Editing 2889: Greenhouse Effect

Jump to: navigation, search

Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.

The edit can be undone. Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then save the changes below to finish undoing the edit.
Latest revision Your text
Line 10: Line 10:
  
 
==Explanation==
 
==Explanation==
 +
{{incomplete|Created by CREATING CRETACEOUS PARK - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
 +
This comic has [[:Category:Climate change|climate change]] as its topic, a reccuring theme on xkcd.
  
−
This comic has [[:Category:Climate change|climate change as its topic, a recurring theme]] on xkcd. There is no 'joke' <em>per se</em>, just a wry (and serious) observation on the timeline of climate change, and our understanding of it. The fact in question here is when science became aware of anthropogenic global warming and its primary cause.
+
It depicts a timeline with three events:  
 +
*The advent of the {{w|Industrial Revolution}}, marked by the introduction of the {{w|Watt steam engine}} by {{w|James Watt}} in 1776
 +
*The first quantitative prediction of the {{w|greenhouse effect}} by {{w|Arvid Högbom}} and {{w|Svante Arrhenius}} in 1896
 +
*And present day, early 2024.  
  
−
The comic depicts a timeline with three events:
+
The distance between the start of the Industrial Revolution and the mathematical demonstration of the role of carbon dioxide as a mediator of global temperature (the "greenhouse effect") is stated to be 120 years, whilst the distance between that demonstration and the present day is 128 years. This means that we have known that greenhouse effect could cause a problem if we continued to burn fossile fules for a longer period after finding this out, than before. Without taking any real action to prevent this.  
−
* The introduction of the {{w|Watt steam engine}} in 1776. The comic takes it as the start of the {{w|Industrial Revolution}}, and the event that most directly ushered in the boom of fossil fuels' burning.
 
−
* [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Influence_of_Carbonic_Acid_in_the_Air_upon_the_Temperature_of_the_Ground The first quantitative prediction] of the {{w|greenhouse effect}} by {{w|Svante Arrhenius}} in January and April 1896 (that, a. o., doubling CO<sub>2</sub> concentration would increase mean temperature by 5 to 6 °C, depending on latitude). Arrhenius drew on and included a summary of {{w|Arvid Högbom}}'s 1894 Swedish article, which dealt with carbon cycle over geological periods and first estimated annual global carbon emissions.
 
−
* The present day, early 2024.
 
  
−
As the caption points out, less time elapsed between the start of the Industrial Revolution and the work by Arrhenius, than has elapsed since then. Some present-day climate discussions may cite [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1957.tb01849.x a 1957 paper by Revell and Seuss] as "the starting point" for modern inquiries into global warming. While it was more advanced and detailed, the comic notes "we figured out the greenhouse effect" 61 years prior; see both [https://folk.universitetetioslo.no/roberan/t/EarlyEstimates1.shtml Robbie 2018] and even longer {{w|History of climate change science}} which includes earlier, qualitative works.
+
Climate discussions may cite [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2153-3490.1957.tb01849.x a 1957 paper by Revell and Seuss] as "the starting point" for contemporary inquiries into global warming, but the comic points out that the matter was being debated, and the underlying mechanism correctly worked out, a full half century before that. The implication, consistent with other [[:Category:Climate change|climate change]] themed xkcd comics, is that humans have taken insufficient action to slow or stop global warming despite knowing the mechanism for more than a century, and understanding, at least intellectually, the consequences of inaction.
  
−
The implication, consistent with other [[:Category:Climate change|climate change themed xkcd comics]], is that humans have taken insufficient action to stop global warming despite knowing about it for more than a century, and understanding, at least intellectually, the consequences of inaction.
+
The title text notes that the seemingly trivial prediction of CO<sub>2</sub> levels in the far future have turned out to be very important, quoting Arrhenius as believing it wouldn't be valuable at all.<ref>Crawford, Elisabeth (1997). [https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Greenhouse-effect/Arrhenius/3-optional-Crawford-1997.pdf "Arrhenius' 1896 Model of the Greenhouse Effect in Context"]. ''Ambio'' '''26'''(1):6-11. JSTOR [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4314543 4314543].</ref> Ironically, Arrhenius's calculations turned out to be both accurate and significant.
−
 
 
−
The title text portrays Arrhenius as dismissive of his work. A reading of the reference cited (page 8 in [https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Greenhouse-effect/Arrhenius/3-optional-Crawford-1997.pdf Crawford 1997]: 'Writing to a friend at the end of [1895], he found it "unbelievable that so trifling a matter has cost me a full year".') suggests instead that Arrhenius was complaining about the unanticipated difficulty of answering what he thought initially was a simple question, about the historical (geological time) connection between carbon dioxide concentrations and global temperature. Per this reading, Arrhenius's complaint was about the work required to achieve the result, <em>not</em> about the significance of the result. His interpretation of the significance, though, differed from today's (page 11 in Crawford 1997): "[Global warming will] allow our descendants, even if they only be those of a distant future [estimating the doubling time as 500 years], to live under a warmer sky and in a less harsh environment than we were granted".
 
  
 
==Transcript==
 
==Transcript==

Please note that all contributions to explain xkcd may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see explain xkcd:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

To protect the wiki against automated edit spam, we kindly ask you to solve the following CAPTCHA:

Cancel | Editing help (opens in new window)

Templates used on this page:

Retrieved from "https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2889:_Greenhouse_Effect"