as a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography. Author of over 175 papers and two books, and editor of the "bible" of microbial oceanography (Microbial Ecology of the Oceans), Kirchman worked on the marine carbon cycle in regions around the world, from the Arctic to Antarctica. He received a B.A. from Lawrence University and the Ph.D. from Harvard University.
Kirchman applied the “Page 99 Test” to his new book, Microbes: The Unseen Agents of Climate Change, and reported the following:
Page 99 is part of a chapter titled “Slow Carbon and Deep Time,” which begins by describing how the White Cliffs of Dover were formed by the deposition of chalk made by algae over millions of years—over “deep time,” a term coined by John McPhee to capture the immensity of geological eras, periods, epochs, and ages. Page 99 starts to lay out the evidence for the microbial origin of another geological feature: limestone-rich rocks in the Akademikerbreen Group located in Spitsbergen, an island off the northern coast of Norway. Based on chemical clues and microscopic fossils, paleontologists believe the limestone was formed by bacteria and other microbes that grew in layers, one piled on another which accrued over eons. So, the building blocks for the White Cliffs of Dover and the massive limestone bluffs in Spitsbergen are from the smallest organisms, unseen except under a microscope. These rocks appear in discussions of climate change because they store 100,000 times more carbon than is in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas. Microbes and carbon-rich rocks are a big part of the carbon cycle and of explanations for climate change that occurred in the geological past.Learn more about Microbes: The Unseen Agents of Climate Change at the Oxford University Press website.
Superficially at least, page 99 isn’t like the rest of Microbes: The Unseen Agents of Climate Change. Much of the book is about the uptake and release of carbon dioxide by microbes as part of the “fast carbon cycle,” which runs much more quickly than the glacial pace of microbes in the “slow carbon cycle” described on page 99 and in the rest of the Slow Carbon chapter. Other chapters discuss the release and degradation by microbes of two other important greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide.
Yet, page 99 hints at the overall message of the book: microbes are huge sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, and what microbes do with these gases has to be considered in thinking about climate change. In the future, microbes could release even more carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, exacerbating the climate change problem now threatening the planet. But microbes may also be part of the solution. Microbes already directly or indirectly sequester a lot of carbon dioxide away from the atmosphere, and biofuels made by microbes help to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Other solutions relying on microbes could do more. In short, understanding the biggest environmental problem now facing society depends on the smallest organisms, the microbes.
--Marshal Zeringue
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