Heat (44 page)

The navy’s reports on oil were both reprinted in
Pennsylvania Petroleum, 1750–1872
, a collection of various articles and papers compiled by Paul Giddens and published in 1947 by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Titusville. The 1864 report was by B. F. Isherwood and is cited as “Report of the Secretary of the Navy for 1864, House Executive Document, Number 1, 38th Congress, 2nd Session, page 1096, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1864.” The second report, also by Isherwood, is cited as “Report of the Secretary of the Navy for 1867, House Executive Document, Number 1, 40th Congress, 2nd Session, pages 173–175. Government Printing Office, Washington, 1867.” The much more positive reports about oil as a potential fuel for navy ships came from
New York Times
articles that were reprinted in the
Venago Spectator
on June 28, 1867, and the
Titusville Morning Herald
on July 10, 1867. The words of the secretary of the navy in 1920 come from “Fuel for the Navy,” an extract of a speech made by Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels on December 18, 1920, published in
Journal of the American Society for Naval Engineers
33, no. 1 (February 1921): 60–63.

The comments about the oil-fired fire engine came from an article in the
Boston Traveler
, which was reprinted in the
Venago Spectator
on October 11, 1867, and then reprinted again in the aforementioned
Pennsylvania Petroleum, 1750–1872
.

Most of Alaska’s oil is shipped to Washington and California. A small amount is shipped by tanker to the refinery near Nikiski, Alaska. Alaskan oil is not exported to foreign refiners.

Vern Miller of Tesoro was the refinery engineer who talked to me about refineries. We were accompanied by Kip Knutson, also of Tesoro. After having had my requests for refinery tours turned down by several other energy companies, I found Tesoro’s openness and hospitality refreshing. Tesoro hosts an excellent explanation of the refining process online at www.tsocorp.com/Refining101/
​index
.html.

The KFC firewalking incident is well known. See www.theage.​com.au/articles/2002/02/27/1014704967158.html. I do not know of any explanation for the prevalence of reported burns associated with this incident.

The brief history of the modern firewalking movement was reconstructed from a number of sources, including lecture notes posted at www.people.vcu.edu/~dbromley/undergraduate/spiritualCommunity/lecturematerialspirit.html and information from the Firewalking Institute of Research and Education. The 1977
Scientific American
article was by Jearl Walker in his “Amateur Scientist” column, published in August on page 126. Emily Edwards’s “Firewalking: A Contemporary Ritual and Transformation” appeared in
Drama Review
42, no. 2 (1998): 98–114. According to the journal’s publishers, the
Drama Review
“focuses on performances in their social, economic, and political contexts.”

The Henry Stephens Washington quotation comes from “Petrology of the Hawaiian Islands: II, Hualalai and Mauna Loa,”
American Journal of Science
, series 5, 6 (1923): 100–126. Among other accomplishments, Washington wrote a book,
Chemical Analyses of Igneous Rocks
(1903), containing more than eight thousand analyses of rocks. With three other scientists, he developed a detailed classification system for igneous rocks known as the CIPW Norm and still referred to today by geologists.

Mark Twain’s mention of “Pele’s furnaces” came from an article in the
Sacramento Daily Union
, November 16, 1866. In the same article, Twain complimented the Volcano House hotel, saying that “it seems to me that to leave out the fact that there is a neat, roomy, well furnished and well kept hotel at the volcano would be to remain silent upon a point of the very highest importance to any who may desire to visit the place.” The article was one of a series of “letters” Twain wrote as a correspondent, essentially on sabbatical from his work as a journalist in the southwestern United States, before he published his first book. Even as a journalist, he was unmistakably Mark Twain, who, in his youth, retained a sense of adventure but also knew how to relax. “It has been six weeks since I touched a pen,” he wrote during his journey. “In explanation and excuse I offer the fact that I spent that time (with the exception of one week) on the island of Maui.…I went to Maui to stay a week and remained five. I had a jolly time. I would not have fooled away any of it writing letters under any consideration whatever.” The articles from Hawaii were republished as
Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii
, ed. A. Grove Day (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1975), and remain readily available today.

Entries in the Volcano House registry have been collected and published in the cleverly illustrated collection
On the Rim of Kilauea: Excerpts from the Volcano House Register, 1865–1955
, ed. Darcy Bevens (Hawaii National Park: Hawaii Natural History Association, 1992).

The quotation about Pele on a house-hunting expedition comes from
Time
magazine, April 22, 1940.

Captain James Cook’s journals have been reprinted under the title
James Cook: The Journals
(New York: Penguin, 2003). The Penguin Classic version includes commentary by Philip Edwards. Regarding the spread of diseases to Hawaii, Cook wrote, “As there were some venereal complaints on board both the Ships, in order to prevent its being communicated to these people, I gave orders that no Women, on any account whatever were to be admitted on board the Ships, I also forbid all manner of connection with them, and ordered that none who had the venereal upon them should go out of the ships. But whether these regulations had the desired effect or not time can only discover.” Cook clearly realized that he could not keep men and women apart. He also understood that infection could be transmitted even when its outward signs were not visible.

My contact at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory was Dr. Matt Patrick. He was kind enough to take time away from his work to answer my questions about volcanoes in general and Kilauea in particular. He has worked on volcanoes in Alaska, South America, Europe, and Hawaii. Appropriately enough for a man who loves volcanoes, he lives in the town of Volcano, close to the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory publishes a weekly feature in the island’s newspapers. The feature of August 28, 2008, “Footprints in Ka’u were probably made in 1790—but not by Keoua’s party,” says, “We measured 405 footprints to determine how tall the walkers were.” The article concludes that most of the footprints were made by women and children, not warriors.

