The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History

By David Beerling

Book Overview

Plants have profoundly moulded the Earth's climate and the evolutionary trajectory of life. Far from being 'silent witnesses to the passage of time', plants are dynamic components of our world, shaping the environment throughout history as much as that environment has shaped them.

In The Emerald Planet, David Beerling puts plants centre stage, revealing the crucial role they have played in driving global changes in the environment, in recording hidden facets of Earth's history, and in helping us to predict its future. His account draws together evidence from fossil plants, from experiments with their living counterparts, and from computer models of the 'Earth System', to illuminate the history of our planet and its biodiversity. This new approach reveals how plummeting carbon dioxide levels removed a barrier to the evolution of the leaf; how plants played a starring role in pushing oxygen levels upwards, allowing spectacular giant insects to thrive in the Carboniferous; and it strengthens fascinating and contentious fossil evidence for an ancient hole in the ozone layer. Along the way, Beerling introduces a lively cast of pioneering scientists from Victorian times onwards whose discoveries provided the crucial background to these and the other puzzles.

This understanding of our planet's past sheds a sobering light on our own climate-changing activities, and offers clues to what our climatic and ecological futures might look like. There could be no more important time to take a close look at plants, and to understand the history of the world through the stories they tell.

Oxford Landmark Science books are 'must-read' classics of modern science writing which have crystallized big ideas, and shaped the way we think.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198798326
• ISBN13: 9780198798323
• Release Date: April 2017
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Original viewpoint nice to read

The emerald Planet by D. J. Beerling approchaes several subjects realted to climatic change, geology and earth processes from an original standpoint of plants and its evolution. Mainly it argues plants are not only pasive spectators of time but did play and are still playing a very active role in shaping the earth history as well as its past and present climate.

Relating Paleobotany to Global Warming

This was one of the best books I read this year. It is superbly written, and makes paleobotany come to life with vividly historical details such as how the Victorian obsession with specimen collection handily provided a data-mine for scientists who are trying to understand how CO2 levels interact with homeobox genes for stomata. It also combines a rich story of geological events with plant evolution and provides one of the best overviews of how CO2 levels affect climate. While it is largely devoid of climate alarmism, you will think about the effect of mass extinction of plant life on our climate long after you put the book down.

so many things I never knew

I found this book pretty remarkable. I had no idea the powerful impact plant life had on the development of our planet. I want to emphasize the word "powerful!" If you are a newby to the subject as I was I think you will be blown away by what you learn. I highly recommend this book for those interested in getting a very different view of the planet's evolution.

a good idea

It is a very good idea of David Beerling to start each chapter of 'The Emerald Planet' with a short and clear summary. It is immediately clear what the author is arguing in the chapter and what it is about. By browsing through the book and reading all the chapter summaries, one gets an excellent idea what the author is arguing. This is a very good service for the reader who does not have an unlimited amount of time and wants to access if the current book is the right one to invest time in. Above that, it is such a pleasant feature. Compare this book with Oliver Morton 'Eating the Sun' which is a similar subject, but lacks that kind of clarity, then I prefer to invest my time in David Beerling.

Arranging carts and horses

For many years, as fossil plants emerged from the rocks, it was believed that these records reflected changes in climate. Plants, it was assumed, had to adapt to variations in weather and other conditions. According to Beerling, plant life was instead the major prompter of climate change. The balance of atmospheric gases was determined by the micro-organisms floating in the seas. The ability to absorb carbon dioxide, coupled with the use of sunlight to convert that into nutrients gives plants the power to shift gas quantities. During the early days, plants exhaled oxygen. It was poison to most organisms, but those capable of using it began the drive leading to today's life. In this useful survey of all the forces forming today's world, Beerling traces how plants "changed Earth's history". Following his thesis requires the reader's close attention, since the organisation of the material is necessarily loose - not fixed chronology nor subject. The many topics to cover cannot be neatly niched. To the author, the biggest mystery lies in the long delay between plants colonising the land and the formation of the first leaves. Leaf structure reflects how the plant is using energy. That, in turn, becomes a signal of how the atmosphere is composed at any given time. This knowledge was assembled over many years through the work of many researchers. Beerling traces the building of data resources and how the information was interpreted. Images of leaves and stems, analysis of the rock chemistry, field observations and laboratory experiments all contributed to the picture of plant evolution. Numerous surprises emerged, sometimes leading scholars to doubt the data and even their methodology. Looking at the life of plants down the ages is, as he puts it, looking "Through a glass darkly". Pervading his presentation is what the implications are for what is occurring in today's atmosphere - on which our life and those of our children, depends. Beerling deems investigations into ancient atmospheres a form of "breathalyser", such as the police apply to suspected impaired drivers. In this case, however, it's not alcohol fumes that are measured, but carbon dioxide. Other gases are also sought, but they don't often leave sufficient clues. The information must be derived indirectly. Again, it's the plant's leaves that are used as the pointers to how ancient atmospheres fluctuated. Underlying the variations is the mighty force of plate tectonics. The shifting of land masses and changes in surface configuration leads plants to shift their survival strategies. Acting far more rapidly than creeping continents, the ability of plants to accelerate or impair rock weathering shifts the presence of gas quantities. Carbon dioxide quantities have varied markedly, leading to most of the world's history being warm times. Only recently - in geologic terms - has the planet experienced a cool era, which led to the "ice age" that scoured the Northern Hemis