EXPERIMENTING ON A SMALL PLANET a history of scientific discoveries, a future of climate... change and global warming.

Contents
1 Introduction
	1.1 Leningrad—1982
	1.2 ‘Global Warming’ or ‘Global Weirding’
	1.3 My Background
	1.4 What Is Science?
	1.5 The Observational Sciences
	1.6 The Compexity of Nature
	1.7 Summary
2 Discovering Climate
	2.1 Defining ‘Climate’
	2.2 Numerical Descriptions of Climate
	2.3 How Science Works
	2.4 Summary
3 The Language of Science
	3.1 Numbers and Symbols
	3.2 Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus
	3.3 Shapes
	3.4 Orders of Magnitude and Exponents
	3.5 Logarithms
	3.6 Logarithms and Scales with Bases Other Than 10
	3.7 Earthquake Scales
	3.8 The Beaufort Wind Force Scale
	3.9 Extending the Beaufort Scale to Cyclonic Storms
	3.10 Calendars and Time
	3.11 Summary
4 Applying Mathematics to Problems
	4.1 Measures and Weights
	4.2 The Nautical Mile
	4.3 The Metric System
	4.4 Temperature
	4.5 Precisely Defining Some Words You Already Know
	4.6 Locating Things
	4.7 Latitude and Longitude
	4.8 Map Projections
	4.9 Trigonometry
	4.10 Circles, Ellipses, and Angular Velocity
	4.11 Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces
	4.12 Graphs
	4.13 Exponential Growth and Decay
	4.14 The Logistic Equation
	4.15 Statistics
	4.16 Summary
5 Geologic Time
	Abstract
	5.1 Age of the Earth—4004 BCE, or Older?
	5.2 The Discovery of the Depths of Time—Eternity
	5.3 Geologic Time Punctuated by Revolutions
	5.4 Catastrophism Replaced by Imperceptibly Slow Gradual Change
	5.5 The Development of the Geological Timescale
	5.6 The Discovery of the Ice Age
	5.7 The Discovery of Past Warm Polar Regions
	5.8 Throwing a Monkey Wrench into Explaining Climate Change
	5.9 Crustal Mobility’ to the Rescue
	5.10 The Return of Catastrophism and the Idea of Rapid Change
	5.11 The Nature of the Geologic Record
	5.12 The Great Extinctions and Their Causes
	5.13 Summary—A History with No Dates
6 Putting Numbers on Geologic Ages
	6.1 1788—An Abyss of Time of Unknown Dimensions
	6.2 1863—Physics Comes to the Rescue—Earth Is Not More than 100 Million Years Old