The term “shield volcano” was derived from the name of an Icelandic volcano, called Skjaldbreiớur, which means something like “broad shield.” Although Mauna Loa is the largest known shield volcano on earth, Olympus Mons, on Mars, is even bigger, with a height of more than 15 miles and a width of 370 miles.

Of the fifty-seven people killed by the Mount St. Helens eruption, the remains of twenty were never recovered. HistoryLink.org, “The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History,” lists the names of the dead.

Dick Thompson’s
Volcano Cowboys: The Rocky Evolution of a Dangerous Science
(New York: Thomas Dunne, 2000) offers a dramatic and readable account of what it is to be a volcanologist. The book focuses to some degree on the Mount St. Helens eruption. Information about deaths during that explosion and Stanley Lee’s words come from Thompson’s book.

Charles Darwin’s comments on volcanoes and the destruction at Concepcion come from the many letters he wrote to his second cousin William Darwin Fox. Anthony W. D. Larkum collected many of Darwin’s letters in
A Natural Calling: Life, Letters, and Diaries of Charles Darwin and William Darwin Fox
(Springer, 2009). Darwin also seemed to recognize at least aspects of the reality of plate tectonics in “On the Connexion of Certain Volcanic Phenomena in South America; and on the Formation of Mountain Chains and Volcanoes, as the Effect of the Same Powers by Which Continents Are Elevated,”
Transactions of the Geological Society of London
5, no. 3 (1840): 601–31. He wrote: “The whole western part of the continent [South America] has been almost simultaneously affected, it appears to me, that there is little hazard in assuming, that this large portion of the earth’s crust floats in a like manner on a sea of molten rock. Moreover,—when we think of the increasing temperature of the strata, as we penetrate downwards in all parts of the world, and of the certainty that every portion of the surface rests on rocks which have once been liquefied;—when we consider the multitude of points from which fluid rock is annually emitted, and the still greater number of points from which it has been emitted during the few last geological periods inclusive, which, as far as regards the cooling of the rock in the lowest abysses, may probably be considered as one, from the extreme slowness with which heat can escape from such depths;—when we reflect how many and wide areas in all parts of the world are certainly known, some to have been rising and others sinking during the recent era, even to the present day, and do not forget the intimate connexion which has been shown to exist between these movements and the propulsion of liquefied rock to the surface in the volcano;—we are urged to include the entire globe in the foregoing hypothesis.”

Melville’s description of Nukuheva comes from
Typee
, published in 1846.
Typee
was Melville’s first and most successful (during his lifetime) book. The book was published as nonfiction, although today it is widely believed to have been a fictionalized account based on Melville’s experiences in the Marquesas Islands. Like many whalers, Melville jumped ship before finishing his entire multiyear cruise. The whale ship was the
Acushnet
from New Bedford. His point of disembarkation was Nukuheva, today commonly spelled Nuku Hiva, at 127 square miles the largest of the Marquesas Islands. He remained in Nukuheva for three weeks before sailing on another whale ship bound for Hawaii.

The bombings of Mauna Loa lava flows in 1935 and 1942 are described by many authors. One description can be found in J. P. Lockwood and F. A. Togerson, “Diversion of Lava Flows by Aerial Bombing—Lessons from Mauna Loa Volcano, Hawaii,”
Bulletin of Volcanology
43, no. 4 (1980): 727–41. Other attempts at lava diversion in Hawaii have met with equally poor results. In contrast, John McPhee’s well-known book
The Control of Nature
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989) describes an apparently successful (in the short term, at least) attempt to divert an Icelandic lava flow that threatened the destruction of Vestmannaeyjar harbor, an important resource (important, that is, to those who lived on the Icelandic island of Heimaey). The diversion was accomplished by pumping salt water onto the flows, selectively cooling the lava to create a levee that sent the lava elsewhere. Another description can be found in the 1983 United States Geological Survey report
Man against Volcano: The Eruption on Heimaey, Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland
, by Richard Williams and James Moore, available online at http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/heimaey/heimaey.pdf.

Charles Keeling described his work in “Rewards and Penalties of Monitoring the Earth,”
Annual Review of Energy and the Environment
22 (1998): 25–82. Over time, Keeling’s work became well known and arguably forms the foundation—or at least part of the foundation—for current thinking about climate change, but his article clearly describes the challenges of maintaining long-term funding for monitoring the atmosphere. Throughout his career, his funding stream was threatened and frequently cut off, often because it was considered to be “monitoring” rather than “research.” In one episode, a National Science Foundation representative wrote, “I believe that we in this program must tread a narrow line between that work which constitutes basic research and that work which constitutes fairly routine monitoring.” Keeling’s work, in fact, could hardly have been considered routine. There were real and ongoing challenges with calibration of measurements and with odd oscillations in the long-term patterns that he detected. And, of course, one can argue that understanding the atmosphere and the earth’s climate would require decades of basic research, even if that basic research was nothing more than the repeated collection of measurements over many years. The difficulty of maintaining funding for long-term monitoring remains a tremendous challenge in the environmental sciences.

The man who showed me around the Mauna Loa Observatory was John Barnes, the facility director. When I arrived, he had just finished talking to a class of Cornell students. He talked to me, my companion, and a retired couple, spending more than an hour showing us around. The laboratory, though somewhat remote, has increasingly attracted global-warming tourists. John’s enthusiasm and passion for his facility was nothing short of inspirational.

Svante Arrhenius’s comments about his climate change calculations come from “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground,”
London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science
41, no. 251 (1896): 238–76. His paper is often cited as a harbinger of today’s concerns about climate change, but in fact he was very much focused on understanding past changes in climate.