A Brief Perspective on Climate Change Skepticism

Scientific skepticism is nothing more than the normal attitude in the natural sciences to inquire about the validity of a scientific proposition. It is not possible to present a historical or philosophical analysis of climate change skepticism in this brief essay. I will therefore opt for a few suggestions:

• John Tyndall, a prominent 19th-century Irish physicist, performed an experiment in 1861 and observed new chemical reactions produced by high frequency light waves acting on certain gases. Tyndall’s scientific interest was to determine the mechanism by which molecules absorb radiant energy. His experiment had been preceded by a similar experiment by Eunice Newton Foote who demonstrated in 1856 that water vapour and carbon dioxide absorb heat from solar radiation. The work of Foote and Tyndall constitute the genesis of the Greenhouse Effect theory (GHE). Foote’s and Tyndall’s conclusions were contested by other scientists who claimed that the experiments proved nothing more than the mere fact that heat moves from warm to cold bodies. This was the first significant instance of skepticism in the science of climate change.
• Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist regarded as one of the founders of physical chemistry, developed a theory in 1896, intended to determine whether greenhouse gases could explain the temperature variation between…