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From that result, Foote made a leap that most of her contemporaries never thought to make. She wrote that an atmosphere containing more carbon dioxide would produce a warmer Earth. In one modest paragraph, tucked into a paper called ‘Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays,’ a woman working alone had described the basic mechanism of the greenhouse effect, the same principle now at the center of every conversation about global warming and climate change. That paper was presented in August 1856 at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Foote herself did not read it aloud. Convention of the era did not extend that platform to women, so Joseph Henry, the head of the Smithsonian Institution, delivered her findings on her behalf. Her paper was published shortly after, but without the standing, connections, or continued access to scientific institutions that might have kept her ideas circulating.