When did we first realize that we had the potential to warm our planet’s climate? You could go all the way back to 1827, when French mathematician Joseph Fourier calculated that the atmosphere, somehow, was keeping the planet warm like a blanket. Or you could go as late as 1938 when British engineer Guy Stewart Callendar gathered data for the first time to show that the Earth was already getting warmer in line with emissions. But over the last decade, a new answer has come to light: 1856. That’s when amateur American scientist Eunice Foote detailed the mechanics of what we now call the greenhouse…

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