March 12th, 2009

This is an excerpt from Stephen Baxter's brilliant biography of James Hutton, Ages in Chaos: James Hutton and the Discovery of Deep Time. New York: Tor Books, 2004:

The astrophysicists have long wrestled with “Young Sun Paradox”. The sun, like all similar stars, is slowly brightening as it ages; in Earth’s early history its power output was only some seventy per cent of its current value. But as far back as we can see, conditions on Earth have been equable. Yes, there have been intervals of glaciations, but on the whole, liquid water has been able to exist on Earth’s surface for almost all of its history. Faced with a relentlessly brightening sun, some mechanism seems to have maintained the mean surface temperature of Earth in a suitable for liquid water—in fact, for life.

The key turns out to be carbon dioxide, the notorious ‘greenhouse gas’ causing our current pulse of global warming: in the past it worked to trap the sun’s heat, just as it does now. Carbon Dioxide is injected into the air by outgassing from volcanoes and other tectonic phenomena, as well as from human industry. It is removed by weathering, as the gas combines chemically with surface rocks and so is drawn out of the atmosphere. The outgassing is more or less constant, but the weathering rate changes with temperature: it increases when the air heats up. So there is a feedback mechanism operating here, with the carbon dioxide concentration adjusting to the climate conditions, resulting in ‘homeostasis’, a stable condition.

[These] ideas were greeted by a predictable storm, but the records of the evenness of temperatures in the past, and similar data, seem unarguable.

Baxter doesn't just lay down a set of dates and events in his biography, he shows how the history of the times influence to a large extent the formulation of ideas in Hutton's scientific theories. Baxter seems to really genuinely agree with the notion commonly held among geologists (and Wikipedia article writers :) ) that Hutton was indeed the "father of modern geology". There is nary a criticism in Baxter's discussion of Hutton's life and time, even when reporting on his philandering and other personality traits. All is eccentricity, not character flaw. Probably this is the wisest course of action to take with someone as colourful as Hutton—and the variety of his accomplishments leaves little room for doubt too.

Anyhow, that's all beside the point. Read Baxter's words. Environmentalism as religion is looking more and more pointless, isn't it?

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