Book Review of "Great Scientific Achievements in the Twentieth Century"

Book Review of "Great Scientific Achievements in the Twentieth Century", Volume 1,
a Magill Book, Salem press, 1994

Book Review by William Schaeffer
copyright(c)2015

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p. 1

Arrhenius and Callendar Predict Global Warming

"Svante August Arrhenius and G. S. Callendar noted the increasing level of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere and traced it to human activity."

"... According to his calculations, the average global temperature would rise as much as 9 degrees if the amount of carbon dioxide in the air doubled from its prindustrial level."

"...Arrhenius' work did not gain acceptance until G. S. Callendar, an English physicist, speculated in 1938 that increasing carbon dioxide levels were the probable cause of a warming of North America and Northern Europe that meteorologists had begun to observe in the 1880's. Callendar was the first to assemble a large body of measurements from several scientific sources and predict a significant temperature change caused by increased carbon dioxide."

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p. 3

"From 1957 to 1975, the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increased almost 5 percent."

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p. 40

"It should be noted that large, mobile industrial vacuum cleaners were in use as early as the 1890's. These large suction cleaners were mounted on wagons pulled by horses and connected to the vacuum nozzle by long, flexible hoses that were strung through doorways and windows to reach the surfaces to be cleaned."

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p. 103

"Albert Einstein' Special Theory of Relativity was first presented in an article in 1905. In it, he points out that time cannot be viewed as being "absolute." He says, rather, that time is "relative." He also questions the idea of simultaneity" -- that is, of being able to view an event, such as a man throwing a baseball, as it is occurring. Because it takes a certain (infitessimal) amount of time for the light that illuminates an event to travel to an observer, the event can be seen only after it happens rather than as it happens."

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FACT:

For every gallon of gasoline burned, twelve pounds of oxygen are removed from the atmosphere and replaced with 19.2 pounds of carbon dioxide.

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