Is this news article from 1912, essentially explaining climate change, real?

Question

I found this image on reddit, and I'm wondering if this is real? Was this actually published over 100 years ago?

Transcription:

Science Notes And News

COAL CONSUMPTION AFFECTING CLIMATE

The furnaces of the world are now burning about 2,000,000,000 tons of coal a year. When this is burned, uniting with oxygen, it adds about 7,000,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere yearly. This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the Earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.

You may be interested in the [history of climate change science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science). In 1896, Svante Arrhenius "calculated that a doubling of atmospheric CO2 would give a total warming of 5–6 degrees Celsius". — gerrit, Aug 14 '18 at 15:02
Arrhenius's original paper is here: http://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf — Paul Johnson, Aug 14 '18 at 15:24
[Science Friction podcast episode 15 July 2018](http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sciencefriction/eunice-foote/9990850) tells the story of Eunice Foot doing experiments in the 19th century demonstrating the warming effect of CO2. So it was certainly a known effect in some circles. — , Aug 14 '18 at 18:42

Giter · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-21T18:49:04.303

273

Yes, it was a real article printed in 1912.

Although that image of the article seems to have been spliced together so that the paper's name, section, and article are all in one neat little frame, here is a scan of the original paper it came from. That site is run by the National Library of New Zealand, so it is pretty trustworthy.

The article in question can be found in the fifth section of the third column of the full paper, and here it is zoomed in.

As pointed out in a comment, the article seems to have been ripped from the caption of an image in Popular Mechanics apparently published several months prior, giving further proof that the content of the article is real and that methods of writing filler articles haven't changed much in a hundred years.

_{Unrelated, but the bottom of column 5 of the full paper has a section called 'Cats in Ancient Times', so climate change isn't the only thing from a hundred years ago that's still news worthy today.}

edited Dec 21 '18 at 18:49

answered Aug 14 '18 at 15:10

Giter

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I assume you, [like the OP](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/42008/is-this-news-article-from-1912-essentially-explaning-climate-change-real#comment182598_42008), found this on snopes.com. It would be worth saying that in the answer. – T.J. Crowder Aug 14 '18 at 16:28
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@T.J.Crowder: It can be found on many sites: Snopes, [New York Times](https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/coals-link-to-global-warming-explained-in-1912/), [this random site](https://www.zmescience.com/other/offbeat-other/1912-climate-change/) that had a bunch of popups, even the [Daily Mail](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4584444/A-century-old-newspaper-predicted-global-warming-1912.html) got it right. Since every article talking about it used the same bit of evidence, I didn't think the one site that linked me to the evidence mattered as much as the evidence itself. – Giter Aug 14 '18 at 16:41
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@T.J.Crowder I found the article at https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ROTWKG19120814.2.56.5 and https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/rodney-and-otamatea-times-waitemata-and-kaipara-gazette/1912/8/14/7 with a [search for the newspaper](https://www.google.com/search?Rodney+and+otametea+times) then following the links and following the date. Snoopes not required – Henry Aug 15 '18 at 09:43
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I'm sorry for being so off-topic, but that page is just a gold mine of good stuff. [Some men would almost as soon sit in a dentist's chair as in a barber's chair.](https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/imageserver/newspapers/P29pZD1ST1RXS0cxOTEyMDgxNC4yLjUyJmNvbG9yPTMyJmV4dD1naWYmYXJlYT0y) – pipe Aug 18 '18 at 08:11

Is this news article from 1912, essentially explaining climate change, real?

1 Answers1