ABSTRACT
More than a century has passed since the theory of what we now call the greenhouse effect was first promulgated by the French scientist, Jean Baptiste Fourier (Revelle 1985). At that time, the possibility of atmospheric warming by heat reradiated from the earth being trapped as in a hothouse excited no one. However, by 1924, the American biophysicist Alfred Lotka noted with concern that industrial processes were emitting ten times the amount of carbon dioxide that was produced in the natural process of breathing. Since the mid-1950s, especially following the International Geophysical Year of 1956–57, there has been increasing scientific concern about the potential for carbon dioxide and other trace gases to increase the ambient temperature of the planet by trapping the lower frequency reradiated heat in the earth’s atmosphere (Clark 1986).
