Experimenting on a Small Planet

This book is an introduction to climate science and global change. It includes the scientific background in physics, chemistry and biology. The science chapters are interleaved with biographical material including personal reminiscences.
The science chapters discuss the history of development of ideas in geology, the discovery of Earth's very different climates in the distant past, and the climate oscillations of the ice ages. Special treatment is given to past warm climates. The role of greenhouse gases in controlling Earth's climate, along with a discussion of the associated physics. It develops the idea that humans have played a role in climate change throughout the past few millennia, rather than just since the beginning of the industrial revolution. It concludes by introducing the idea that the result of the present perturbation may be the transition to an ice-free warm world.

Auteur
Bill Hay began his academic career at University of Illinois in Urbana in 1960. From 1968 to 1974 he was Professor at both Illinois and the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. After serving as Dean of the Rosenstiel School he moved to Washington, D.C. to work on ensuring future scientific drilling in the ocean. In 1982 he moved to the University of Colorado, investigating ancient climates with colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Since 1988 he has also served as Guest and/or Professor at the Universities of Munich, Kiel and Greifswald in Germany, the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and the University of Vienna in Austria. He retired from the University of Kiel in 2002. He now lives in the Rocky Mountains, but returns to Europe frequently to teach intensive short courses.

Résumé
This book is a thorough introduction to climate science and global change. The author is a geologist who has spent much of his life investigating the climate of Earth from a time when it was warm and dinosaurs roamed the land, to today's changing climate. Bill Hay takes you on a journey to understand how the climate system works. He explores how humans are unintentionally conducting a grand uncontrolled experiment which is leading to unanticipated changes. We follow the twisting path of seemingly unrelated discoveries in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and even mathematics to learn how they led to our present knowledge of how our planet works. He explains why the weather is becoming increasingly chaotic as our planet warms at a rate far faster than at any time in its geologic past. He speculates on possible future outcomes, and suggests that nature itself may make some unexpected course corrections. Although the book is written for the layman with little knowledge of science or mathematics, it includes information from many diverse fields to provide even those actively working in the field of climatology with a broader view of this developing drama. Experimenting on a Small Planet is a must read for anyone having more than a casual interest in global warming and climate change - one of the most important and challenging issues of our time.

Contenu
The Language of Science.- Geologic Time.- Putting Numbers on Geologic Ages.- Discovering Past Climate Change.- The Nature of Energy Received from the Sun - The Analogies with Water Waves and Sound.- The Nature of Energy Received from the Sun - Figuring out what Light really is.- Exploring the Electromagnetic Spectrum.- The Origins of Climate Science - The Idea of Energy Balance.- The Climate System.- What's at the Bottom of Alice's Rabbit Hole?.- Energy from the Sun - Long-term Variations.- Solar Variability.- Albedo.- Air.- HOH - The Keystone of Earth's Climate.- Greenhouse Gasses.- The Circulation of Earth's Atmosphere and Ocean.- The Biological Interactions.- Sea level.- Global Climate Change - the (Geologically) Immediate Past.- Is there an Analog for the Future Climate?.- The Instrumental Temperature Record.- What is Expected in the 21st Century.- Beyond 2100 - The Return to Warm Earth.- Titanic Timeline.