Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change | Elizabeth Kolbert

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change | Elizabeth Kolbert | Climate Change is Not in Doubt

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Field Notes from a...

	Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change Elizabeth Kolbert Bloomsbury USA, 2006 - 240 pages average customer review:based on 48 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Catastrophe Averted -- NOT!

Earlier this year I read The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery. It was an excellent book full of scientific explanations to nearly all the questions I had about the issue of climate change. Now I have just finished Field Notes From a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert. It also is an excellent book. In fact, I wish I had read it first - not because it is the better of the two books, but because it is a better introduction to the subject.

Field Notes From A Catastrophe details the author's experiences as she traveled, met, and conversed with several leading authorities of the climate change issue. The first chapters explain some of the negative effects of climate change on nature, while the later chapters deal with how climate change has affected man and civilization in the past, how it will likely affect us in the future, and how political leaders are squandering the last few years we have left to make much of difference - all in order to appease their big-time cash contributors.

The author excels in letting experts in the field tell the story for her. For example, in explaining the devastating consequence of modest, but prolonged, local climate change to an ancient middle-eastern civilization the leading paleo-climatologist to study the case says, "The thing they couldn't prepare for was the same thing that we won't prepare for, because in their case they didn't know about it and because in our case the political system can't listen to it. And that is that the climate system has much greater things in store for us than we think."

I highly recommend this book. For more advanced scientific information about climate change many other good books are available (including The Weather Makers), but for an introduction to the subject this one is nearly perfect.

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Climate Change is Not in Doubt

Elizabeth Kolbert chronicles the true face of what so many refuse to believe to be real: Global Climate change. Far from being alarmist, she carefully assembles eye witness experts and scientific papers to such disparate topics as species migration, toad species extinction, ice sheet core analysis, and ice flow consistencies from all over the globe. It's as careful as her journalism and as sourced as a dissertation and rightly so, since it springs from the series of articles she wrote for the New Yorker on the subject.

The work isn't new and it isn't hidden, this is what has been available to all of us for quite some time. The earth is warming and the human contributions are no longer deniable. There are things that can be done, if only we are willing.

A truly striking theme in the book is the notice that scientists are being characterized as alarmist and extremist. When have scientists ever fit that bill? When have they thrown the scientific method to the wind and gone on the vagaries of belief as a crux of argument? They have not ever done that and they aren't now. As a group they agree on the principle elements - the earth is warming, humans contribute to that, and it's going to be a major and drastic change that no one is sure whether we can survive - provided nothing is done to stop it.

Never before have we been so threatened by simple profit motive. But who is out there to actually discredit science? Kolbert takes us carefully through the science and also through the opponents of the science to show that there is no real benefit in lying about the warming, but there is profit in denying it.

It's a valuable book, with beautiful material and illustrations. It's also a sad book which shouldn't be read by anyone who has already lost hope.

- CV Rick

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A Must Read for Caring People

"Field Notes from a Catastrophe" reminds me of another book that I read many years ago; it was "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson. That book changed the way Americans viewed their environment, and I think this book will do the same. As a retired earth science teacher, I found "Field Notes" accurate and well written. I read it soon after watching Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" and found them to be complimentary. I would highly recommend both.

Field Notes

Elizabeth Kolbert is a NYTimes writer and she relates her experiences as she explores the effects of global warming from how it effects humans to animals and what step are being done or not done to prevent global warming. Over all a very informative text for anyone interested in global warming.

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