Climate change deniers like to suggest that the science underlying climate change is highly complex, like quantum mechanics or Godel’s number theory, something that is only understandable to a handful of highly trained scientists. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The science of climate change is very simple. Anyone who has ever put salt on their driveway in the winter understands the basic science. Adding an impurity to a solution changes the physical properties of that solution. Add salt to water and you change the melting point. Put salt on a snowy sidewalk and the snow melts. A British scientist named John Tyndall discovered in the 1850’s that if you add carbon to air it changes its properties, allowing it to retain heat better.
Most people are familiar with the physical phenomenon of an impurity altering the ability of air to retain heat. We all know that it doesn’t cool off as much at night when it’s humid. A humid summer day that reaches the upper 80’s may only cool off into the low 70’s at night. But a dry Indian summer day that reaches the same upper 80’s may cool off into the 50’s at night. The reason for the difference is that the water vapor in the air holds the heat in.
This is what is known as the Greenhouse Effect. The scientific concept was first theorized by Joseph Fourier in the 1820’s. Tyndall added to the science in the 1850’s. In the 1890’s a Swedish scientist named Svante Arrhenius expanded on this earlier work, and published a lengthy study of the greenhouse effect in 1896. In that book he noted that carbon, and particularly carbon dioxide, enhanced the greenhouse effect. He said that as the quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, the temperature of the atmosphere will also increase. This has been the standard model of climate science ever since.
So not only is the science behind climate change very simple, it is also quite old. A scientific concept doesn’t survive for over 100 years unless it’s sound. Global climate change caused by the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is simple and sound. Usually I’m comforted by the power of science, but in this case I find it quite scary.
I have a slightly longer version of this post here: Simple Science