	6.3 What We Now Know About Heat from Earth’s Interior
	6.4 Some Helpful Background in Understanding Nineteenth-Century Chemistry
	6.5 Atomic Weight, Atomic Mass, Isotopes, Relative Atomic Mass, Standard Atomic Weight—A Confusing Plethora of Terms
	6.6 1895–1913—The Worlds of Physics and Chemistry Turned Upside Down
	6.7 Henri Becquerel and the Curies
	6.8 Nonconformists and the British Universities Open to All
	6.9 The Discovery of Electrons, Alpha-Rays, and Beta-Rays
	6.10 The Discovery of Radioactive Decay Series, Exponential Decay Rates, and Secular Equilibrium
	6.11 The Mystery of the Decay Series Explained by Isotopes
	6.12 The Discovery That Radioactive Decay Series Might Be Used to Determine the Age of Rocks
	6.13 The Discovery of Stable Isotopes
	6.14 Rethinking the Structure of the Atom
	6.15 From Science to Science Fiction
	6.16 The Discovery of Protons and Neutrons
	6.17 Arthur Holmes and the Age of the Earth
	6.18 The Development of a Numerical Geological Timescale
	6.19 Summary
7 Documenting Past Climate Change
	7.1 What Is ‘Climate’?
	7.2 A Brief Overview of Earth’s Climate History
	7.3 The Cenozoic Climate ‘Deterioration’
	7.4 From Ages to Process Rates
	7.5 Radiometric Age Dating in the Mid-Twentieth Century
	7.6 Potassium—Argon Dating
	7.7 Reversals of Earth’s Magnetic Field
	7.8 Fission Track Dating
	7.9 Astronomical Dating
	7.10 Tritium, Carbon-14, and Beryllium-10
	7.11 The Human Acceleration of Natural Process Rates
	7.12 The Present Climate in Its Geologic Context
	7.13 Steady State Versus Non-steady State
	7.14 Feedbacks
	7.15 Summary
8 The Nature of Energy Received from the Sun—The Analogies with Water Waves and Sound
	8.1 Water Waves
	8.2 Special Water Waves—Tides and Tsunamis
	8.3 Wave Energy, Refraction, and Reflection
	8.4 Sound Waves
	8.5 Sound Waves and Music
	8.6 Measuring the Speed of Sound in Air
	8.7 Measuring the Speed of Sound in Water
	8.8 The Practical Use of Sound in Water
	8.9 Summary
9 The Nature of Energy Received from the Sun—Figuring Out What Light Really Is
	9.1 Early Ideas About Light
	9.2 Refraction of Light
	9.3 Measuring the Speed of Light
	9.4 The Discovery of Double Refraction or ‘Birefringence’
	9.5 Investigating the Dispersion of Light
	9.6 Figuring Out the Wavelengths of Different Colors of Light
	9.7 Diffraction
	9.8 Polarization of Light
	9.9 Eureka!—Light Is Electromagnetic Waves
	9.10 A Review of the Discovery of the Invisible Parts of the Electromagnetic Spectrum
	9.11 The Demise of the ‘Luminiferous Æther’
	9.12 Summary
10 Exploring the Electromagnetic Spectrum
	10.1 Spectra and Spectral Lines
	10.2 The Discovery of Helium—First in the Sun, Then on Earth
	10.3 The Discovery That Spectral Lines Are Mathematically Related
	10.4 Heinrich Hertz’s Confirmation of Maxwell’s Ideas
	10.5 Marconi Makes the Electromagnetic Spectrum a Tool for Civilization
	10.6 Human Use of the Electromagnetic Spectrum for Communication, Locating Objects, and Cooking
	10.7 Summary
11 The Origins of Climate Science—The Idea of Energy Balance
	11.1 What Is Heat?
	11.2 Thermodynamics
	11.3 The Laws of Thermodynamics
	11.4 The Discovery of Greenhouse Gases
	11.5 Kirchhoff’s ‘Black Body’
	11.6 Stefan’s Fourth Power Law
	11.7 Black Body Radiation
	11.8 Summary
12 The Climate System
	12.1 Insolation—The Incoming Energy from the Sun
	12.2 Albedo—The Reflection of Incoming Energy Back into Space
	12.3 Reradiation—How the Earth Radiates Energy Back into Space
	12.4 The Chaotic Nature of the Weather
	12.5 The Earthly Components of the Climate System: Air, Earth, Ice, and Water
	12.6 The Atmosphere
	12.7 The Hydrosphere
	12.8 The Cryosphere
	12.9 The Land
	12.10 Classifying Climatic Regions
	12.11 Uncertainties in the Climate Scheme
	12.12 Summary
13 What Is at the Bottom of Alice’s Rabbit Hole?
