The content is too big for 300 words. This Essay was posted on 9/16/2025.
Peter Brannen’s book, The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything tells how CO2 is necessary for our existence while it could kill us all from a geologist’s point of view. The book traces how CO2 influenced Earth’s weather over millions of years, helped start the development of mammals, and is now abetting humans in our own very possible end.
I learned some things as I read the book. First, there are two carbon cycles, not just one. In addition to the cycle where plants use CO2 and expel Oxygen and animals use Oxygen and give off CO2, there is another cycle where Carbon from plants and animals is sequestered in the Earth and the Earth gives off CO2 through volcanos and erosion. In fact, the Earth to air to Earth process is more problematic than the plant and animal cycle.
Second, Snowball Earth was a super cold period when the planet turned into a big round glacier for over 50 million years. The cold started when there was too little CO2 in the air to keep the planet warm. For some reason, the CO2 level returned, the cold period ended, and plants and animals flourished again.
Third, our current time is colder than any time in the last 50 million years. At one time in the 50-million-year period, the CO2 level reached a high of over 1,000 parts per million with a global temperature at least 10 degrees hotter than now. Since that high point the CO2 level has trended downward due to the sequestering of CO2 in the ground. At the same time, the temperature trended down as well.
Our current world is in a period of glacial cycles in which the temperature is colder than any time in the last 50 million years, and we are experiencing glacial periods cycling about every 100,000 years. And the glacial periods are getting colder. If the Industrial Revolution didn’t interrupt the glacial cycle by introducing unexpected CO2 in the air, then a subsequent glacial cycle would likely evolve into the next Snowball Earth and last for a few million years. Instead, we are becoming more efficient at polluting the air with CO2 and at driving the temperature up to an unbearable level.
The problem isn’t just global warming. It is the proper management of the level of CO2 in the air to ensure that the Earth’s overall temperature remains hospitable to humans. Not too hot and not too cold. Since global warming is caused by the excessive release of sequestered CO2 by humans, any fix to global warming should involve more sequestering of excess CO2 into the ground. This will take a concerted international effort.
One final thought: It is now clear to me that civilizations don’t last because hubris makes them blind to the changing world that engulfs them.
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