Shocking 106-Year-Old Newspaper Article Predicts Global Warming

• News & Highlights

If you think the climate change debate is a recent issue, think again. For the past few years, an image of a 1912 article proclaiming that coal consumption can have a negative effect on the climate has circulated online. The image in question is from the August 14, 1912 issue of the New Zealand newspaper, Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette.

Skeptics will find the original article available in the digital archives of the New Zealand National Library. The article declares that, at the time, the 2 million tons of coal being burned a year add 7 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Even in 1912, the negative impact was clear. “This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperatures. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.”

The facts from this news article appear to come from an article in the March 1912 issue of Popular Mechanics. The article, titled The Remarkable Weather of 1911, commented on the strange meteorological swings of the past year and pointed the finger at coal consumption and carbon emissions. The greenhouse effect was already a theory in use, having been developed by Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius in 1896.

Photo Gallery