evidence: Climate change is the long-term alteration in Earth’s climate and weather patterns. It took nearly a century of research and data to convince the vast majority of the scientific community that human activity could alter the climate of our entire planet. In the 1800s, experiments suggesting that human-produced carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases could collect in the atmosphere and insulate Earth were met with more curiosity than concern. By the late 1950s, CO2 readings would offer some of the first data to corroborate the global warming theory. Eventually an abundance of data, along with climate modeling and real-world weather events would show not only that global warming was real, but that it also presented a host of catastrophic consequences. [...] The Discovery of Global Warming, by Spencer R. Weart. (Harvard University Press, 2008).