Seeing further: the story of science & the Royal Society — 17 OLIVER MORTON

1. 1. The Apollo 17 photograph of the whole Earth, taken in 1972, is the most reproduced photographic image in history.
2. 2. Seeing the Earth from space objectifies the planet, making it too easy to hold at a distance and idealize, obscuring the lived experience of its inhabitants.
3. 3. Tim Ingold argued that the global environmental movement's use of the photographed Earth as an icon is contradictory, because the environment of a globe is what lies outside it, not within.
4. 4. The 'planet in peril' rhetoric misdirects environmental concern by focusing on an abstract Earth rather than on the people who are actually at risk, especially the poor.
5. 5. An alternative to the static blue-marble view is to see the Earth as a nested set of cycles, from fast biogeochemical cycles to slow geological ones, all driven by energy flows.
6. 6. The Earth's cycles are driven by three energy streams: primordial heat from planetary formation, radioactive decay of supernova-forged elements, and solar radiation, with sunlight providing the vast majority.
7. 7. Human burning of fossil fuels short-circuits the geological carbon cycle, releasing carbon dioxide that traps heat at a rate about 100 times larger than the energy released by the fuels themselves.
8. 8. The solution to the environmental crisis is to harness other energy flows—wind, solar, geothermal, tidal—to decouple human energy use from the damaging carbon cycle.
9. 9. The Earth's orbital cycles, calculated by astronomers, drive ice ages, and asteroid impacts have had major geological significance, showing that the Earth is not isolated from its space environment.
10. 10. Astronomers are now searching for Earth-like planets around other stars by looking for signs of biogeochemical cycling, such as atmospheric disequilibrium, rather than direct images.