CO2 Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge | 
| Author: Tyler Volk
Publisher: The MIT Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.95
Buy New: $14.83
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Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 81035
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 223
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.6 x 0.9
ISBN: 0262220830
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.73874
EAN: 9780262220835
ASIN: 0262220830
Publication Date: October 31, 2008
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Product Description
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, 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 with 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Not the best book on the subject December 27, 2008
I have mixed feelings about this book. Professor Volk clearly understands the science of climate change, but I still have to say this book was somewhat disappointing. I think there were too many graphs and charts; it became textbook-like and tedious after about a hundred pages. There were many questions he left unanswered. I'm also not crazy about the format of telling it from the point of view of a carbon atom, which Volk names Dave after a deceased scientist. There are better books on this subject.
 Animating complex carbon systems December 19, 2008
If you want to understand the carbon cycle or communicate to a skeptic about why co2 is a growing problem, this is the book. The scope, breadth, & depth of Volk's knowledge and research are impressive. But to tell a captivating story, he invents carbon atom characters: Dave (for David Keeling, who first recorded the 'Keeling curve' of rising co2); and some carbon atoms newly released by burning fossil fuels, Coaleen, Oiliver and Methaniel; and Icille, long-trapped in a frozen air bubble. Volk describes their travels through the biosphere, correlating them with geological time, human cultural history, and current energy strategies.
The story-telling analogies are helpful in making complex systems clear and understandable. Volk goes on to explain potential individual and governmental responses to growing co2 levels. The book doesn't advocate any one technical fix, other than clear thinking and immediate large-scale action. The intent is that an informed public understanding of natural systems and balances could go a long way toward better policy and consumer decisions.
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