CO2 Rising: The World's Greatest Environmental Challenge »

Tyler Volk is Science Director of Environmental Studies and Associate Professor of Biology at New York University. He is the author of Gaia's Body: Toward a Physiology of the Earth (MIT Press, 2003), Metapatterns: Across Space, Time, and Mind, and other books.

An introduction to the global carbon cycle and the human-caused disturbances to it that are at the heart of global warming and climate change.