The waters of the world. How the secrets of the oceans, atmospheres, glaciers and climate of our planet were solved

In 1856, the Scottish astronomer and the traveler Charles Piazzi Smith first tried to conduct astronomical observations without interference in the form of clouds, that is, a water vapor in the atmosphere, and for this climbed the top of the volcano on the Tenerife (one of the islands of the Canary Archipelago).
In the UK, thanks to the intensive laying of railways and the construction of more and deeper coal mines, secrets began to open in the bowels of the Earth ... The desire to shed light on the events of the past moved enthusiasts, which with hammers and lups in their hands enthusiastically investigated the rock. Railway and mining companies quickly realized that thanks to these people you can find out where the mineral wealth of the Earth is lurking and earn a lot of money. So the science of the history and structure of our planet was born - geology.
The properties of Pasternak are such that if you throw it into the ocean, it will almost completely immerse yourself in the water and will swim, only slightly peering out and, thus, without exposing the wind. Thanks to this property, an ordinary Pasternak - floating and clearly visible on the water - turned out to be an excellent material for oceanographic measuring buoys.
Back in the middle of the last century, it was believed that the climate on Earth is stable, and only with the advent of climatology in its modern form the concept of “climate change” ceased to be an oxymoron. How was a new idea of ​​our planet and understanding of the global climatic system formed? Who were those people thanks to which climatology arose as a systemic science of land? Talking about its formation, Sarah Drai turns to the stories of these people - the stories of risky adventures, rebellions, exciting discoveries made in mountain expeditions, traveling to tropical islands, during flights in the heart of hurricane. Thanks to these pioneers, mankind managed to reveal the secrets of the Earth and understand how our planet is arranged, how we influenced and continue to influence it. Understanding this is especially important for us today, when we are on the verge of a climatic crisis, and we need to prevent its worst consequences.

In this book, water carries with it not a stream of energy, but a stream of human ideas and aspirations that embodied John Tyndal and his contemporaries who studied our planet in the 19th century, and in the works of the scientists who created the sciences of the Earth In the XX century. This makes the science alive, and also helps to tell the history of such an interdisciplinary field of knowledge as climatology in its modern sense.

Great ideas are often invisible - they have such a powerful effect on our vision of the world that we simply can’t imagine how you can look at it differently. We think that we simply see the world as it is. The idea of ​​the Earth as an interconnected global system is a clear example of this