We are evaporating our coal mines into the air

Abstract

The title sentence was not written by Svante Arrhenius. Furthermore, the context within which he was working would not have led naturally to the creation of such a sentence. The sentence was the work of four separate individuals. Lotka introduced the word "evaporating" in a paragraph where he was discussing Arrhenius views as presented in 1908. Ausubel copied a sentence from Lotka, still with only the word "evaporating" in quotation marks, but without a qualifying phrase, in a paragraph where he was discussing Arrhenius contributions, probably believing that the word was from Arrhenius. Revelle included the whole fragment of a sentence from Ausubel (probably believing that this fragment was from Arrhenius), along with nine direct quotations from Arrhenius (1908), while not saying exactly where they came from. Weiner added the first two words and ascribed the whole sentence to Arrhenius (1896). Subsequent authors have sequentially quoted each other, generally without attribution. © Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2006.