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Field Notes from a Catastrophe
by Elizabeth Kolbert
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Powells.com Staff Pick
Field Notes from a Catastrophe, a refreshingly slim and concise volume, grew out of Elizabeth Kolbert's remarkable series on global warming in the New Yorker. Kolbert spans the globe, from examining ice samples in Greenland to mosquitoes in a lab in Oregon to the changing habitats of butterflies in England. Field Notes from a Catastrophe is sober, disturbing, and beautifully written exploration of global warming — environmental science at its best.
Recommended by Jill, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews An argument for the urgent danger of global warming in a book that is sure to be as influential as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.
Known for her insightful and thought-provoking journalism, New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert now tackles the controversial subject of global warming. Americans have been warned since the late nineteen-seventies that the buildup of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere threatens to melt the polar ice sheets and irreversibly change our climate. With little done since then to alter this dangerous course, now is the moment to salvage our future. By the end of the century, the world will likely be hotter than it's been in the last two million years, and the sweeping consequences of this change will determine the future of life on earth for generations to come.
In writing that is both clear and unbiased, Kolbert approaches this monumental problem from every angle. She travels to the Arctic, interviews researchers and environmentalists, explains the science and the studies, draws frightening parallels to lost ancient civilizations, unpacks the politics, and presents the personal tales of those who are being affected most: the people who make their homes near the poles and, in an eerie foreshadowing, are watching their worlds disappear. Growing out of a groundbreaking three-part series for the New Yorker, Field Notes from a Catastrophe brings the environment into the consciousness of the American people and asks what, if anything, can be done, and how we can save our planet. Review: "On the burgeoning shelf of cautionary but occasionally alarmist books warning about the consequences of dramatic climate change, Kolbert's calmly persuasive reporting stands out for its sobering clarity. Expanding on a three-part series for the New Yorker, Kolbert ( The Prophet of Love) lets facts rather than polemics tell the story: in essence, it's that Earth is now nearly as warm as it has been at any time in the last 420,000 years and is on the precipice of an unprecedented 'climate regime, one with which modern humans have had no prior experience.' An inexorable increase in the world's average temperature means that butterflies, which typically restrict themselves to well-defined climate zones, are now flitting where they've never been found before; that nearly every major glacier in the world is melting rapidly; and that the prescient Dutch are already preparing to let rising oceans reclaim some of their land. In her most pointed chapter, Kolbert chides the U.S. for refusing to sign on to the Kyoto Accord. In her most upbeat chapter, Kolbert singles out Burlington, Vt., for its impressive energy-saving campaign, which ought to be a model for the rest of the nation — just as this unbiased overview is a model for writing about an urgent environmental crisis." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: "Three new books on global warming should provide beachgoers with plenty of responses to the question they will likely hear all summer: Hot enough for you? The short answer, according to Elizabeth Kolbert, Eugene Linden and Tim Flannery, is definitely yes. These authors — two magazine journalists and a biologist — explore many of the same branches in the tangled thicket of climate history, science ..." Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) and policy. Each takes a different approach to sorting through the foliage, but all arrive at largely the same conclusion: The Earth is warming, we're causing it, and that is not at all a good thing. The broad outline of the argument is familiar: Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the air keep our planet toasty by letting the sun's energy into the atmosphere and not letting it out again. By clearing forests and especially by burning fossil fuels such as gasoline, oil and coal, humankind is boosting these gases to the sweltering point and beyond. But climate is a wondrously detailed and complex thing, and climate science is full of uncertainties and apparent contradictions that have made for a confused public, politicized policy and some of the most tedious science journalism on the planet. For those who have thus far avoided said media reports, Kolbert's 'Field Notes from a Catastrophe,' written largely as a series of vignettes about scientists at work, provides a reasonably painless tour through the standard themes of climate change reportage. For those who have paid more attention, Linden delivers, among other things, an engaging look behind the scenes of that reportage. But in a refreshing cultural turnabout, it is the scientist, Flannery, not the journalists, who focuses on the big picture, writes in bold language and broad strokes, and makes the most passionate and ultimately convincing plea for action. It's as if having earned his scientific capital, Flannery is now ready to spend it, and in so doing he delivers a tour de force. Here, finally, we have an authoritative, scientifically accurate book on global warming that sparkles with life, clarity and intelligence, rather than settling for being merely important. As a paleontologist and mammalogist, Flannery wanders into