3500 BC
Sumerians invent the wheel.
3000 BC
Sumerians invent money; the Shekel.
1st Century BC & AD
Vitruvius invents the term “AeolisPila”, the ball of Aeolus (Greek god of air and wind).
Heron of Alexandria (Egypt) describes a steam-powered device with rotating parts called an aeolipile (Hero engine), considered the first steam engine.
900 AD
Chinese invent gun powder.
1000 AD
Chinese invent the gun.
1604
The Treaty of London is the starting point for the first “global” power covering most regions of the world and imposing a new world order based on trade; the Empire on which the sun never sets.
1611
Establishment of the first important stock exchange in Amsterdam.
1712
British ironmonger Thomas Newcomen invents the first widely used steam engine starting Industrial Revolution and industrial scale use of coal.
1760
Start of industrial revolution, a period of transition in the production method from hand production (manufacture and artisanat) to machine production (automation). Industrial revolution starts with textiles industry.
1769
First steam-powered automobile was built by Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot.
1804
Franco-Swiss inventor Isaac de Rivaz invents first internal combustion engine called the de Rivaz Engine.
1824
French physicist Joseph Fourier describes the Earth’s natural “greenhouse effect”.
1828
Hungarian priest Ányos Jedlik builds the first car with electric engine.
Electric cars became popular end of 19th and beginning of 20th until technical developments and mass production of gasoline vehicles.
1885
Karl Benz builds the first “production” vehicle considered as the first true automobile.
1893
The first use of the name ‘El Niño’ to describe a climatic phenomenon appeared in South America. The term did not mean what it does today.
1896
Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius concludes that industrial-age coal burning will increase natural greenhouse effect.
1902
First mass-produced electric vehicles appeared in America.
1913
Ford Motor Company mass produces the first automobile on a moving assembly line.
1924
The Southern Oscillation was named “El Nino” in 1924 and its discovery can be traced back to colonial attempts to forecast the Indian monsoon in the late-nineteenth century.
1937
Term “Greenhouse Effect” is invented.
1938
British engineer Guy Callendar says temperatures had risen over the previous century, CO2 concentrations had increased over the same period and that both were related.
1957
US oceanographer Roger Revelle and chemist Hans Suess say that seawater will not absorb all the additional CO2 entering the atmosphere.
1958
Monitoring station is established by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Hawai.
1970s
Global Cooling movement. Earth cooled down between 1940-1970 due to boom in aerosol pollutants which reflected sunlight away from earth.
1975
US scientist Wallace Broecker invents the term “global warming”.
1977
First developments towards trading of emission certificates based on the “offset-mechanism” taken up in Clean Air Act.
1987
The Montreal Protocol is agreed, restricting chemicals that damage the ozone layer.
1988
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is established under the UN to provide scientific views on climate change and its political and economical impact.
1989
UK PM Margaret Thatcher warns in UN speech that “We are seeing a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere… The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto.”
1992
The international community began the process to tackle GHG emissions when 160 countries agreed on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Rio de Janeiro.
1997
Toyota launches the “Prius”, the world’s first mass-produced hybrid vehicle.
1997
The Kyoto Protocol was agreed. Developed nations pledge to reduce emissions by an average of 5% by the period 2008. Emission trading is established.
2005
The Kyoto Protocol becomes international law for signatories.
2006
Al Gore launch his movie “An Inconvenient Truth”.
2008
First Tesla Roadsters are delivered to customers. The Roadster was the first highway legal serial production all-electric car to use lithium-ion battery cells.
2009
China overtakes the US as the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter.
2009
Emails from a server belonging to the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit are released and published revealing a conspiracy referred to as the “ClimateGate” affair.
2016
Paris Agreement are signed, dealing with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance.
2018
Greta Thunberg starts her “school strike for climate”.
2019
Multi-city school “strike for climate” actions.
2020
Pandemic referred to as the “Corona” or “Covid19” virus caused massive confinement measures in many countries leading to a reduction of more than 50% of CO2 production in these countries; the most impactful measure that involuntarily reduced CO2 production.
Polemics
- Relation between Global warming and climate change.
- Is there global warming, global cooling or none?
- What is the cause of climate change and global warming: human activity, natural cycle, solar cycle or combination?
- Can the process be slowed down, stopped or reverted?
- What action should be taken to stop or slow down climate change and / or global warming?
- Is fight for global warming a genuine scientific concern to improve living conditions for future generations or conspiracy to control ressources or impose economic vision / agenda.