Experimenting on a Small Planet: A Scholarly Entertainment

998 Pages·2013·26.733 MB·English

by  William W. Hay (auth.)

About the Cover
In the eight or so millennia since humans have organized themselves into ‘civi-
lization,’ they have made many changes in Earth’s natural environment: burning
off forests and grasslands as a means of hunting, clearing out the natural vege-
tation for agriculture, constructing villages, towns, and cities, mining ores and
quarrying stone. But all of these changes have, until recently, had little impact on
Earth’s overall condition. Then in the late eighteenth century things changed; the
Industrial Revolution brought prosperity and allowed rapid growth of the human
population. The energy for the Industrial Revolution was fossil fuels, starting with
coal, then including petroleum and finally natural gas. These all produce a green-
house gas, carbon dioxide, CO, when they are burned. The increased human pop-
2
ulation has an appetite for meat, and has increased the population of cattle, which
produce methane that then is converted into carbon dioxide. Construction of cities
and roads has required the use of concrete. It is made from the oxide of calcium
produced by heating limestone, driving off carbon dioxide in the process. In con-
trast to man’s earlier activities which only had regional impacts, the massive addi-
tion of a greenhouse gas to the atmosphere has a global effect. The insidious thing
about carbon dioxide is that once in the atmosphere it remains there for hundreds
of thousands of years.
The major modern sources of atmospheric CO are shown as chemical exper-
2
iments on the cover. Starting from the lower left and moving counterclockwise,
they are: (1) burning of petroleum, exemplified by the least fuel efficient mod-
ern automobile, the Hummer; (2) the burning of coal, formerly for heating, but
more recently to produce electricity; (3) the roasting of limestone tomake lime for
cement and concrete; and (4) the grazing of cattle, producing methane that ulti-
mately, after a few years, becomes converted to CO. These are the major elements
2
of the ‘grand uncontrolled geophysical experiment’ being conducted on our small
planet. Another dangerous suite of gases, the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), were
developed for use in spray cans in themiddle of the twentieth century. However,
after CFCs were found to be the major agent destroying the stratospheric ozone
that protects Earth’s surface from the deadly ultraviolet radiation from the sun,
they were banned by an international agreement, The Montreal Protocol. That vic-
tory for our planet’s health is shown in the upper left of the cover. In the upper left
is a pink object in the sky, the Orion nebula. It is hydrogen gas re-radiating energy
ABOuT THE COvER
received from nearby stars. Hydrogen is the simplest atom, and the energy re-radi-
ated from it is in the pink part of the visible spectrum. The process is the same as
that of Earth’s greenhouse gases that absorb infrared radiation from the planet’s
surface and re-radiate it, but in this case the gas molecules are much more com-
plex. With greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, both the incom-
ing and outgoing radiation are in the infrared part of the spectrum and invisible to
human eyes.
A toast to a warmer planet © Greg Wray
William W. Hay
ExPER I MEnT Ing
On A SMAll PlAnET
A Schol arly Enter tain ment
1 3
William W. Hay
university of Colorado at Boulder
Estes Park
uSA
ISBn 978-3-642-28559-2 ISBn 978-3-642-28560-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-28560-8
Springer Hei del berg new York Dordr echt lon don
library of Con gress Con trol num ber: 2012950325
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Fore W orD
One only needs to check the curr ent list of book titles on clim ate change and its
potential effects on mank ind to appre ci ate the bur geon ing inter est in cli mates and
cli mate his tory, the topic of this book. Curr ent titles listed by just one publ isher
(John Wiley’s Poli ty Books) include titles such as Cli mate Wars, Cli mate Change
and Soci ety, and The Poli tics of Clim ate Change to name a few. Most give only a
super fi cial intro duc tion to the scie nce of cli ma tol ogy and few take into account the
Earth’s past clim ate his tory.
Bill Hay was my gradu ate study advis or at the uni ver sity of Illin ois in urbana
in the late 1960s. In his Preface, he states that “This book is intended for the lay-
per son in the united States, although I hope my sci en tific col leagues and those
else where might also find it inter est ing and amus ing.” Amus ing, yes, because this
highly read able book is laced through out with quips, car toons, and wit ti cisms;
infor ma tive to the lay man, yes, because the author presents each topic his tor i cally
so that the reader can trace not only the key dis cov er ies going back cen tu ries, but
also the develo p ment of scie n tific thought on each item; but this vol ume is also
far more than that. It will pro vide the lay man and spe cial ist alike with much new
infor ma tion here assem bled in one place in the space of some xxx pages of text,
far more than any one expert in the field is likely to have at his or her fin ger tips
from any other source.
