For two centuries, scientists have known that burning fossil fuels warms our planet.

History · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Long before modern climate models, 19th-century researchers identified the greenhouse effect and linked industrial activity to rising temperatures. What began as a curiosity about atmospheric gases has evolved into a global consensus on human-driven climate change, tracing a path from coal-burning alchemists to today's precise carbon monitoring.

The scientific journey began in 1640 when Johann Baptista van Helmolt identified carbon dioxide as a byproduct of burning coal. By 1754, Joseph Black developed a method to detect this gas using limewater. The theoretical framework for the greenhouse effect emerged in 1824, when Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier compared Earth's atmosphere to a greenhouse. In 1856, Eunice Foote experimentally demonstrated that carbon dioxide and water vapor trap heat from sunlight, a finding further refined by John Tyndall in 1859, who identified these gases as the primary heat-trapping agents in our atmosphere.

By the late 19th century, the connection between industrialization and climate became clearer. In 1896, Svante Arrhenius theorized that burning coal would increase atmospheric carbon dioxide and warm the climate. While early 20th-century researchers like George Callendar observed rising temperatures and CO2 levels, they often viewed this as a potential benefit to delay future ice ages. By 1957, oceanographer Roger Revelle and chemist Hans Suess famously described human industrial activity as a large-scale geophysical experiment, acknowledging that such a shift had no historical precedent.

The transition from theory to precise observation accelerated in 1958, when Charles Keeling began daily measurements of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa. These records showed a steady climb from 313 parts per million (ppm) to over 400 ppm by 2013. By 1988, NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the U.S. Senate that greenhouse gases were driving global warming. Today, research has expanded to include ocean acidification and the attribution of specific extreme weather events to human-caused climate change, confirming that the atmospheric composition has shifted significantly from the pre-industrial baseline of approximately 280 ppm.

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