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An old truism holds that a scientific discovery has three stages:
first, people deny it is true; then they deny it is important;
finally, they credit the wrong person. Alfred Wegener's "discovery"
of continental drift went through each stage with unusual drama. In
1915, when he published his theory that the world's continents had
once come together in a single landmass before splitting apart and
drifting to their current positions, the world's geologists denied
and scorned it. The scientific establishment's rejection of
continental drift and plate tectonic theory is a story told often
and well. Yet, there is an untold side to Wegener's life: he and
his famous father-in-law, Wladimir Koppen (a climatologist whose
classification of climates is still in use), became fascinated with
climates of the geologic past. In the early 20th century Wegener
made four expeditions to the then-uncharted Greenland icecap to
gather data about climate variations (Greenland ice-core sampling
continues to this day). Ending in Ice is about Wegener's
explorations of Greenland, blending the science of ice ages and
Wegener's continental drift measurements with the story of
Wegener's fatal expedition trying to bring desperately needed food
and fuel to workers at the central Greenland ice station of
Eismitte in 1930. Arctic exploration books with tragic endings have
become all too common, but this book combines Wegener's fatal
adventures in Greenland with the relevant science--now more
important than ever as global climate change becomes movie-worthy
("The Day After Tomorrow").
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