Total Pageviews

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

The controversy over Louis Agassiz’s 1837 ice age theory is found!

Louis Agassiz’s 1837 ice age theory, seems pretty well known now.  But he didn't come up with it, this is found and not found on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz#Ice_age

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Agassiz

But what does not appear on the Agassiz page, on Wikipedia, or Britannica, is that he stole it from Karl Shimper

This knowledge does appear, in a brief way,  in the Karl Schimper article

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Friedrich_Schimper

This remarkable paper published 50 years after gives a wonderful account of the whole sordid matter.

https://archive.org/details/jstor-25101263/page/n1/mode/2up

Just beautiful writing in that old text, thanks to archive.org for saving it from obscurity

It's mentioned in

A Short History of Nearly Everything





Saturday, July 4, 2020

The carbon dioxide theory of the ice ages by John Tyndall

Not even on his page!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tyndall

As best as can be told, nowhere on Wikipedia  (no surprise actually)
Archive.org has it archived here

Calculation shows that doubling or tripling the amount of the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere increases the average sea level temperature by about 4° and 7°K, respectively; halving or reducing to zero the carbon dioxide decreases the temperature by similar amounts. Such changes in temperature are about the same as those which occur when the earth passes from an ice age to a warm age, or vice versa. Thus the calculation indicates that the carbon dioxide theory of the ice ages, originally proposed by Tyndall, is a possible theory.
https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/wea.386

https://history.aip.org/climate/xTyndall.htm

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstl.1861.0001


See also  Louis Agassiz’s 1837 ice age theory