The Threat: The Invisible Threat

The Invisible Threat: How Climate Change Came to be Regarded as a Social Problem The dawn of the twentieth century marked the beginning of dramatic changes around the world. The invent of steam and coal driven machines was creating an industrial boom the likes of which the world has never seen. As the world’s focus was turned to the exploding economy of the Second Industrial Revolution, behind the scenes, carbon dioxide pollution was beginning to collect in the atmosphere. The collection of this gas caused the atmosphere to absorb more solar radiation and was slowly heating the earth. At the time many people believed shift in the climate was not caused by gases in the atmosphere, but the ever present forces of earthly elements such as

Researchers such as Callendar had gotten the idea on the table, but it would be up to others in the decades to come to gather evidence able to sway the opinion of the rest of the scientific community as well as the public. By the middle of the nineteenth century, technology had come quite a long way and electronic computers were becoming readily available for researchers to use in their quest to prove beyond a doubt the effects of carbon dioxide emissions on the climate. In a twist of luck for climate researchers, government funding was becoming more readily available as the Cold War sparked an interest in the environment in hopes of learning how to manipulate it (Weart 2015). Spurred on by the increased funding and new technology, research into climate change continued under the guise of research for climatological warfare. Eventually, a breakthrough in public recognition came following a report published by oceanographer Roger Revelle. He reported that the oceans were not absorbing excess carbon dioxide at the rate previously predicted and that the process was actually much slower (Revelle, Suess 1957). He also became the first to put a negative spin on global warming. While scientists of the past had seen only milder winters and increased crop growth as the effects of global warming, Revelle predicted negative consequences in the form of melting ice caps, expanding deserts, etc. He said that humanity was becoming part of an unintentional climatological experiment and reminded people that the earth was a closed system that there was no escaping from should anything go wrong (Keller