	13.1 Max Planck and the Solution to the Black Body Problem
	13.2 The Photoelectric Effect
	13.3 The Bohr Atom
	13.4 Implications of the Bohr Model for the Periodic Table of the Elements
	13.5 The Zeeman Effect
	13.6 Trying to Make Sense of the Periodic Table
	13.7 The Second Quantum Revolution
	13.8 The Discovery of Nuclear Fission
	13.9 Molecular Motions
	13.10 Summary
14 Energy from the Sun—Long-Term Variations
	14.1 The Faint Young Sun Paradox
	14.2 The Energy Flux from the Sun
	14.3 The Orbital Cycles
	14.4 The Rise and Fall of the Orbital Theory of Climate Change
	14.5 The Resurrection of the Orbital Theory
	14.6 Correcting the Age Scale: Filling in the Details to Prove the Theory
	14.7 The Discovery that Milankovitch Orbital Cycles Have Affected Much of Earth History
	14.8 Summary
15 Solar Variability and Cosmic Rays
	15.1 Solar Variability
	15.2 The Solar Wind
	15.3 Solar Storms and Space Weather
	15.4 The Solar Neutrino Problem
	15.5 The Ultraviolet Radiation
	15.6 Cosmic Rays
	15.7 A Digression into the World of Particle Physics
	15.8 How Cosmic Rays Interact with Earth’s Atmosphere
	15.9 Carbon-14
	15.10 Beryllium-10
	15.11 Cosmic Rays and Climate
	15.12 Summary
16 Albedo
	16.1 Albedo of Planet Earth
	16.2 Clouds
	16.3 Could Cloudiness Be a Global Thermostat?
	16.4 Volcanic Ash and Climate Change
	16.5 Aerosols
	16.6 Albedo During the Last Glacial Maximum
	16.7 Changing the Planetary Albedo to Counteract Greenhouse Warming
	16.8 Summary
17 Air
	17.1 The Nature of Air
	17.2 The Velocity of Air Molecules
	17.3 Other Molecular Motions
	17.4 The Other Major Component of Air—Photons
	17.5 Ionization
	17.6 The Scattering of Light
	17.7 Absorption of the Infrared Wavelengths
	17.8 Other Components of Air: Subatomic Particles
	17.9 Summary
18 HoH—The Keystone of Earth’s Climate
	18.1 Some History
	18.2 Why Is HOH So Strange?
	18.3 The Hydrologic Cycle
	18.4 Vapor
		18.4.1 Pure Water
	18.5 Natural Water
	18.6 Water—Density and Specific Volume
	18.7 Water—Surface Tension
	18.8 Ice
	18.9 Earth’s Ice
	18.10 How Ice Forms from Freshwater and from Seawater
	18.11 Snow and ICE on Land
	18.12 Ice Cores
	18.13 Ice as Earth’s Climate Stabilizer
19 The Atmosphere
	19.1 Atmospheric Pressure
	19.2 The Structure of the Atmosphere
	19.3 The Troposphere
	19.4 The Stratosphere
	19.5 The Mesosphere
	19.6 The Thermosphere
	19.7 The Exosphere
	19.8 The Magnetosphere
	19.9 The Ionosphere
	19.10 The Atmospheric Greenhouse Effect
	19.11 The Distribution of Gases in the Atmosphere
	19.12 The Overall Effect of the Atmosphere on Solar Irradiance
	19.13 The Effects of Anthropogenic Atmospheric Pollution
	19.14 Summary
20 Oxygen and Ozone—Products and Protectors of Life
	20.1 Diatomic Oxygen—O2—‘Oxygen’
	20.2 Triatomic Oxygen—O3—Ozone
	20.3 The Oxygen–Ozone–Ultraviolet Connection
	20.4 The Oxygen–Ozone–Ultraviolet Conundrum
	20.5 The Human Interference with Ozone
	20.6 Ozone—The Greenhouse Gas
	20.7 Summary
21 Water Vapor—The Major Greenhouse Gas
	21.1 H2O (‘Water’) on Earth
	21.2 The Behavior of Dry Air
	21.3 The Behavior of Wet Air
	21.4 What Controls Atmospheric Water Vapor?
	21.5 Anthropogenic Effects
	21.6 The Changing Area of Exposed Water Surface
	21.7 Summary
22 Carbon Dioxide
	22.1 Carbon Dioxide as a Greenhouse Gas
	22.2 The Carbon Cycle
	22.3 The Very Long-Term Carbon Cycle
	22.4 Carbon Dioxide During the Phanerozoic
	22.5 Rethinking the Role of co2 in Climate Change
	22.6 The Ice Core Record of the Last Half Million Years
	22.7 The Industrial Era Increase in Atmospheric co2
	22.8 The Short-Term Sinks for Atmospheric co2
	22.9 Carbon Dioxide Catastrophes
	22.10 Projections of Future Atmospheric co2 Levels
	22.11 Summary
23 Other Greenhouse Gases
	23.1 Methane—CH4
	23.2 The History of Methane in Earth’s Atmosphere
