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The most colossal environmental disturbance in human history is underway. Ever-rising levels of the potent greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) arealtering the cycles of matter and life and interfering with the Earth's naturalcooling process. Melting Arctic ice and mountain glaciers are just the firstrelatively mild symptoms of what will result from this disruption of the planetaryenergy balance. In CO2 Rising, scientist Tyler Volk explains the process at theheart of global warming and climate change: the global carbon cycle. Vividly andconcisely, Volk describes what happens when CO2 is released by the combustion offossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), letting loose carbon atoms once trappeddeep underground into the interwoven web of air, water, and soil. To demonstrate howthe carbon cycle works, Volk traces the paths that carbon atoms take during theirglobal circuits. Showing us the carbon cycle from a carbon atom's viewpoint, hefollows one carbon atom into a leaf of barley and then into an alcohol molecule in aglass of beer, through the human bloodstream, and then back into the air. He alsocompares the fluxes of carbon brought into the biosphere naturally against thosecreated by the combustion of fossil fuels and explains why the latter areresponsible for rising temperatures. Knowledge about the global carbon cycle and thehuge disturbances that human activity produces in it will equip us to consider thehard questions that Volk raises in the second half of CO2 Rising: projections offuture levels of CO2; which energy systems and processes (solar, wind, nuclear, carbon sequestration?) will power civilization in the future; the relationshipsamong the wealth of nations, energy use, and CO2 emissions; and global equity in percapita emissions. Answering these questions will indeed be our greatestenvironmental challenge.