Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences

James Lawrence Powell serves as executive director of the National Physical Science Consortium, a partnership among government agencies and laboratories, industry, and higher education dedicated to increasing the number of American citizens with graduate degrees in the physical sciences and related engineering fields, emphasizing recruitment of a diverse applicant pool that includes women and minorities. He received his Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has taught at Oberlin College and served as its acting president. He has also been president of Franklin and Marshall College, Reed College, the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush both appointed Powell to the National Science Board. He is also the author of The Inquisition of Climate Science.

James Lawrence Powell breaks new ground. His scholarship is deep, and his stories are well-written and enriched with human detail. Anyone with an interest in how science progresses will profit from reading this book. -- Spencer Weart, director emeritus of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics, author of The Discovery of Global Warming Absorbing. Publishers Weekly This clear and well-written book offers four classic examples that show how science progresses-despite tough opposition, generally accepted ideas are often slowly replaced by newer, better ones. As an apocryphal medical school dean told incoming students: 'Half of what we will teach you in the next four years is wrong. The problem is that we don't know which half.' James Lawrence Powell's new title provides a lively look at how the sciences, in this case the geosciences, really work. -- Seth Stein, Northwestern University, author of Disaster Deferred: How New Science is Changing Our View of Earthquakes in the New Madrid Seismic Zone This is first-rate story telling, with heroes, villians, and the often-unexpected discoveries that created revolutions in our concept of the planet. -- David Morrison Skeptical Inquirer

• List of Illustrations Preface Introduction Part I. Deep Time The Abyss of Time A Great Mistake Has Been Made The Bank of Time Account Overdrawn Strange Rays An Hourglass of Great Precision Geochronology Duck Soup Part II. Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics An Idea to Pursue A Very Trusting Man Dead on Arrival Geologists Unite Against Heresy Continental Drift: Not Even Wrong Postwar Surprises Wandering Poles or Drifting Continents? The Final Confrontation Spreading Seafloors HypotHESSes The Discovery of the Century All This Rubbish Part III. Meteorite Impact A Trivial Process To Hunt a Star The Moon's Face Rosetta Stone To a Rocky Moon Worlds in Collision Dinosaur Killer Out with a Bang Cosmic Pinball Part IV. Global Warming Origins of the CO2 Theory Tedious Calculations of Extraordinary Interest Destructive Criticism A Unique Experiment of Planetary Dimensions Giant Brains Warming Is Unequivocal From Heresy to Truth Acknowledgments Notes Recommended Reading Bibliography Index