Carbon dioxide’s powerful heat-trapping effect has been traced to a quirk of its quantum structure. The finding may explain climate change better than any computer model.

A paper by Eunice Newton Foote titled ‘Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays’ was published in 1856 in American Journal of Science and Arts.

Here’s that 1896 paper from Svante Arhenius: https://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf

Don’t ever let anyone tell you ‘nobody knew’.