John Tyndall on the Greenhouse Effect, 1859

John Tyndall

John Tyndall is often credited with discovering the Greenhouse Effect. That's not quite true, since Eunice Foote's paper was published before Tyndall's. However, this quote from Tyndall's paper is remarkable. Not only did he understand that greenhouse gases trapped heat, he understood that it was the heat radiating from the planet that was trapped, not the solar energy entering the climate system. Here's an excerpt from John Tyndall's 1859 paper entitled, "On the Transmission of Heat of different qualities through Gases of different kinds."
The bearing of this experiment upon the action of planetary atmospheres is obvious. The solar heat possesses, in a far higher degree than that of the lime light, the power of crossing an atmosphere; but, and when the heat is absorbed by the planet, it is so changed in quality that the rays emanating from the planet cannot get with the same freedom back into space. Thus the atmosphere admits of the entrance of the solar heat, but checks its exit; and the result is a tendency to accumulate heat at the surface of the planet.

In the admirable paper of M. Pouillet already referred to, this action is regarded as the cause of the lower atmospheric strata being warmer than the higher ones; and Mr. Hopkins has shown the possible influence of such atmospheres upon the life of a planet situated at a great distance from the sun."[1]
There is some very interesting reflection on this study that is also worth reading.[2][3] Tyndall's paper was published after Eunice Foote in the U.S. first discovered that increasing CO2 concentrations will also cause the atmosphere to warm.[4] The science of climate change is over 150 years old, and there has been no evidence offered to suggest that it's wrong.

John Tyndall's Device for Observing Radiant Heat Absorption

References:

[1] John Tyndall (1859), "On the Transmission of Heat of different qualities through Gases of different kinds."
https://ozonedepletiontheory.info/Papers/Tyndall1859TransmissionHeat.pdf

[2] Steve Graham, "John Tyndall (1820-1893)"
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Tyndall

[3] Mike Hulme, "On the origin of ‘the greenhouse effect’: John Tyndall’s 1859 interrogation of nature"
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/wea.386?fbclid=IwAR3ZNUmHNvEAbQxeOqqWpL6VpPYyF80shoR2T1t-A5kJuXloUoYGajtQ6MY

[4]Eunice Foote, “Circumstances Affecting the Heat of Sun’s Rays”, in American Journal of Art and Science, 2nd Series, v. XXII/no. LXVI, November 1856, p. 382-383.
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/first-paper-to-link-co2-and-global-warming-by-eunice-foote-1856

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