One highly impor tant out come of this 4-year schola rly effort is that it pro vides
the aca demic world with a much needed textbook on past, pres ent, and future cli-
mates and the nature of cli mate change. It appears at a most oppor tune time for
those wish ing to teach this sub ject or por tions of it at vir tu ally any level. Most of
our knowl edge of the Earth’s past cli mate his tory has been devel oped in the past
30 years. There are only a few books on clim ate in the cont ext of the Earth’s his-
tory and most of them are con cerned with the ice ages of the imme di ate past. Bill’s
book dis cusses not only the Earth’s recent cold past, but also the warmer Earth
toward which we seem to be headed. It fills a major and grow ing need not only for
lay men need ing to under stand the prob lem, but also for the teache rs and research-
ers as well.
This book also tells us much about the author him self via his own obser va tions
as well as vignettes about his pers onal life and career inserted as “int er mez zi”
between the chap ters. These con firm what those of us who stud ied under him
v
vi FORE WORD
have long known, that he is a true Renaiss ance Man. Widely trav eled, flu ent in a
num ber of Euro pean lan guages (French, ger man [includ ing sev eral otherwise
unin tel li gi ble Swiss dia lects], and Span ish) and he is able to get by in a num ber
of oth ers (Dutch, Czech, and Rus sian). He is highly appre cia tive of mod ern and
clas si cal art, music, and lit er a ture, as well as good food and wines. This we were
exposed to when he did give a party for one of his mas ter’s or doc toral grad u ates
or a visi t ing sci en tist at his seco nd-story garage flat known as the “Hay loft” in
Cham paign, Illi nois. There he would skill fully cook the main course of a gour-
met meal while apport ion ing to all of the guests the vari ous tasks of prep ar ing the
accom pa ny ing bread, salad, veg e ta bles, and des sert.
A hint of his good taste in wine and liquors is given in his Preface under Sect. 3
(“Pairings”) where he sugg ests which of those would be good to sip while readi ng
var i ous sec tions of the book. The depth of his knowl edge of wines, how ever, was
best dem on strated to my wife, Cindy, and me duri ng my own year of postd oc toral
study in Switz er land when we accomp a nied Bill to the uni ver sity of Bern where
he gave an invited lecture at their geol ogy Insti tute, fol low ing which his host, Pro-
fes sor Franz All e mann, invited us all out to his place for a little “wine tast ing”.
Fresh samp les of six dif fer ent Swiss wines in unmarked glasses were pre sented
to him in turn, and he was asked not only to iden tify each but to give their geo-
graphic ori gins. To our coll ec tive amaze ment this he did witho ut a miss, corr ectly
nam ing the wines and the river val leys from which each came. He had acquired
that knowl edge while on a u.S. national Sci ence Foun da tion (nSF) Post doc toral
Fel low ship in Basel, Swit zer land.
Bill’s expe ri ences abroad help to explain his unders tand ing of the need for
back ground knowl edge to under stand sci ence. His expe ri ence in com mu ni ca-
tion the scie nce to stu dents with very dif fer ent back grounds has con trib uted in
no small way to the depth, breadth, and fasc i na tion of his curr ent book. Even
after his for mal retire ment from the uni ver sity of Kiel in ger many in 2002, he
con tin ues to teach inten sive short courses in pa leo cli ma tol o gy in The neth er lands,
Italy, Aus tria, ger many, and China. His insa tia ble sci en tific curi os ity con tin ues to
this day as furt her inves ti ga tions of past warm clim ates and through intern a tional
col lab o ra tion.
Sher wood W. (“Woody”) Wise Jr.
ly man D. Toul min
Pro fes sor of geol ogy
Depart ment of Earth, Ocean,
and Atmo spheric Sci ence
Flor ida State uni ver sity
Tallahasse, Fl, uSA
We’re on our way © Greg Wray
PreFACe
1. Pre Am ble
When george Fried rich Han del wrote that most famous piece of sacred music,
“The Mes siah,” in 1741, he searched for a term to describe it. It was not a mass or
a requiem, or a hymn. It was an ora to rio, but not really like the oth ers he had writ-
ten. He wrote “The Mes siah” in less than a month. He adver tised its first per for-
mances as ‘A Musical Entert ain ment.’
This book is both about scie nce and per sonal expe ri ence. But it is not like
other books about the sci ence of cli mate and it is not a textbook. It is full of
sto ries about sci en tific dis cov ery. And it is also an auto bi og ra phy. I started to write
it in the late fall of 2007 after the great Arc tic Ice Melt back had become known.
