| | This is the best web site I know of that gives background on CC. Very readable, it can be understood by anyone with at least a high school education, I think. It mostly gives a history of how climate scientists came to their current understanding of climate and along the way implicitly refutes most of the attempts to refute it. The opening page with a table of contents:
history.aip.org
The introduction:
Introduction:
A Hyperlinked History of Climate Change Science
"To a patient scientist, the unfolding greenhouse mystery is far more exciting than the plot of the best mystery novel. But it is slow reading, with new clues sometimes not appearing for several years. Impatience increases when one realizes that it is not the fate of some fictional character, but of our planet and species, which hangs in the balance as the great carbon mystery unfolds at a seemingly glacial pace."
— D. Schindler (1) | It is an epic story: the struggle of thousands of men and women over the course of a century for very high stakes. For some, the work required actual physical courage, a risk to life and limb in icy wastes or on the high seas. The rest needed more subtle forms of courage. They gambled decades of arduous effort on the chance of a useful discovery, and staked their reputations on what they claimed to have found. Even as they stretched their minds to the limit on intellectual problems that often proved insoluble, their attention was diverted into grueling administrative struggles to win minimal support for the great work. A few took the battle into the public arena, often getting more blame than praise; most labored to the end of their lives in obscurity. In the end they did win their goal, which was simply knowledge.
The scientists who labored to understand Earth's climate discovered that many factors influence it. Everything from volcanoes to factories shape our winds and rains. The scientific research itself was shaped by many influences, from popular misconceptions to government funding, all happening at once. A traditional history would try to squeeze the story into a linear text, one event following another like beads on a string. Inevitably some parts are left out. Yet for this sort of subject we need total history, including all the players — mathematicians and biologists, lab technicians and government bureaucrats, industrialists and politicians, newspaper reporters and the ordinary citizen. This website is an experiment in a new way to tell a historical story. Think of the site as an object like a sculpture or a building. You walk around, looking from this angle and that. In your head you are putting together a rounded representation, even if you don't take the time to inspect every cranny. That is the way we usually learn about anything complex.
You can start with the following 10-minute overview. Or skip down to advice on using this site. This and all other files are available in a printable format (but you'll miss the hyperlinks and the most recent updates).
continues at history.aip.org
| The Discovery of Global Warming January 2017 |
A hypertext history of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to cause climate change.
This Website created by Spencer Weart supplements his much shorter book, which tells the history of climate change research as a single story. On this Website you will find a more complete history in dozens of essays on separate topics, updated annually.
If you want basic facts about climate change, or detailed current technical information, you might do better using the links page. But if you want to use history to really understand it all...
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Second edition, revised
and updated (2008)
| Basic navigation: On the right of each essay are links to essays about other topics. Follow forward an arrow to see how the events that you are reading about gave something => TO the other topic. Follow back an arrow to track influence <= FROM the other topic. Double arrow <=> shows MUTUAL interaction.
Click on a numbered note, e.g., (12) for references. Some notes, indicated thus: (12*) have additional text. In the note, click on a reference to reach the bibliography—use your browser's BACK button to return.
About this site: top of page
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Contents/Site Map January 2017 version
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This is mounted on the Website of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics. Discovery of Global Warming site created by Spencer Weart with initial support from the American Institute of Physics, the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The statements on this site represent the views of the author and are not positions endorsed by the American Institute of Physics. Two of the Institute's Member Societies have taken positions on climate change; see the American Physical Society's statement and the American Geophysical Union's statement (pdf).
Copyright © 2003-2017 Spencer Weart and the American Institute of Physics.
Book cover photo © AbleStock.
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