Why does everyone think Al Gore discovered global warming?

Question

Anyone with an elementry education should know that it was NASA scientists that discovered it 20 years ago. Al Gore is only bringing attention to it.

Answer 1

I am not aware of anyone having ever expressed the notion, before reading your question, that Al Gore discovered global warming. It is not widely known but in fact the possibility of global warming due to release of CO2 from burning fossil fuels was actually predicted 111 years ago. Increasing CO2 levels were discovered about 80 years ago and conclusively confirmed about 60 years ago. The connection between increasing CO2 and the global warming was know then. S. Arrhenius discovered global warming in 1896. Dr. Keeling was Al Gore's professor in the 1950's and that is when Gore learned about global warming and he went into politics in part to do what he could to address it. He has been most effective in bringing attention to this extremely important issue.

The following is from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center which is part of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). and is located at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Q. Is there any ONE person who discovered global warming? If not, what year was global warming discovered?.

A. The first person to have predicted that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels would cause a global warming is considered to be S. Arrhenius, who published in 1896 the paper "On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground." That atmospheric carbon dioxide was actually increasing was confirmed beginning in the 1930s, and convincingly so beginning in the late 1950s when highly accurate measurement techniques were developed (the most famous demonstration of this is in C.D. Keeling's record at Mauna Loa, Hawaii). By the 1990s, it was widely accepted (but not unanimously so) that the Earth's surface air temperature had warmed over the past century. An ongoing debate is whether such a warming can, in fact, be attributed to increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. [RMC]

Answer 2

Al Gore is acting as a messenger repeating the science of others. Because he's a public figure he's easy to parody and ridicule. The only people I've ever heard referencing Al Gore as the discoverer or inventor of global warming are the global warming skeptics. Unfortunately their finger pointing is at the wrong person and they're falslely crediting him with something he never did. Kind of makes them look dumb doesn't it.

As for who discovered global warming. The first documented evidence dates back to 1811 but this was more of an observation than a discovery'. If anyone can be credited with discovering global warming then it's the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius who in 1896 established the link between carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. This was published in a paper entitled "On the Influences of Carbonic Acid (carbon dioxide) in the Air Upon the Temperatures of the Ground" which is available online here - http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/1/18/Arrhenius.pdf

Wikipedia has an article about Arrhenius - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius

Answer 3

Well, I went to Graduate School, more than once, and I never heard anybody attribute the discovery of Global Warming to NASA. But, I did read that the White House demanded that all NASA workers clear with the White House any statements on Global Warming contrary to White House policy.
Perhaps, what you are thinking is about Al Gore "inventing the Internet". That is not true either, I believe it was an accidental "slip" he made and comedians picked it up and it is now enshrined in the popular lore, he seems to not mind and smiles when he talks about it on TV.

The Internet was originally a government (ARPA) sponsored project to link all government super computers, you know, as powerful as the one sitting on your desk (they used to be called that, then). Check out the link that follows.

Also, like someone's Answer above mention the contribution of Arrhenius in 1896, who correctly predicted Global Warming and was totally ignored, check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius

Answer 4

There is no ability to evaluate evidence by people who could believe anything that Al Gore would say. Al Gore is doing more than bringing attention to it. He is exaggerating it beyond all rationally. He tries to scare little ignorant children that the world is going to end and he is given hero status by the brain dead that think he is a visionary.

Answer 5

It speaks volumes about the level of intelligence in this country, it's bad enough a demagogue like Bush can feed the majority of the population with his greedy aspirations, it seems anybody with mass media access can feed anything they want to the population. So, Al Gore is the flavour of the town right now, but do you even question their motives or is everyone content on behaving like an ostrich, by hiding their head in the sand ,oblivious to the world around them.
Grow up already- "BE A MAN" -dude

Answer 6

that actually isn't true not everyone thinks that al gore discovered it plus if they thought it was him they're right because when he was in college his class did an experiment,they and he found that the carbon level was much higher than the temp.plus SCIENTISTS discovered facts in the 1960's andin the past. in the 1970's it started taking place somewhat effectively.NASA did not discover it 20yrs. ago (1980's) it was way before that

Answer 7

I'm not scared about it in the slightest, I will be long dead before it has a noticeable effect. But I do understand the science behind it, and worry about the effects on future generations. Anyone who says there is no factual proof of it is simply burying thier heads in the sand and denying it without doing any research, you don't get 97% of climatologists agreeing that it is happening if there is NO PROOF.

Answer 8

I do not think so.
See John Burke's "After the Warming" from around 1989's PBS series. He was way ahead of the game on exposing our future problems to be. But I do appreciate VP Al Gore's rendition.
"James Burke takes us into the future to see what could have been done in the 1990's to slow the Greenhouse Effect.."

Answer 9

Scientists have known about global warming for tens of thousands of years. It's a cyclical pattern that continues to occur on this planet. Al Gore and the contemporary scientific community have simply tried to warn us as to the impact we've had on the acceleration of this cycle. Our industrial revolution of these past 150 years has added tons of pollution from smoke-belching factories and vehicle emissions. We now throw 70,000 tons of poison into our atmosphere ever day. Anyone with an elementary education knows that this needs all the attention it deserves if we want to prevent the world from dying out. -RKO- 05/26/07

Answer 10

Al Gore discovered a political topic he could sell to the masses, as you state.