The Emerald Planet: How plants changed Earth's history (Oxford Landmark Science)

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.

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.

Love how well and easy this read was . Understanding how plants influenced and impacted our world around us. And the effects the human race contributes to global warming on a large scale . The forests, swamps , and plant life are crucial to our survival

David Beerling is obviously a highly regarded scientist and this well researched book is evidence of his abilities. The book is well written and quite easy to read. I'm a geologist, more or less in an adjacent field to Mr Beerling so it was with special interest I purchased this book. It does give plenty of facts about plants and climate and how these have changed over time. I would recommend this but ... and I bet you knew there was a but ... there are some things that kept annoying me throughout the reading.I can't stress enough that this does seem to be a well research book (though with some errors - see below). But there wasn't a chapter in the book where Mr Beerling's bias for anything British didn't leak through. I'm sorry, but Scott wasn't the first to the south pole, why try and make it as if really his journey was more legitimate than Amundsen's? There are numerous examples of this but the only other one I'll cite is his assessment of Marie Stopes. It is well recognised that she was a pioneer in coal science and women reproductive education but only Mr Beerling makes a wild statement about her poetry being well regarded; Although a great person in her own right, poetry was not her strong suit. In the words of 'Meatloaf' though: two out of three ain't bad - so why the need to make all things British be spectacular? It takes away from what are the great things that have come from the small isle.One of the most annoying aspects of the book, however, was when Mr Beerling was citing his own work. I could always tell when it was his work he was referring to as there seemed to be special praise and a long build up to why these "UK group of scientists ... " did this or did that. It was all a bit too disingenuous and subtracted from the credibility of the book as a piece of scientific work. It leaves question marks over the other conclusions which are given in the book. In the end, I felt Mr Beerling was pushing an agenda and selecting research that would favor his point of view. There definitely was a feeling that Mr Beerling had a 'who's in and who's out' list of researchers.There were some factual errors, which I won't go into here and only cite one. Methanogens don't break down organic matter to make methane. The actual process is that bacteria breaks down the organic material into CO2 or a few other substances and then methanogens convert those products into methane. If this relatively well established process is incorrect how many other details has Mr Beerling gotten wrong?I'd suggest to others that the book  Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World (Popular Science)  by Nick Lane is much better written, more objective, less self pandering and ultimately more credible and digestible than Mr Beerling's book. Finally, if you are looking for a book on plant evolution and how climate and plants really interact (and one that presents data and doesn't seem to be pushing an agenda) please get the book  The Evolution of Plants  by K.J. Willis and J.C. McElwain. Although Willis' and McElwain's excellent book is a text book it is ultimately more satisfying than 'The Emerald Planet'.

Being an animal myself, I'm biased towards earth history as it relates to other animals. This book went a long way to redress that bias. The way plants have interacted with geology is more important, and more interesting, than I knew. Plants are valuable indexes, too, for changes in the climate over geologic time. Well worth reading - more than once.

