An Ocean of Air (40 page)

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to create the easterly trade winds
George Hadley himself got this far.

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three thousand pages of scientific research
See Abbé's obituary in
Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington.

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and my courage failed
Biographical Memoirs,
p. 298.

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scientific men that America has produced
See the obituary by Professor W. M. Davis,
American Meteorological Journal,
vol. viii, no. 8, p. 359.

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surface would be unbearable
Note that though ocean currents transport some of the heat necessary to alleviate this imbalance, air does most of the work. Oceans are responsible for about one-third and air for about two-thirds. See Barry and Chorley,
Atmosphere, Weather and Climate.

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get hurricanes only in the tropics
Ferrel was the first person to realize why hurricanes never happen at the equator: It's the one place on Earth where the Coriolis force doesn't operate. Air has neither the urge to turn right nor left, so it can simply tumble into local low-pressure holes without whipping itself up into a hurricane frenzy.

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roll chaotically around the middle latitudes
A hurricane is typically about four hundred miles across, compared with nine hundred to eighteen hundred miles for a mid-latitude storm. Also, though hurricanes tend to blow themselves out in a few days, mid-latitude weather fronts can last a week or more. See Barry,
Atmosphere, Weather and Climate.

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earthquakes with thunder and lightning
"New England Weather," 1876, quoted in Watson,
Heaven's Breath,
p. 45.

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get a picture of you frying on both sides
Sterling and Sterling,
Forgotten Eagle,
p. 154.

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I never worry about healthy nerves
Ibid., p. 139. 114 rancid on the grocers' shelves Ibid., p. 6.

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getting into the prevailing wind channel
Ibid., p. 153.

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out of the moon, or somewhere
Ibid., p. 158.

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the most active transporter
Air has 0.035 percent of Earth's water, which is 1.3 x 10
₁₈
cubic meters, enough to coat the Earth in a mere 2.5 centimeters of rain.

CHAPTER
5

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South Downs during a south-west breeze
W. N. Hartley, "On the absorption of solar rays by atmospheric oxygen,"
Journal of the Chemical Society,
vol. xxxix (1881), p. 111.

132 
the General Motors Company
When Midgley arrived it was the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (Delco), but it changed to General Motors four years later.

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spitting in the Great Lakes
Haynes,
Great Chemists,
p. 1592.

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reek with the smell of garlic
See
Dictionary of Scientific Biography.

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on the technological scene
The first commercial refrigeration system was patented in 1873, but they had only recently begun to be manufactured on an industrial scale.

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the life of the scientific clairvoyant
Haynes,
Great Chemists,
p. 1595.

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one pure sample. I still wonder
Ibid., p. 1596.

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acknowledge their permanent value
Cited in
Biographical Memoir of the National Academy of Sciences,
vol. xxiv, no. 11 (1947), pp. 361–80, by Charles F. Kettering.

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single organism that has ever lived
Here I've paraphrased McNeill, who, in
Something New Under the Sun,
said that Midgley had "more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in earth history."

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my tough luck to draw it
Kettering, p. 375.

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mischievous mind I've ever encountered
"Father Earth," by Michael Bond, in
New Scientist
(September 9, 2000), p. 44.

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Not a car, not a bus, but a tram
Lovelock,
Homage to Gaia,
p. 133.

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by so competent a wordsmith
Ibid., p. 241.

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the scientist had meant "wholly."
Ibid.

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weather was good enough to sell
Ibid., p. 191.

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exerts a pull of over 100 pounds
Ibid., p. 199.

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constitutes no conceivable hazard
J. E. Lovelock, R. J. Maggi, and R. J. Wade, "Halogenated Hydrocarbons In and Over the Atlantic,"
Nature,
vol. 241 (January 19,

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three molecules of useless oxygen
The actual reactions are much more complicated, and involve several intermediaries. See, for instance, the detailed description in Richard Wayne's brilliant textbook
Chemistry of Atmospheres,
3rd Edition (London: Oxford University Press, 2000).

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like a miniature Pac-Man
I have borrowed this memorable image from Sharon Roan in
Ozone Crisis.

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like the end of the world
Roan,
Ozone Crisis,
p. 2.

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and threw them all away
Ibid., p. 31.

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says Lovelock, he kept quiet
Lovelock,
Homage to Gaia,
p. 205.

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Molina and Rowland's findings appeared
Nature,
vol. 249 (June 28 1974), pp. 810–12. Lovelock's stratospheric measurements swiftly followed in the same journal.

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don't know what you've got till it's gone
A message that seems to have made its mark down the years. In 2003, I played this song to a group of Princeton juniors and seniors during a class I was teaching on environmental science writing and told them I'd give extra credit to anyone who could name the singer and song. In unison, they all chanted, "Joni Mitchell: 'Big Yellow Taxi.'"

147 
billions of aerosol cans
Roan,
Ozone Crisis,
p. 37.

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decent bunch of scientists
"Father Earth," by Michael Bond, in
New Scientist
(September 9, 2000), p. 44.

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with his delicate measurements
Roan,
Ozone Crisis,
p. 4.

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"Yes," and "But"
Rowland and Molina, "Ozone Depletion 10 years after the alarm," in
Chemical and Engineering News,
vol. 72, no. 33 (August 15, 1994), pp. 8–13.

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how the
Washington Post
put it
Roan,
Ozone Crisis,
p. 81.

