CO2 Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge

CO2 Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge

by Tyler Volk
ISBN-10:
0262515210
ISBN-13:
9780262515214
Pub. Date:
09/24/2010
Publisher:
MIT Press
ISBN-10:
0262515210
ISBN-13:
9780262515214
Pub. Date:
09/24/2010
Publisher:
MIT Press
CO2 Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge

CO2 Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge

by Tyler Volk
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Overview

An introduction to the global carbon cycle and the human-caused disturbances to it that are at the heart of global warming and climate change.

The most colossal environmental disturbance in human history is under way. Ever-rising levels of the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) are altering the cycles of matter and life and interfering with the Earth's natural cooling process. Melting Arctic ice and mountain glaciers are just the first relatively mild symptoms of what will result from this disruption of the planetary energy balance. In CO2 Rising, scientist Tyler Volk explains the process at the heart of global warming and climate change: the global carbon cycle. Vividly and concisely, Volk describes what happens when CO2 is released by the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), letting loose carbon atoms once trapped deep underground into the interwoven web of air, water, and soil. To demonstrate how the carbon cycle works, Volk traces the paths that carbon atoms take during their global circuits. Showing us the carbon cycle from a carbon atom's viewpoint, he follows one carbon atom into a leaf of barley and then into an alcohol molecule in a glass of beer, through the human bloodstream, and then back into the air. He also compares the fluxes of carbon brought into the biosphere naturally against those created by the combustion of fossil fuels and explains why the latter are responsible for rising temperatures. Knowledge about the global carbon cycle and the huge disturbances that human activity produces in it will equip us to consider the hard questions that Volk raises in the second half of CO2 Rising projections of future levels of CO2; which energy systems and processes (solar, wind, nuclear, carbon sequestration?) will power civilization in the future; the relationships among the wealth of nations, energy use, and CO2 emissions; and global equity in per capita emissions. Answering these questions will indeed be our greatest environmental challenge.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780262515214
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 09/24/2010
Series: The MIT Press
Pages: 240
Product dimensions: 5.44(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Tyler Volk is Science Director of Environmental Studies and Professor of Biology at New York University. He is the author of Gaia's Body: Toward a Physiology of the Earth (MIT Press, 2003), Metapatterns: Across Space, Time, and Mind, and other books.

What People are Saying About This

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus

A clear and compelling picture of both the nature and scale of the global climate and energy challenge and what will be necessary to address it.

Mitchell Thomashow

"If I had the power, I would assign C02 Rising to every college freshman in America. It is that good. It is that accessible. It is that important." -- Mitchell Thomashow, President, Unity College

Roald Hoffmann

"Tyler Volk is a wonderful expositor who tells it like it is. In CO2
Rising he has some feisty carbon atoms take us along on their vividly and clearly described romp through the bio and geosphere. A journey we most certainly affect."
-- Roald Hoffmann, Department of Chemistry, Cornell University,
and winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Lynn Margulis

"Incessant flow of carbon dioxide and its fluid transformation becomes our own personal story in this wise and accessible narrative of the reality of accelerating climate change. Volk's beautifully illustrated description of this vast problem and his approach to potential solutions for our future life, growth, and energy supplies should interest everyone."--Lynn Margulis, Distinguished University Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Endorsement

Here's the most important math of our time on Earth. Straightforward, simple, powerful Tyler Volk lays out the numbers to show why we need a far more urgent and dramatic response to global warming than we've attempted to date.

Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and founder of 350.org

From the Publisher

Here's the most important math of our time on Earth. Straightforward, simple, powerful Tyler Volk lays out the numbers to show why we need a far more urgent and dramatic response to global warming than we've attempted to date.

Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature and founder of 350.org

Bill McKibben

"Here's the most important math of our time on earth. Straightforward,
simple, powerful--Tyler Volk lays out the numbers to show why we need a far more urgent and dramatic response to global warming than we've attempted to date."--Bill McKibben, author The End of Nature, and founder, 350.org

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