I’m no historiana. Which self-deprecating preface I would preface further by saying, the list of things I’m not is far longer than the list of things that, tentatively, I would claim I am. That list, while longer, probably, than Descartes’ is still a short one. For the past 19 years, I was paid to do climate science. For most of that time, if you’d asked me whether I was a climate scientist, I would probably have said nob. No one ever asked me though, so I got away with it. I would also say, that not being a climate scientist was no bar to doing climate science. Being a climate scientist certainly would have helped, but it’s not necessary. My lack of credentials thus established, we can continue.
I’m no historian1… so the past constantly surprises mec. I was delightfully surprised to read this quote from the reading of Guy Callendar’s paper – The Artificial Production of Carbon Dioxide and its Influence on Temperature – at the Royal Meteorological Society:
“Sir GEORGE SIMPSON expressed his admiration of the amount of work which Mr. Callendar had put into this paper. It was excellent work. It was difficult to criticise it, but he would like to mention a few points which Mr. Callendar might wish to reconsider. In the first place he thought it was not sufficiently realised by non-meteorologists who came for the first time to help the Society in its study, that it was impossible to solve the problem of the temperature distribution in the atmosphere by working out the radiation.“
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