The Many Lives of Carbon

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

In its pure form carbon can be the soft graphite in a pencil or an immensely hard diamond. It is the basic building block of most of the cells in our bodies. Carbon attracts, and one of the most crucial relationships it forms is with oxygen, producing carbon dioxide, the gas vital to life on earth. This is the story of a chemical element, C, its myriad properties and its life cycle.

It is the story of a balance between photosynthesis and cell respiration, between building and burning, life and death.Dag Olav Hessen navigates us through an exploration of the existence of carbon in minerals and rocks, wood and rainforests, and of carbon's role in processes such as the greenhouse effect and the carbon cycles, on both small and large scales. He explores the burning issue of climate change: how will ecosystems respond to global change How bad could things get Will the world's ecosystems recover And what are our moral obligations Neither alarmist nor moralistic, Hessen takes the reader on a journey from the atom to our planet in informative, compelling prose.

Reviews

This is a brilliant and deep journey into the science, history, and indeed the morality of the Periodic Tables sixth element, carbon. An accomplished scientist and a masterful storyteller, Dag Hessen takes us from the elegance of the Koh-i-Noor diamond to the putrescence of cow flatulence, explaining the science behind carbons connection to our bodies (we are 40% C, once water is removed) and to our future given its ongoing impact on global climate. Hessen has a particular knack for explaining chemical concepts clearly and illustrating chemical transformations, all while weaving seamlessly between the physics at atoms, the geology of Earths crust, and the biology of organic molecules. Readers will enjoy the journey while also gaining some philosophical and ethical perspective on the tradeoffs and complexities that are involved as humanity struggles to decarbonize. Carbon you thought you knew it Think again and read this book. * Jim Elser, Bierman Professor of Ecology, University of Montana *

Author Bio

Dag Olav Hessen is Professor of Biology at the University of Oslo, and the author of many popular science books and scientific papers on ecology and evolution.