Book Review: The Global Carbon Cycle

The Global Carbon Cycle by David Archer, is one of the excellent series of Princeton Primers in Climate. These are short, economically priced (in the paperback or Kindle editions), slightly technical discussions of aspects of climate.

The carbon cycle is the movement of Earth's stock of carbon among its several reservoirs - the solid earth, the oceans, fossil fuels, the soils, the biosphere, and the atmosphere. The atmosphere is the smallest of these but it is also the one crucial for anthropogenic climate change and climate change more generally. The movements are complex, imperfectly understood, and, again, crucial for our understanding of the effect of carbon on the climate.

Archer's book explains much of what is known, something about how it is known, and discusses those things that aren't known, all in concise fashion. I liked the book and learned a lot, but I still have a number of complaints. The Kindle version is cheap ($19.25) and easy to carry on my phone, but the not very numerous equations are rendered as tiny images which are difficult (or were difficult for me) to magnify. In some cases, the author gives different numbers for the same quantities, like the amount of carbon in natural gas reservoirs, for example. To be sure, estimates vary, but I would prefer that he give a range rather than quote different estimates in different places. I would also prefer a more structured organization scheme, with more chapters and fewer topics in each.

Despite it's generally careful approach to the unknown aspects of the problem, the author occasionally lets his alarm at human caused climate change emphasize, or perhaps overemphasize, the worst case scenarios.

In my many arguments with climate skeptics, I have found that the carbon cycle is one of the things about which they are most deeply confused. Its complexity makes it a convenient dumping ground for all kinds of magical thinking, but they could learn a lot by reading this book. That, however, is something that they are unlikely to do.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more