| Summary: | Awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1903, Arrhenius was also fascinated by cosmogony, or the study of the origins of the universe and life. Driven by a desire to explain the mechanisms controlling glacial cycles, he turned to the radiative properties of the atmosphere in the infrared zone – and in particular, the works of Fourier, Pouillet and Langley – to demonstrate that the chemical composition of the air is a crucial factor in determining variations in the earth’s temperature. He was one of a number of scientists at this time who refuted the theory of James Croll (1821–1890), which attributed glaciations to astronomic causes, a theory which would eventually be developed and recognised by the scientific community, notably thanks to the work of Milutin Milankovitch (1879–1958) in the 1920s. Arrhenius calculated that a doubling of the quantity of CO2 in the air could lead to global warming of around 5° C. This result is surprisingly relevant today given that the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimate this value to lie between 2.5 and 4.5° C. Arrhenius’s calculations are now known to be incorrect. Yet while the relative precision of his results was somewhat fortuitous, Arrhenius’s research was a precursor to the quantitative models of the greenhouse effect which are used by climatologists today, particularly when calculating the risk of sudden and irreversible climate change as a result of increasing CO2 emissions. Though it seems paradoxical to us, in a work of popular science published in 1906, Arrhenius writes that the emission of carbon dioxide due to increasing industrialisation would actually prove beneficial in terms of reducing the effects of the next glaciation ! Lauréat du prix Nobel de chimie en 1903, Arrhenius était aussi un passionné de cosmogonie – l’étude des origines de l’univers et de la vie. En souhaitant expliquer les mécanismes des cycles de glaciation, Arrhenius s’appuie sur les propriétés radiatives de l’atmosphère dans l’infrarouge – et notamment ...
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