On his book CO2 Rising: The World’s Greatest Environmental Challenge
Cover Interview of December 04, 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.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
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.