Rating of 4.5. Excellent History of Four key ideas in geology. Covers the history, the science and current thinking. Very good notes and bibliography for those interested in pursuing any of the topics. ( )

Why we aren’t farther ahead

One of the many great things about Four Revolutions is that it jumps right in. There isn’t the endless groundwork and foundation building of so many such efforts. It is captivating right off the top. Being the history of discovering how the Earth works, it is intuitive and has universal appeal. Its cast of miscreants and creatives makes it colorful. And Powell has a terrific knack for harpooning just the right keywords for the titles and subtitles, along with dramatic endings for sections.

The four revolutions are:
-determining the age of rocks and the Earth
-continental drift
-meteorite impacts on the moon, and dinosaur extinction here
-global warming

While the first is a quite civil disagreement among natural philosophers (as scientists were called), the second gets into vicious mudslinging, as scientists use ad hominem attacks on each other to denigrate their theories, their qualifications and even their personalities. Continental drift had all the appeal of forced abortion to American scientists in the first half of the last century. It is astonishing how they wielded their ignorance as if it were unimpeachable truth, and accused each other of being unqualified quacks. Rather than consider a new theory, they would conjure absurd patches to paper over faults in their own work. They worked to banish the printing of references in textbooks, or even the names of the perpetrators. They refused to cite competitors in their papers. It has of course, been this way for centuries.

Global warming is the most obnoxious story. It was theorized in the late 1800s. “Greenhouse Effect” was coined in 1913. And the issue has been proven again and again and again since. However, certain fossil fuel giants as well as conservatives have spent millions to counter the science. In Unaccountable: How Elite Power Brokers Corrupt our Finances, Freedom, and Security, Janine Wedel cites studies that of the more than one thousand books published on the topic, maybe 25 deny it. 72% of those denial books have a verifiable link to (conservative) “think tanks”, and 40% of those were written or edited by people with NO relevant scientific credentials. Yet that is what is holding up the whole planet from taking action, as the media repeatedly focus on the deniers in order to be “balanced”. Powell says there is no balance. This is settled science.

You can see the same process underway in geology today. The astrophysicist Marvin Herndon has disproven (not theorized, but disproved, which Powell says is far more difficult) convection as the motor of continental drift. He has postulated a unified theory in which all planets began as gas giants like Jupiter, and that particles rained in from the gas clouds over billions of years to produce the rock cores we call planets. His Maverick's Earth and Universe is both inspiring and sad. Sad to see the entire scientific community actively ignore this theory, and refuse to cite it, just as Powell describes in Four Revolutions.

These are most worthy reads. Four Revolutions is a fascinating record of small minds obfuscating big issues for personal gain.

David Wineberg ( )