Most readers of science know that photosynthesis is the primary source of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere. Yet, surprisingly, plants account for only ½ the annual production of biomass, which I assume roughly correlates with release of oxygen (Beering tends not to dwell on the obvious, or at least what is obvious to him): phytoplankton account for the other half (p.14). Beerling has more general interests than the impact of plants on earth's history including plant evolution, the causes of mass extinctions, global warming and cooling. What ties many of his subjects together is that plant fossils, as well as experiments with living plants, offer evidence as to what was happening and why. To understand the book, especially the first two chapters, I had to resort to Wikipedia, and in one case to one of Beerling's references: weathering reduces CO2 by its creation of calcium and magnesium carbonates, and the deposition of these in marine sediments. The summaries that begin each chapter are very well written and should be read carefully. Did Beerling or an editor write them? If Beerling, then I just wish he had added about 10% to the book's length devoted to helping the reader out. Following are some of the important things which were new to me, but this book has all sorts of fascinating material. The greatest mass extinction, 251 million years ago, was probably caused by depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer, and its protection of life against radiation. The increase in available oxygen may have been responsible for the explosion of multi-cellular life forms in the pre-Cambrian (should I infer that more oxygen in the atmosphere led to more dissolved oxygen in the seas?). The major obstacle to be overcome before plants with leaves, especially larger leaves, could become important was to keep the leaves cool in the sun; this required enhanced evaporation, which in turn required the development of better plant systems to provide the water for this evaporation, and an increase in leaf pores to facilitate the evaporation. (Beerling attributes the original trigger for the increase in leaf pores to the need to obtain more CO2 as atmospheric CO2 declined, but it was not clear why this had to be the exclusive driver of more pores). The global warming characterizing the Epocene, especially in the polar regions, could not have been due to increased CO2 alone, but thanks to feedback effects, there were increased levels of methane. Methane and nitric oxide are both increasing currently. (On p.151 Beerling states our current climate models do not include the feedback effects on methane, but that is not true, and I infer from later pages Beerling does not in fact believe it to be true). Photosynthesis in plants, remarkably, still utilizes an ancient enzyme, Rubisco, which is not efficient when CO2 levels are low relative to oxygen; in fact there was an explosion of C4 plants, mostly sub-tropical grasses like the ancestor of corn, about 8 million years ago when CO2 levels dropped: C4 plants have a structure to concentrate the CO2 to overcome this Rubisco deficiency. The C4 plants also do well in dry conditions as they require fewer pores to obtain CO2. Raging wildfires in a high oxygen atmosphere, as an important cause of a mass extinctions, has been discredited. Wildfires, such as in the US west, do impact local rainfall adversely, reinforcing the dry conditions.

My intention was to give this book a 5-star rating. The only reason, and a feeble one, for which I decided otherwise is that it is not what it promised to be - not 100% of what the premises were.It starts with a splendid statement, which hits the mark when discussing the bibliography of Earth-sciences books: pop-science books almost totally discuss just animal evolution. Beerling is surely right in saying that there is a huge piece of information lacking from our understanding of the history of planet Earth. The problem is that for a good chunk of the book he describes and discusses... animal evolution.I was expecting a book about the history of the evolution of plants. In certain sections, at the beginning of the book, the author analyses some elements of plant evolution; but after that, the author moves on and the rest of the book is a long dissertation of the effects of plants on the shaping of the environment without any further hint at what were the critical steps in the shaping of the different orders of plants we see around us and in the fossil record. So, if you are looking for a book about plant evolution, this is not the right book.This said, the dissertation about the shaping of the environment is clearly part of the objectives of the book, since the title of it is crystal clear - how plants changed Earth's history. In my humble opinion, Beerling has written an outstandingly clear text for those who want an introduction to the complex net of factors that must be considered when discussing climate evolution through time. The book includes few but really exciting chapters. Having personally read animal evolution books, Beerling's one of those that emerge for the impressive new information that are thrown in the already super complex description of the Earth systems.Give it a try, you won't regret it. Was it not for the tens of pages discussing the dynamics of Permian and Triassic extinctions (with too many details of the geology of the events, aspects that could have been destined the the already satisfying list of references at the end of the book, instead of being included in the text) and the lack of information about the evolution of plants through 2 billion years of history, I would have rated it 5 stars.

I Love it so far. [end of Chapter 2] The problem is I only have the "sample" copy although I paid for the full copy. I bought it on August 1 but cannot get through to Amazon Customer Service to correct the problem. Their online service insists I have it but it does not appear in my library. I have a deadline to finish this book and I am very frustrated with Amazon's indifference to my problem!

Pra quem gosta de entender de evolução e das mudanças do planeta ao longo do tempo, este livro é uma excelente pedida!

I opted to purchase this book as a consequence of seeing the recent "How to grow a Planet" series on TV, as the latter only (so far) comes as a DVD,rather than the usual BBC book. Having initially been disappointed by the lack of glossy photographs of plants,I have to say that what this book lacks in illustration, it more than makes up for in content, and has reshaped my view of Geography in general as a discipline of enormous importance for our own Planet. The logical layout and wealth of information in the book, as well as its excellent references to other sources of information on the many subjects it manages to cover make it a very good source of information and stimulation to read further. Allow me to recommend it, not just as a guide to anyone wanting to find out even more on the subject of plants and their influence on Earth's history and evolution, but as a source of information and interest to any general reader on the subject.

Very interesting