[SystemSafety] Eunice Newton Foote

[Prof. Dr. Peter Bernard Ladkin]

Today is the 204th birthday of Eunice Newton Foote, one of the four pioneers of climate science 
(Fourier, Foote, Tyndall, Arrhenius), specifically the Greenhouse Effect. Foote was the first person 
to note the connection between atmospheric CO2 and possible climate change. Apparently women weren't 
allowed to present at the AAAS general meeting in the 1850's, so someone else had to do it for her. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunice_Newton_Foote

My housemate informed me that Google initiated some kind of celebration. Just for interest, I 
checked out my bookshelf.

Sir John Houghton's text Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, which presents the results of the 
IPCC in glossy American textbook style (he was the IPCC WG1's chair for the first three 
assessments), has a half-page box on "Pioneers of the science of the greenhouse effect", mentions 
Fourier, Tyndall, Arrhenius, and omits Foote. It's been through five editions in 1994, 1997, 2004, 
2009 and 2015, is a fine text and won't be updated any more since Houghton is no longer with us.

Raymond Pierrehumbert's text Principles of Planetary Climate also has the three men in the index but 
no Eunice Foote.

Michael Mann's book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, which details his experiences after 
having published the "hockey stick", also mentions the three men in the index, but not Foote.

Peter Stott's book on his experiences with the climate-change denialists, Hot Air, however, has a 
page and a half on Foote.

I thought Britain and the US were both well past the point of airbrushing women out of science, what 
with all the discussion about Rosalind Franklin's contribution to the discovery of the structure of 
DNA. (She wasn't airbrushed out; she died in 1958 and the Nobel isn't awarded post mortem.) Yet here 
are three notable and highly visible climate scientists ignoring Foote's contribution.

Shame on them. And good for Peter Stott for putting the record straight.

PBL

Prof. i.R. Dr. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany

Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319 www.rvs-bi.de