Climate science is not a new field.
By the time of the American Civil War,
it was well-known that a handful of gases
that make up less than 1% of the air
absorb radiation from the sun and the earth,
and emit some of it back to Earth.
We now know that without those gases,
the average surface temperature
of the planet would be well below freezing,
and human life would not exist.
How did these early scientists study this?
What else affects our Earth’s climate,
and what does it have to do with recent warming?