and out of his home disciplines in 'The Weather Makers' but manages the material with force, clarity and authority throughout. He covers much of the same ground as Kolbert and Linden — the workings of the global climate system, the history of climate, the melting polar ice caps — and adds particularly well-drawn portraits of a biological world already showing signs of global warming, and of the computer-based artificial world of climate forecasting. In the process, Flannery is often more stylish than the journalists, noting, for example, that 'it is in our lungs that we connect to our Earth's great aerial bloodstream, and in this way the atmosphere inspires us from our first breath to our last.' A touch over-the-top perhaps, but he deploys such passages sparingly and writes lucidly. Flannery is fast emerging as one of our best popularizers of science — a term vaguely insulting in many academic circles for those who somehow manage to convey not just the why of things but the why-we-should-care. The secret in Flannery's case, developed in earlier books such as his ecological histories of North America ('The Eternal Frontier') and his native Australia ('The Future Eaters'), seems to be confident knowledge joined to a storyteller's gifts and a writer's determination to get it just right — a rare combination, and a powerful one when brought to bear on such a monumental topic. The author spends the final third of 'The Weather Makers' assessing the varieties of apocalypse that lie in wait for our warming world and the options we have for keeping them at bay. Despairing of sufficient government action to confront the coming crisis, Flannery advocates what might be called the Smokey Bear approach to fighting climate change: Only you can prevent forest fires, to say nothing of the species loss, widespread drought, resource wars and quite possible collapse of civilizations that Flannery sees resulting from the increasingly manifest changes wrought by human-induced global warming. In laying out a personal program for reducing individual contributions to the atmospheric carbon dioxide pool, he is the only author here to make a direct appeal for urgent, individual action to counteract global warming — and he's quite likely the only one currently generating his own solar electricity to protest the profligate carbon pollution of coal-fired power plants. Kolbert is less forthcoming about her own carbon budget, though she seems otherwise happy to insert herself into a narrative that covers many aspects of the canon of climate change reportage. Here we have the melting Arctic sea ice; the northward shift of England's heat-avoiding butterflies; the ancient Akkadian civilization, established some 4,300 years ago between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and shortly afterward driven off the world stage by severe droughts; and the engineering marvels dreamed up by the Dutch to defend against ever-rising sea levels. And throughout, we have the requisite portraits of dedicated scientists as they earnestly drill into glaciers, sift through desert sands and construct fantastically complicated computer models to make sense of it all. Based on Kolbert's 2005 three-part New Yorker series, the book is competently reported and often nicely written, but for the most part it falls well short of vivid — Kolbert visits interesting places with interesting people but never quite manages to take us along on her travels. Our children may well hate us for leaving them with a messed-up, overheated planet. 'Field Notes from a Catastrophe' reads at times as though written with a nervous glance over the shoulder at that coming generation, as if motivated by a guilty sense that such a book should be written, if only to immunize the author against future recriminations. Kolbert is at her best when she sticks to straight reporting and at her unfortunate worst when she indulges in largely pointless first-person passages. Linden, by contrast, is at his best when he takes the first-person plunge in 'The Winds of Change.' He covered the development of climate science and the debate on global warming during a two-decade career at Time, and his latter chapters on how the advances in global-warming science have filtered through into public opinion and policy are invaluable. 'I've watched with frustration as the story presented to the general public has diverged ever more markedly from the story as it is seen by the scientists studying the phenomenon,' he writes, noting a growing gulf between a public narrative in which climate change is a 'moderated and incremental ... problem for future generations' and the ever-stronger scientific consensus 'that humans have already had dramatic effects on climate, and that climate, when prodded, is prone to violent and extreme swings rather than gently paced changes.' 'The Winds of Change' is largely about climate history, with Linden proposing that climate is on trial as 'a serial killer of colonies and civilizations' and applying significant effort to digging up evidence for the prosecution. (He spends considerable time among the Vikings of Greenland and the classic Mayans of Central America, and he all but bumps into Kolbert in ancient Akkad.) Only recently have reconstructions of past climates achieved enough detail and precision to allow the side-by-side comparison of climate change and human events in history, and Linden's sections on the work of Columbia University paleoclimatologist Peter de Menocal and University of New Mexico Mayanist Lisa Lucero are among the most interesting in the book. Kolbert and Linden both end their books calling for action to curtail carbon dioxide emissions before our current global civilization succumbs to a dramatic climate shift of its own making, and both decry the apparent paralysis gripping the official global efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The degree