What Role Did G.S. Callendar Play in Reviving the CO2 Theory of Global Climate Change?
James Rodger Fleming Science, Technology and Society Program Colby College Waterville, ME 04901 jrflemin@colby.edu ABSTRACT: In 1938, Guy Stewart Callendar, a noted British steam engineer, published “The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and Its Influence on Temperature,” the first of many articles aimed at reviving the carbon dioxide theory of climate change. Callendar took his own weather observations at his home in Sussex and compiled a massive amount of temperature data from around the world. Noting an upward trend in temperatures for the first four decades of the twentieth century, he combined these results with studies of the retreat of glaciers, measurements of rising concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide since pre-industrial times, and information newly available concerning the infrared absorption bands of atmospheric constituents. He concluded that the trend toward higher temperatures was significant, especially north of the forty-fifth parallel; that increased us
