Ebook: Four revolutions in the earth sciences: from heresy to truth

Over the course of the twentieth century, scientists came to accept four counterintuitive yet fundamental facts about the Earth: deep time, continental drift, meteorite impact, and global warming. This scientific history describes the evolution of these four ideas from heresy to truth, showing how science works in practice and how it inevitably corrects the mistakes of its practitioners. Scientists can be wrong, but they do not stay wrong. In the process, astonishing ideas are born, tested, and over time take root.;Note continued: Warming Is Unequivocal -- From Heresy to Truth.;Machine generated contents note: pt. 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 -- pt. 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 -- pt. 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 -- pt. IV GLOBAL WARMING -- Origins of the CO2 Theory -- Tedious Calculations of Extraordinary Interest -- Destructive Criticism -- A Unique Experiment of Planetary Dimensions -- Giant Brains.