Four Revolutions in the Earth Sciences: From Heresy to Truth
ISBN: 9780231538459
Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Columbia University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science);

Powell (The Inquisition of Climate Science), executive director of the National Physical Science Consortium, takes a historical look at four truths in the earth sciences and how these truths came to be accepted. While he gives equal weight to his treatments of the age of the earth, continental drift, meteorite impacts, and global warming, it is his goal to use the first three topics to help inform understanding of the fourth. With each subject in turn, Powell begins with first thoughts on the matter and then tracks opposed views until the mounting data in each case is able to "transform heresy into truth." Scientists come off as fallible and stubborn as anyone, and indeed Powell says that "in science, being wrong is inevitable and indispensable." But he makes it clear that the process of science eventually succeeds in producing the best explanation of available data. In the case of anthropogenic global warming, there is no dispute in the scientific community and, despite media claims, this is borne out by peer-reviewed articles (of which only one in a thousand claims that this is not the case). Powell concludes that Big Oil is doing exactly what Big Tobacco did in trying to obscure the truth for its own ends. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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 .

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