I thought I could fin ish it in three months at most. Havi ng worked in the field of
pa leo cli ma tol o gy, the study of ancient cli mates, for over 30 years, I thought I had
a good unders tand ing of the topic. But as I went along I disc ov ered that I needed
to know more of the basic sci ence involved in order to prop erly explain it to my
non-sci en tist neigh bors. Instead of three months it took four years of research
into the his tory of sci ence and how we have come to our pres ent under stand ing
of the way the world works. And I guess that in this case the end prod uct is best
described as ‘A Schol arly Enter tain ment.’
2. the GrAnD unCon trolleD exPer i ment
The idea that humans might be able to alter the cli mate is older than you may
think. The Briti sh col o nists of north Amer ica found its clim ate to be rather
unpleas antly hot and humid. Thomas Jef fer son sug gested that it might be
improved, that is made to be more like that of England, by cut ting down the
for ests.
The idea that the burni ng of foss il fuels, thereby releasi ng CO into the atmo-
2
sphere and affect ing the cli mate, arose at the end of the 19th century. It was sug-
gested by Swed ish sci en tist Svan te Arrhe nius, who thought that the ensu ing
warm ing would be good for the nor dic coun tries, mak ing for a longer grow ing
sea son. The hypoth e sis of atmo spheric CO con cen tra tions as a cont rol of clim ate
2
enjoyed brief pop u lar ity among geol o gists but was soon for got ten.
ix
x PREFACE
A Brit ish steam engi neer, george Cal lend er, kept track of ris ing tem per a tures
and CO con cen tra tions dur ing the first half of the 20th century, not ing the good
2
cor re la tion between the two. no one paid much atten tion.
Then, in 1956, gilbert Plass, a Canadian physicist who had been made a full
professor at Texas A & M university, made a solid argument that atmospheric CO
2
was the likely regulator of the Earth’s climate over time. He also suggested that
the continued burning of fossil fuels might tend to dive the planet toward a global
tropical climate in the not-too-distant future. His paper in American Scientist is a
true classic, and you should read it. The web address where you can download a
free copy is at the end of this preface.
A year later Roger Rev elle and Hans Su ess, both sci en tists at the Scripps Insti-
tu tion of Ocean og ra phy in la Jolla, Cal i for nia, pub lished what has become the
clas sic paper on the poss i ble future effects of human activi ties result ing in increas-
ing the cont ent of carb on diox ide (CO), a ‘greenh ouse’ gas, in the atmos phere.
2
Their 1957 paper included the statem ent
Within a few cent u ries we are returni ng to the atmos phere and oceans the conc en trated
organic car bon stored in sed i men tary rocks over hun dreds of mil lions of years. This
exper i ment, if ade quately doc u mented, may yield a far-reach ing insight into the pro cesses
deter min ing weather and cli mate.
Roger and Hans thought we were going to make only a minor modi fi ca tion of
the Earth’s cli mate with this addi tion of fos sil car bon. How ever, the exper i ment
was more com plex than they real ized. The addi tion of CO to the atmo sphere is
2
only one of sev eral changes humans are mak ing to the planet Earth. Over the past
two and a half cent u ries since the beginn ing of the Indust rial Rev o lu tion, human
activ i ties have become increas ingly impor tant in affect ing con di tions on the
sur face of the Earth. Four human-driven fac tors are forc ing regional and global
envi ron men tal change:
1. Increas ing lev els of atmo spheric green house gases;
2. Clear ing of for ests for agri cul ture and con struc tion of build ings and roads on
a scale that affects the amount of the sun’s energy reflected or absorbed by our
planet;
3. Replace ment of plants that freely tran spire and return water to the atmo sphere
by water-con serv ing plants that grow faster and now form the basis for our
food sup ply in many parts of the world; and
4. Min ing of mine r als and extract ion of petrol eum with conc om i tant release of
nutri ents and poi son ous mate ri als into the envi ron ment.
All of the above four fac tors are closely related to the growth of the human
pop u la tion of the planet, the devel op ment of civ i li za tion, and the need for increas-
ing food sup plies. Of these four, only the first has been seri ously addressed in
attempts to assess its affect on future cli mate change. This is because green house
gas con cen tra tions have a global effect. The other fact ors have regional effects but
may over the long run have irre vers ible global impli ca tions.
To assess the global effects of the addit ion of green house gases to the atmo-
sphere, an Inter gov ern men tal Panel on Cli mate Change (IPCC) was establ ished