“Research by definition is done at the frontier of ignorance. Like
nearly everyone described in these essays, Callendar had to use
intuition as well as logic to draw any conclusions at all from the
murky data and theories at his disposal. Like nearly everyone, he
argued for conclusions that mingled the true with the false, leaving
it to later workers to peel away the bad parts. While he could not
prove that global warming was underway, he had given reasons to
reconsider the question. We owe much to Callendar’s courage. His
claims rescued the idea of global warming from obscurity and thrust
it into the marketplace of scientific ideas. Not everyone dismissed
his claims. Their very uncertainty attracted scientific curiosity.”
Excerpt from The Discovery of Global Warming, by Spencer Weart, an
excellent book available free from the American Institute of Physics:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
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