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probably not going to avoid it
Ibid., p. 124. Note: There were still some international rumblings. The infant United Nations Environment Program held the Vienna Convention in March 1985. It was modest in ambition, with only twenty signatories and no regulatory powers—nothing compared with what would follow the discovery of the ozone hole itself.

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wooden huts up to their necks
Four successive stations have been crushed by the snow, and the fifth one, though balanced on steel stilts, will soon have to be replaced.

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or comforts, or women
It was not until 1997 that women were allowed to winter there. The first woman visitor was back in 1973, but she doesn't really count. She was the wife of a ship's captain, who stepped onto the ice after the officers' dinner to be photographed next to the penguins in her evening gown.

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what's posterity done for you
Roan,
Ozone Crisis,
p. 127.

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was published in May 1985
Farman, J. C., B. G. Gardiner, and J. D. Shanklin, "Large losses of total ozone in Antarctica reveal seasonal ClOx/NOx interaction,"
Nature,
vol. 315 (1985), pp. 207–10.

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wise to expect the unexpected
Heath later claimed his group had already spotted the spurious data by the time Farman's paper was published, and had been secretly trying to interpret them. In any case, he had certainly missed his chance at one of the scientific scoops of the century.

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puny humans are by comparison
She told me this in an interview in London in mid-September 2001, when she had refused to be scared into cancelling her plans to fly across the Atlantic to London. She was on one of the first planes that flew after 9/11.

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it would cease production
Rowland and Molina, "Ozone Depletion 10 years after the alarm," in
Chemical and Engineering News.

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the dangers of CFCs
They shared this prize with Paul Crutzen, who had first realized that the ozone layer might be vulnerable by working out that nitrogen oxides could also destroy ozone.

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reject her care at our peril
Lovelock,
Homage to Gaia,
p. 391.

CHAPTER
6

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still, small voice of the air
Degna Marconi,
My Father, Marconi,
p. 8.

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put his schemes into practice
Ibid., pp. 11–12.

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inventions remained well hidden
Ibid., p. 14.

162 
for our eyes to see
Ultraviolet and infrared are other examples of electromagnetic waves; see chapter 5. But whereas they have wavelengths of tiny fractions of an inch, wireless waves can have a distance between successive peaks and troughs of several miles. Since the shorter the wavelength, the higher the energy, radio waves are the least energetic of all, which is why we can live in a world that is permanently crisscrossed with radio waves yet suffer no ill effects.

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echoed down the valley
Degna Marconi,
My Father, Marconi,
p. 29.

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Marconi is thoroughly a cosmopolitan
Dunlap,
Marconi: The Man and His Wireless,
p. 80.

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study and scientific experiment
Ibid., p. 78.

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the friction of his lamp
Weightman,
Signor Marconi's Magic Box,
p. 40.

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too many 'whisky-and-sodas'
Ibid., p. 41.

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since the dawn of navigation
Karl Baarslag, in
SOS to the Rescue,
quoted in earlyradiohistory.us/sec005.htm.

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put all America behind him
Degna Marconi,
My Father, Marconi,
p. 94.

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activity and mental absorption
Ibid., p. 105.

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issue a formal statement
Some people still doubt that Marconi heard his signal on that day. However, see
The Friendly Ionosphere,
by Crawford MacKeand (Montchanin, Delaware: Tyndar Press, 2001). MacKeand went to elaborate technical lengths to model the equipment that Marconi used, and concluded that it is highly feasible that he was right.

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received them from England
Dunlap,
Marconi: The Man and His Wireless,
p. 99.

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development in modern times
Degna Marconi,
My Father, Marconi,
p. 104.

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and thought passing in between
Ibid., p. 105.

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almost summon at his will
Dunlap,
Marconi: The Man and His Wireless,
p. 107.

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A few weeks later
January 13, 1902.

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an electric wave across the Atlantic
Dunlap,
Marconi: The Man and His Wireless,
p. 113.

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'If Marconi says it is true, I believe it.'
Ibid., p. 117.

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promoter to capitalize on his invention
Ibid., p. 118.

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Though not very tall
He was 5 feet 4/2 inches.

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conceited logic-choppers
Nahin,
Oliver Heaviside, Sage in Solitude,
p. 17.

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fog created of our own efforts
Ibid., p. 99.

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mind of the average man
Ibid., p. 168.

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simply added "(by work)"
Searle, in
The Heaviside Centenary Volume,
p. 9.

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much more difficult to write
Sir Edward Appleton, in
The Heaviside Centenary Volume,
p. 3.

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O! He is a very Devil
Nahin,
Oliver Heaviside, Sage in Solitude,
p. 293.

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never had the courage to call again
J. A. Crowther, quoted by Searle in
The Heaviside Centenary Volume,
pp. 8–9.

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leaving me far behind
Searle, in
The Heaviside Centenary Volume,
p. 94.
174 
Found accidentally in pocket
Searle, in
The Heaviside Centenary Volume,
p. 9.

175 
come to be called the Heaviside layer
About the same time, an American scientist, Arthur Kennelly, made a similar suggestion. Heaviside had earlier written a more detailed treatment of the idea and submitted it as an academic article to be published in the
Electrician,
but the article was never published. That could be why researchers at the time used the term "Heaviside" layer or at most, appended Kennelly's name to Heaviside's. See Ratcliffe's
Sun, Earth and Radio.

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keep herself warm in winter
Searle, in
The Heaviside Centenary Volume,
p. 8.

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my genius to keep me warm
Sir George Lee, in
The Heaviside Centenary Volume,
p. 16.