	23.3 Methane Clathrates
	23.4 Methane Trapped in Permafrost
	23.5 Nitrous Oxide—N2O
	23.6 Other Greenhouse Gasses
	23.7 Summary
24 The Earth is a Sphere and Rotates
	24.1 The Egyptian View of the Earth
	24.2 The Babylonian Universe
	24.3 The Hebrew Earth
	24.4 The Chinese View
	24.5 From a Flat to a Spherical Earth
	24.6 The Sun Does Not Orbit the Earth, but the Earth Rotates
	24.7 Robert Hooke (1635–1703)
	24.8 Isaac Newton (1642–1727)
	24.9 Is the Earth Hollow or Solid?
	24.10 Determining the Density of the Earth and the Value of ‘g’, Newton’s Gravitational Constant
	24.11 Explaining the Trade Winds—Halley and Hadley’s Ideas 1686–1735
	24.12 Back to Proving that Earth Rotates 1791─1831
	24.13 The Earth is not Really a Sphere
	24.14 The Flat Earther’s Still Survive
	24.15 Summary
25 The Coriolis Effect
	25.1 The Ideas of Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis 1792─1835
	25.2 The Foucault Pendulum 1851
	25.3 The Earth is Neither a Disk Nor a Sphere
	25.4 Inertial Circles
	25.5 William Ferrel Figures It Out 1817–1891
	25.6 Buys-Ballot’s Discovery 1857
	25.7 Flow Down a Pressure Gradient
	25.8 Introduction to the Use of ‘Coriolis’ in Meteorology
	25.9 A Mathematical Derivation of the Coriolis Force
	25.10 Summary
26 The Circulation of Earth’s Atmosphere
	26.1 Earth’s Fluid Systems
	26.2 The Geographically Uneven Radiation Balance
	26.3 The ‘Modern’ Atmospheric Circulation
	26.4 The Indian and Southeast Asian Monsoons
	26.5 Cyclonic Storms
	26.6 Tornados
	26.7 Summary
27 The Circulation of Earth’s Oceans
	27.1 The Modern Ocean’s General Circulation
	27.2 The Global Ocean’s Great Conveyor
	27.3 Upwelling of Waters from the Ocean’s Interior to the Surface
	27.4 El Niño–La Niña, the Southern Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation
	27.5 Kelvin Waves
	27.6 A New Hypothesis: Very Different Atmospheric and Ocean Circulations on the Warm Earth of the Distant Past
	27.7 The Transition from the ‘Warm Earth’ to the ‘Modern’ Circulation
	27.8 Summary
28 The Biological Interactions
	28.1 Life on Land
	28.2 C3 and C4 Plants
	28.3 Response of Land Plants to Higher Levels of CO2
	28.4 Response of Land-Based Life to Past Climate Change
	28.5 Response of Land Life to Future Climate Change
	28.6 Life in the Ocean and Seas
	28.7 Life in the Open Ocean
	28.8 Life Along Coasts and in Shallow Seas
	28.9 Marine Life and the CO2 Connection
	28.10 The Role of Plants and Animals in Fixing CaCO3
	28.11 How Do Organic Matter and CaCO3 Get to the Sea Floor?
	28.12 The Acidification of the Ocean
	28.13 What Are the Effects of Acidification on Marine Animals and Plants?
	28.14 Atmospheric and Oceanic Circulation, Nutrients and the Carbon Cycle in Other Climate States
	28.15 Summary
29 Sea Level
	29.1 What is Sea Level?
	29.2 Why Does Sea-Level Change Differently in Different Places?
	29.3 Changing the Volume of Water in the Ocean
	29.4 Changing the Mass of H2O in the Ocean
	29.5 Changes in Groundwater Reservoirs
	29.6 Conversion of Ice to Ocean Water
	29.7 Storage in Lakes
	29.8 Effect of Changing the Salinity of the Ocean
	29.9 Effect of Warming or Cooling the Ocean
	29.10 Motion of the Earth’s Solid Surface
	29.11 The Gravitational Attraction of Ice Sheets
	29.12 Changing the Speed of Earth’s Rotation
	29.13 Effect of Winds and Atmospheric Pressure Systems
	29.14 Effect of the Evaporation–Precipitation Balance
	29.15 Sea-Level Change During the Deglaciation
	29.16 Sea Level During the Holocene
	29.17 What Has Happened to Sea Level in the Past Few Centuries?
	29.18 The Global Sea-Level Record
	29.19 Summary
30 Global Climate Change—The Geologically Immediate Past
	30.1 The Climate Changes During the Last Deglaciation
	30.2 The Sudden Changes Recorded in Ice Cores: Dansgaard–Oeschger Events
