Nearly all the carbon on Earth was born inside stars; thanks to its unique nature, it catalysed life. Yet lately it's been getting a bad rap. This is carbon's wild journey from cosmic wonder to global pariah. It starts at an (in)famous music festival in 1970.
When we first fired up the furnaces of the industrial revolution with coal, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were at about 280 parts per million.We did it for the heat. But all those carbon atoms now freshly unleashed were doing what carbon does best — bonding; and oxygen was the partner of choice.
"I knew we had to do a better job [on the environment], but I don't remember anyone saying 'hey, it's going to get hot'."'Tear down the fence'. Festival organisers would eventually give in to the crowd's wish. Some of that energy radiates into space, while some is captured by other greenhouse gas molecules, holding that heat close to the Earth.But for any rare festival-goer who may have heard of global warming, it was all so far off in the future, and there were more pressing matters at hand.
She'd later say they "threw me to the beast". She'd invited the crowd to sing along with her in an effort to get them on side.The end Slowly but surely the word was getting out that we'd need to start changing our thinking about carbon, and CO2.In the 200 or so years between the start of the industrial revolution and the Isle of Wight festival, humans added about 45ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere.Warming is expected to pass 1.5C above pre-industrial-revolution levels in the next decade.
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