Svante, the Big Swede in Chemistry

Ever read a bit about Mozart’s early life? He could play the clavier faultlessly at four years of age and write music at five. I think I was mastering sand castles at 5. Today, I still struggle with paper airplanes. 

There are the “gifted” among us. Many learn to compose music, and many turn their interest to science. Our mental radar screen of brilliant scientists may include Einstein, of course, and maybe Stephen Hawking. Some may include Marie Curie or Tesla and maybe Newton, but I doubt if a man named Svante Arrhenius would show up on our radar screens. He was Sweden’s first Nobel prize winner. This great achievement may have been predictable; Svante taught himself to read at the age of three.

To the 30,000 or so climate scientists, the name Svante Arrhenius is revered. He is the man who ushered in modern climate science. The year was 1896. The industrial revolution began about 1760 but did not turn heavily to steam power until roughly 1800. Simultaneous improvements in the steam engine, pumps, and mining equipment meant the demand for and use of coal was rapid and accelerated dramatically after 1870. 

The fact that carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, was a large bi-product of this massive burning of coal was not lost on Svante. The early work of John Tyndall was now well established, so Svante decided to bring his genius to bear on the subject.   If only he had today’s modern computers! Today the computations, by computer, may have been done in an afternoon. In his day there was only one way to do the computations and that was by hand with pencil and paper. It occupied a great part of his days and nights for a year. In the end, his equation which is a simple one by today’s standards, confirmed his suspicion that man will eventually raise the temperature of the earth.

In 1938 an engineer/scientist named Guy Stewart Calendar began measuring and tracking the rise of CO2 concentrations vs the corresponding rise in the earth’s temperature. In 1958 precise measurements of carbon dioxide concentrations were made possible by Charles David Keeling. His new equipment was installed in the Mauna Loa Observatory on the slopes of the giant volcano on the Big Island. This is the same observatory I flew by multiple times per day, loaded with tourists bound for the Kilauea volcano, all of us blissfully ignorant of global warming.

Keeling’s equipment is so precise it accurately measures the breathing of our earth.  Breathing? Yes! In the northern summer, the trees of the northern hemisphere take in or “breath”, great quantities of air. Through leaf photosynthesis the carbon of CO2 is taken into the tree for growth and oxygen is exhaled. CO2 drops during our summers and rises during our winters.  But, our trees and green vegetation cannot keep up. The Keeling Curve shows, decisively, that we are throwing our atmosphere out of whack. 

I could not write music at four nor did I teach myself to read at three. If it wasn’t for the determination of my parents to keep me on track, I am sure I would not have flown a helicopter, nor would I be writing much of anything.  Am I jealous that I am not “gifted”?  No. I am just thankful we have people who can write music to brighten our days, and for dedicated scientists whose inventions make my life pleasant, and most of all, allow us to understand and admire the delicate systems of God’s Creation.

The Keeling Curve shows two things.

First, the small graph in the upper left corner shows the seasonal fluctuation of our atmosphere’s CO2 concentration as our giant northern forests, “Breathe”.

Second, the large graph shows that the concentration of CO2 is steadily rising.

Graph copied from Wikipedia under Creative Commons

Greyson Morrow