On his book CO2 Rising: The World’s Greatest Environmental Challenge
Cover Interview of December 05, 2008
In a nutshell
When fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas are combusted they release CO2. This greenhouse gas is no ordinary pollutant but an inherent waste byproduct of the energy conversion. The CO2 is ejected skyward, thereby letting loose carbon atoms that had been outside the biosphere “system” for hundred of millions of years during their deep, underground sequestration. Now released and wafted worldwide, the waste carbon then infiltrates into all parts of this surface system we inhabit—the biosphere’s intricate and intimate circulating webs of air, water, and soil, which include myriads of living creatures. In short, the newly created CO2 enters the global carbon cycle. This Jackson Pollack-like complex carbon cycle is one of the great wonders of the universe. We are privileged to live within it and we must come to know it to understand the profound changes that are unfolding today.
The goal of this book is to set forth in plain language and powerful images the essential facts about the dynamics of fossil fuel-derived CO2 in the carbon cycle, how the CO2 is changing the natural world, how it will affect climate, and how its creation is tied to human material well-being. The result, I hope, is the definitive statement about such topics as: How do we know the CO2 rise is due to human activities? What will be the future amounts of CO2? What causes the extraordinary seasonal cycle of CO2? Why don’t the oceans remove all the CO2? What do we learn from the dynamics of carbon in Earth’s past ice ages? Why are the exhaled breaths of the growing human population not net additions to atmospheric CO2? How ready for massive deployment are various energy technologies that do not emit CO2, for example carbon sequestration, biomass, solar, wind, and nuclear?
Written by a carbon cycle scientist, my book illuminates the complex, awesome dynamics of the carbon atom. I have attempted to put forth the essential facts that I believe every Earth citizen should know about the role of fossil fuel carbon in the imbalance that we have created in the cycles. The book links the CO2 molecule to life, energy, and the future of civilization.
Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see how anyone could have taken them seriously in the first place. Why wouldn’t it occur to anyone that flies might be laying eggs that were too small for us to see? How simple would the crucial experiment be? What I have tried to do in much of my work is to turn this ‘obvious wrongness’ on its head—why, exactly, does it seem so obviously wrong?—and see what the new picture that emerges from that inquiry says about science and our belief in its results.Daryn Lehoux, Interview of November 13, 2017
It’s commonplace to say that humor is subjective, since what’s funny to you might not be funny to me. But humor is also a loaded concept. If you – or your people – have no sense of humor, or the wrong one, that means you’re less rational, tolerant, understanding, or civilized. You don’t get it. Or, worse, you lack something human. Modern Chinese debates about humor were very much caught up with these fundamental questions of value.Christopher Rea, Interview of October 26, 2016
In a nutshell
When fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas are combusted they release CO2. This greenhouse gas is no ordinary pollutant but an inherent waste byproduct of the energy conversion. The CO2 is ejected skyward, thereby letting loose carbon atoms that had been outside the biosphere “system” for hundred of millions of years during their deep, underground sequestration. Now released and wafted worldwide, the waste carbon then infiltrates into all parts of this surface system we inhabit—the biosphere’s intricate and intimate circulating webs of air, water, and soil, which include myriads of living creatures. In short, the newly created CO2 enters the global carbon cycle. This Jackson Pollack-like complex carbon cycle is one of the great wonders of the universe. We are privileged to live within it and we must come to know it to understand the profound changes that are unfolding today.
The goal of this book is to set forth in plain language and powerful images the essential facts about the dynamics of fossil fuel-derived CO2 in the carbon cycle, how the CO2 is changing the natural world, how it will affect climate, and how its creation is tied to human material well-being. The result, I hope, is the definitive statement about such topics as: How do we know the CO2 rise is due to human activities? What will be the future amounts of CO2? What causes the extraordinary seasonal cycle of CO2? Why don’t the oceans remove all the CO2? What do we learn from the dynamics of carbon in Earth’s past ice ages? Why are the exhaled breaths of the growing human population not net additions to atmospheric CO2? How ready for massive deployment are various energy technologies that do not emit CO2, for example carbon sequestration, biomass, solar, wind, and nuclear?
Written by a carbon cycle scientist, my book illuminates the complex, awesome dynamics of the carbon atom. I have attempted to put forth the essential facts that I believe every Earth citizen should know about the role of fossil fuel carbon in the imbalance that we have created in the cycles. The book links the CO2 molecule to life, energy, and the future of civilization.