Greenhouse Effect (1917)
Alexander Graham Bell, better known to most people as the inventor of the telephone, made a surprising warning in a 1917 paper. The unchecked burning of fossil fuels would “have a sort of greenhouse effect,” he wrote, and it would eventually cause the Earth to become “a sort of hot-house.” What shall we do, he wondered, in a piece for National Geographic, when all the oil and coal dries up?
His suggestions: Alcohol as an alternative fuel, and devices that would collect solar power from sunlight and use it as an energy source. His ideas didn’t get much traction at the time, but a hundred years later, global warming is the center of a worldwide debate.
