The purpose of this letter is to call John Doner’s bluff. Since Doner has followed the “climate change debate” for 40 years, I guess he knows that the “greenhouse effect” was discovered by Irish physicist John Tyndall on 05/18/1859, after a day’s work in the laboratory at London’s Royal Institution.
This was six months before publication of Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” Tyndall had been experimenting with gases’ properties to test the idea that gases found in Earth’s atmosphere absorbed differing amounts of radiant heat (i.e. longwave infrared radiation). I’m certain that Doner knows physicist Joseph Fourier had articulated this theory in the 1820s. Tyndall demonstrated experimentally such a phenomenon existed.
The experiment helped explain how the temperature of this, and other planets, are regulated. Tyndall’s experiments in 1859, which he refined for several years, established for the first time that gaseous molecules, such as water vapor, carbon dioxide and methane, do absorb more energy than oxygen and nitrogen when radiant heat is passed through them. Less than four weeks later, on Friday, 06/10/1859, at a meeting of the Royal Institution with chair Prince Albert, John Tyndall offered the first public account of what has become known as the “greenhouse effect.”
And I’m certain Doner knows Charles Keeling initiated measuring CO2 levels for NOAA in 1959, and that levels have increased at an annual rate that doesn’t conform to preindustrial changes. The NAS, USM, NGS, & TWC have reported on/planned for Earth’s greenhouse. Doner is focused on his 401K at Earth’s expense.