Eating the Sun

Eating the Sun
Author: Oliver Morton 2008 412 pp
My rating: 3.5*
Started April 7 2009, Finished May 12 2009.

This book is primarily a history of human understanding of photosynthesis, though it also is substantially concerned with how photosynthesis has shaped the planet. I thought too much of the book was devoted to the scientific personalities in the arena and not enough to clearly and simply explaining the intricacies of photosynthesis itself; the author tends to explain a breakthrough then cover many pages discussing various tangential issues leading up to the next big discovery which caused me to lose track of the what was important and greatly diluted my understanding of the fundamentals. Despite the fact that reviews state that the scientific explanations are directed to the layman, I still had a hard time keeping everything straight, but then biology was always a weak subject for me. Nonetheless, I understood enough of the details to realize that the unlikelihood of a system as complex as photosynthesis developing randomly is so great as to prompt even an affirmed non-believer to consider the possibility of a greater power pulling the strings. The end of the book addresses human induced climate change which the author indicates is beyond dispute and if left to its current trajectory, will have a severe negative impact on the sustainability of human society; he doesn’t feel the situation is hopeless though, envisioning Manhattan Project type effort to engineer new photo-synthesizing, carbon-sequestering organisms.

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Extinctions may remove species and shapes and behaviors, but they do little if anything to biochemical possibilities. (266)
  
Today’s carbon-dioxide level is 381 parts per million. Bob Berner’s Geocarb model suggests that the carbon-dioxide level was more than three times that for almost all the time the dinosaurs walked the earth. (282)

The average duration of a mammalian species in the fossil record is just a million years. (310)

Nitrogen fertilization is largely responsible for increases in average cereal yield from 750kg per hectare in 1900 to 2.7 tonnes per hectare today. (353)