Marked Mauna Loa

SubjectIn outline · lessons being written

The human climate

In 1958 Charles Keeling began measuring carbon dioxide in the air on Mauna Loa in Hawai’i. His curve has risen every year since. Burning coal, oil and gas has warmed the Earth by more than a degree since the 1800s.

Place
Mauna Loa · Vostok, Antarctica · Kiribati · ParisThe whole world
Laid out as
A theme across timeOne idea followed through the eras it crosses.
Lessons
6 planned, none written yet

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

  1. ITyndall, Foote and Arrhenius
  2. IIThe Keeling curve
  3. IIIIce cores
  4. IVRio, Kyoto and Paris
  5. VRising seas in the Pacific
  6. VIWhat we do next

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

  • Eunice Foote
  • John Tyndall
  • Charles Keeling
  • Wangari Maathai
  • Greta Thunberg

Objects

  • The Keeling curve
  • Ice cores

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestryOur species and the Old Stone AgeFarming and the New Stone AgeFirst cities and the Bronze AgeThe Iron Age and growing statesThe classical worldAfter the empiresMedieval networks and empiresOceans crossedRevolutions and the first factoriesIndustry, empire and world warThe world since 1945

1958 to now. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?