of scientific certainty is now more than adequate to justify immediate action, says Linden, who attributes the ongoing state of inaction to a synergy between 'cautious scientists interacting with cautious policymakers, all to the delight of naysayers who hold that no action is necessary.' Unfortunately, that interaction is often mediated by journalists, who, when it comes to global warming, might just be the most cautious party of all. Kolbert and Linden are good journalists and far too experienced to fall for the equal-time canard, whereby the voices of the tiny fringe of scientists who dispute that humans are affecting climate are amplified out of all proportion to their relevance. But both display signs of lacking confidence — a tendency to soft-pedal a little here, to get bogged down in technical details there — as if, in bending over backward to appear thorough and fair-minded, the journalists have fallen victim to the softer bias of insecurity. It has become fashionable in certain circles — most prominently the White House — to say that global warming is an important issue and thus worthy of more study. More knowledge is always good, and real gains can come from an intensified effort to monitor the globe's changing climate and ecosystems — to parse out the climate roles of cloud formation and open-ocean ecology, for example. But in this sense, global warming is not much different from evolution — the much-publicized controversies have very little to do with the science. Just as evolution is the central organizing principle of modern biology, so global warming has become the context for all ecology and conservation. Nothing can be fully understood or predicted without taking it into account. As all three authors here make clear, global warming is real, it's happening now, and if the existing research is not joined by real action, real soon, then the best scientists in the world will be able to provide nothing more than a richly detailed diary of our home planet's grim, needless decline. As Kolbert writes, to do nothing 'is not to put off the consequences, but to rush toward them.' Thomas Hayden is a science journalist in Washington, D.C." Reviewed by Thomas Hayden, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Book News Annotation: Former New York Times reporter Kolbert has been a staff writer for
the New Yorker since 1999. She expands on three articles she wrote
for the New Yorker, which ran in the spring of 2005, exploring the
reality of global warming. The text is based on journeys she made to
several locations around the world--Alaska, Iceland, Greenland,
England, the Netherlands--where she interviewed researchers and
environmentalists to get the facts about climate change and its
effects. The text is intended for the general reader concerned about
this issue.
Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Review: "Good storytelling humanizes an often abstract subject." Kirkus Reviews Review: "A riveting view of the apocalypse already upon us. Kolbert mesmerizes with her poetic cadence as she closes the coffin on the arguments of the global warming skeptics." Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Review: "This country needs more writers like Elizabeth Kolbert." Jonathan Franzen, author of The Corrections Review: "Reading Field Notes from a Catastrophe during the 2005 hurricane season is what it must have been like to read Silent Spring fifty years ago. When you put down this this book, you'll see the world through different eyes." Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful MindReview: "The hard, cold, sobering facts about global warming and its effects on the environment that sustains us. Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catstrophe is nothing less than a Silent Spring for our time." T.C. Boyle Review: "In Field Notes from a Catastrophe, Elizabeth Kolbert gives us a clear, succinct, and invaluable report from the front. Even if you have followed the story for years, you will want to read it. And if you know anyone who still does not understand the reality and the scale of global warming, you will want to give them this book." Jonathan Weiner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Beak of the FinchReview: "... Field Notes From a Catastrophe is a measured, elegant and brief book that functions as a perfect primer on global warming. It might be the most important book you read this year." Cleveland Plain DealerReview: "...Kolbert has rendered a mannered account as compelling as it is enlightening, a litany of evidence that conveys a reality overwhelming and unmindful of what our society eventually chooses to believe." Oregonian Review: "[B]oth comprehensive and succinct." New York Times Review: "Climate change is complex stuff, but [Kolbert] deftly distills the brew to clarity. Hers is not only an 'important' book, it is good reading, with revealing examples and piercing quotes from her subjects..." Minneapolis Star Tribune About the Author Elizabeth Kolbert was a reporter for the New York Times for fourteen years before becoming a staff writer covering politics for the New Yorker. She and her husband, John Kleiner, have three sons. They live in Williamstown, MA.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9781596911253
- Subtitle:
- Man, Nature, and Climate Change
- Author:
- Kolbert, Elizabeth
- Author:
- Kolbert, Elizabeth
- Publisher:
- Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Subject:
- Environmental Science
- Subject:
- Weather
- Subject:
- Global warming
- Subject:
- Global environmental change
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences - Meteorology & Climatology
- Copyright:
- 2006
- Edition Description:
- U.S.
- Publication Date:
- March 7, 2006
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 210
- Dimensions:
- 8.54x5.90x.90 in. .87 lbs.
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