User:Mehmuffin/sandbox

Proposed new copy for the section:

Climate history (including ice ages and other natural changes), and early conceptions of the greenhouse effect were initially developed in the early 19th century. Water, methane, and were specifically identified as greenhouse gas contributors to natural climate change in the 1850s by John Tyndall.

Svante Arrhenius noted that water vapour in air continuously varied, but carbon dioxide was determined by long term geological processes. At the end of an ice age, warming from increased would increase the amount of water vapour, amplifying its effect in a feedback process. In 1896, he published the first climate model of its kind, showing that halving of could have produced the drop in temperature initiating the ice age. Arrhenius calculated the temperature increase expected from doubling to be around 5-6 C-change. Other scientists were initially skeptical and believed the greenhouse effect to be saturated so that adding more would make no difference. Experts thought climate would be self-regulating. From 1938 Guy Stewart Callendar published evidence that climate was warming and levels increasing, but his calculations met the same objections.

Hans Suess found evidence levels had been rising, Roger Revelle showed the oceans would not absorb the increase, and together they helped Charles Keeling to begin a record of continued increase, the Keeling Curve. Scientists alerted the public, and the dangers were highlighted at James Hansen's 1988 Congressional testimony. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, set up in 1988 to provide formal advice to the world's governments, spurred interdisciplinary research.