When the Swede Svante Arrhenius took a scientific look at the atmosphere at the end of the 19th century and noticed that carbon dioxide led to an increase in the Earth's temperature via the greenhouse effect, he was delighted by this correlation. Arrhenius thought he saw his planet on the right path, which would prevent the coming of an ice age and ensure that Europeans could stay in their own countries instead of having to flee - migrate - to Africa.
"People used to worry about the planet dying of cold"
In the 1930s, the pioneer of climate research, power plant engineer Guy Callendar, published his insights on "The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and its Influence on Temperature", in which he showed that moreCO2 led to a warmer Earth, which the researcher viewed positively because it would delay - if not prevent - "the return of the deadly glaciers". This changes the way we look at things, and today we seem to have forgotten that in my school days - i.e. the 1950s - there were many warnings about coming ice ages in geography lessons, but never about the earth being too warm. The geography teacher was supported by the physics teacher, who was able to report on the ideas of his science, which in the 19th century, based on thermodynamic laws, believed that it was possible to predict the death of the planet from cold, which was illustrated by gruesome pictures in the textbooks. People looked at freezing people with torn clothes waiting in vain for rescue in icy conditions. If someone had spoken of the opposite back then and announced a hot age instead of an ice age, the public would have burst out laughing. Over the course of the 20th century, concerns about man-made climate change grew to such an extent that politicians had to respond. They did so for the first time in 1992 at the famous Earth Summit in Rio des Janeiro, which attempted to draw up a "Marshall Plan" for developing countries. The specific aim was to set up a "Framework Convention on Climate Change", as the United Nations called the project, and it was indeed possible to get 193 countries to sign the document. The Tagesschau of June 11, 1992 reported on a weak convention - a disappointment. Was it really that and not rather the opposite? Today, the United Nations is talking about a real breakthrough in the political handling of the climate issue. Has anyone noticed?
