A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson [252]
9 “The absolute limit of human tolerance . . .” Ashcroft, p. 8.
10 “even the most well-adapted women . . .” Attenborough, The Living Planet, p. 18.
11 “nearly half a ton has been quietly piled upon us . . .” Quoted by Hamilton-Paterson, p. 177.
12 “a typical weather front . . .” Smith, p. 50.
13 “equivalent to four days' use of electricity . . .” Junger, The Perfect Storm, p. 128.
14 “At any one moment 1,800 thunderstorms . . .” Stevens, p. 55.
15 “Much of our knowledge . . .” Biddle, p. 161.
16 “a wind blowing at two hundred miles an hour . . .” Bodanis, E = mc2, p. 68.
17 “as much energy ‘as a medium-size nation.' ” Ball, p. 51.
18 “The impulse of the atmosphere to seek equilibrium . . .” Science, “The Ascent of Atmospheric Sciences,” October 13, 2000, p. 300.
19 “Coriolis's other distinction . . .” Trefil, The Unexpected Vista, p. 24.
20 “gives weather systems their curl . . .” Drury, p. 25.
21 “Celsius made boiling point zero . . .” Trefil, The Unexpected Vista, p. 107.
22 “Howard is chiefly remembered . . .” Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 10, pp. 51–52.
23 “Howard's system has been much added to . . .” Trefil, Meditations at Sunset, p. 62.
24 “the source of the expression ‘to be on cloud nine.' ” Hamblyn, p. 252.
25 “A fluffy summer cumulus . . .” Trefil, Meditations at Sunset, p. 66.
26 “Only about 0.035 percent of the Earth's fresh water . . .” Ball, p. 57.
27 “the prognosis for a water molecule varies widely.” Dennis, p. 8.
28 “Even something as large as the Mediterranean . . .” Gribbin and Gribbin, Being Human, p. 123.
29 “Such an event occurred . . .” New Scientist, “Vanished,” August 7, 1999.
30 “equivalent to the world's output of coal . . .” Trefil, Meditations at 10,000 Feet, p. 122.
31 “a lag in the official, astronomical start of a season . . .” Stevens, p. 111.
32 “how long it takes a drop of water . . .” National Geographic, “New Eyes on the Oceans,” October 2000, p. 101.
33 “about twenty thousand times as much carbon . . .” Stevens, p. 7.
34 “the ‘natural' level of carbon dioxide . . .” Science, “The Ascent of Atmospheric Sciences,” October 13, 2000, p. 303.
CHAPTER 18 THE BOUNDING MAIN
1 “a world dominated by dihydrogen oxide . . .” Margulis and Sagan, p. 100.
2 “A potato is 80 percent water . . .” Schopf, p. 107.
3 “Almost nothing about it can be used . . .” Green, p. 29; and Gribbin, In the Beginning, p. 174.
4 “By the time it is solid . . .” Trefil, Meditations at 10,000 Feet, p. 121.
5 “an utterly bizarre property . . .” Gribbin, In the Beginning, p. 174.
6 “like the ever-changing partners in a quadrille . . .” Kunzig, p. 8.
7 “only 15 percent of them are actually touching.” Dennis, The Bird in the Waterfall, p. 152.
8 “Within days, the lips vanish . . .” Economist, May 13, 2000, p. 4.
9 “A typical liter of seawater will contain . . .” Dennis, p. 248.
10 “we sweat and cry seawater . . .” Margulis and Sagan, pp. 183–84.
11 “There are 320 million cubic miles of water . . .” Green, p. 25.
12 “By 3.8 billion years ago . . .” Ward and Brownlee, p. 36.
13 “Altogether the Pacific holds just over half . . .” Dennis, p. 226.
14 “we would better call our planet not Earth but Water.” Ball, p. 21.
15 “Of the 3 percent of Earth's water that is fresh . . .” Dennis, p. 6; and Scientific American, “On Thin Ice,” December 2002, pp. 100–105.
16 “Go to the South Pole and you will be standing . . .” Smith, p. 62.
17 “enough to raise the oceans . . .” Schultz, Ice Age Lost, p. 75.
18 “driven to distraction by the mind-numbing routine . . .” Weinberg, A Fish Caught in Time, p. 34.
19 “But they sailed across almost seventy thousand nautical miles . . .” Hamilton-Paterson, The Great Deep, p. 178.
20 “female assistants whose jobs were inventively described . . .” Norton, p. 57.
21 “Soon afterward he teamed up with Barton . . .” Ballard, The Eternal Darkness, pp. 14–15.
22 “The sphere had no maneuverability . . .” Weinberg, A Fish Caught in Time, p. 158, and Ballard, p. 17.
23 “Whatever it was, nothing like it has been seen since . . .” Weinberg, A Fish Caught