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Made In Saratoga: The Mother Of Climate Change

By Natalie Moore

February 10, 2020

Two words: climate change. That’s right, the first person to theorize that changes in carbon dioxide in our planet’s atmosphere could impact its temperature lived in Saratoga County shortly after her groundbreaking discovery.

Eunice Newton Foote, an American scientist who attended Troy Female Seminary (now the Emma Willard School), discovered that, when placing two glass cylinders, one with “carbonic acid gas” (the term for carbon dioxide at the time), the other with “common air,” in sunlight, the one with carbon dioxide stayed warmer longer.

Foote presented her findings in a paper entitled, Circumstances Affecting The Heat Of Sun’s Rays, at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Albany in 1856 and subsequently published it.

Three years later, Irish physicist John Tyndall published similar, more detailed research that is typically credited as the foundation of climate science.

Natalie Moore

Natalie Moore is the editor of Saratoga Living and Capital Region Living magazines. A native of Ballston Lake, she began her career as an editorial intern at Saratoga Living, and, essentially, never left. In addition to overseeing the creation of the print magazines, she is the main contributor to Saratoga Living After Hours, a Substack newsletter that covers the Spa City’s social scene. In an alternate reality, she is a professional pickleball player.