	30.3 The Record of Massive Iceberg Discharges in North Atlantic Deep-Sea and Greenland Ice Cores: The Heinrich Events
	30.4 What Did the Deglaciation Look like Outside the North Atlantic Region?
	30.5 Are There Holocene Climate Cycles?
	30.6 The Hockey Stick Controversy
	30.7 Summary
31 Human Impacts on the Environment and Climate
	31.1 Factors Controlling Earth’s Surface Temperature
	31.2 Early Humans as Nomadic ‘Hunter/Gatherers’
	31.3 Humans Become Sedentary
	31.4 Extinctions Due to Humans
	31.5 Human Effects on Swamps, Marshes, and Coastal Wetlands
	31.6 Early Human Changes in Rivers
	31.7 The Growth of Urbanization
	31.8 Advances in Hygene to Improve Human Life
	31.9 Later Changes in Climate in Europe
	31.10 Cultural Effects of the ‘Little Ice Age’
	31.11 The Discovery of the New World: Introduction of New Diseases to the Americas and New Foods to Europe
	31.12 The Discovery of the Real Causes of the Diseases
	31.13 The Industrial Revolution
	31.14 Advances in Medicine Expand Human Longevity
	31.15 World War I and the ‘Spanish Flu’
	31.16 The End of Smallpox
	31.17 Effects of Recent Damming of Large Rivers in Desert Areas
	31.18 Urban Areas as Heat Islands
	31.19 Climatic Effects Related to the Development of the Automobile
	31.20 Climate Changes Related to Agricultural Practices
	31.21 Human Longevity and Population Growth
	31.22 The Great Chinese Famine of 1959–1961 and Its Ultimate Result
	31.23 The Mid-Twentieth-Century Temperature Plateau
	31.24 The Escalating Emergence of the Coronaviruses and Their Relation to Climate Change
	31.25 Atmospheric Pollution Reductions in Response to the COVID-19 PANDEMIC
	31.26 Summary
32 Predictions of the Future of Humanity
	32.1 Predictions of the Future—Models
	32.2 What is Expected in the Twenty-First Century—Human Population
	32.3 Environmental Variability and Tipping Points
	32.4 The Anthropogenic Factors Causing the Earth’s Climate and Environment to Change
	32.5 The Reports of the Club of Rome
	32.6 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—The ‘official’ Scenarios for Future Increases in Greenhouse Gas Concentrations
	32.7 Comparison of Climate Models Based on SRES and RCP Scenarios
	32.8 The Kyoto Protocol
	32.9 The 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change
	32.10 Some Problems with Predicting the Future
	32.11 Summary
33 Is There an Analog for the Future Climate?
	33.1 The Eemian, the Last Interglacial
	33.2 Sea Level During Older Interglacials
	33.3 Arctic Sea Ice During Interglacials
	33.4 The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum
	33.5 Summary
34 The Instrumental Temperature Record
	34.1 The Development of the Thermometer
	34.2 Keeping Records
	34.3 The Late Nineteenth Though Early Twenty-first Century Pattern of Temperature Change
	34.4 Some Examples of Local Temperature Records
	34.5 Larger Regional and Global Compilations
	34.6 Summary
35 The Changing Climate of the Polar Regions
	35.1 The Decline in Arctic Summer Sea Ice
	35.2 Feedbacks in the Arctic
	35.3 Arctic Permafrost
	35.4 The Arctic Tundra and Boreal Forest
	35.5 The Polar Ice sheets
	35.6 The Greenland Ice Sheet
	35.7 Antarctic Sea Ice
	35.8 The Antarctic Ice Sheets
36 Global, Regional, and Local Effects of Our Changing Climate
	36.1 The Long-Term View
	36.2 Milankovitch Insolation
	36.3 Temperature
	36.4 Rain and Snow
	36.5 Extreme Weather
	36.6 Sea Level
	36.7 Ocean Warming
	36.8 El Niño, La Niña, and the Southern Oscillation
	36.9 Ocean Acidification
	36.10 Ocean Anoxia
	36.11 The Sahara-Sahel
	36.12 Amazonia
	36.13 Methane Clathrates
	36.14 Critical Tipping Points
	36.15 Summary
37 Final Thoughts
	37.1 Global Climate Change
	37.2 Global Population Growth
	37.3 Predicting the Future
	37.4 An Afterthought
Author Index
Subject Index
Index of Works Mentioned