Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man,
Nature, and Climate Change by
Elizabeth Kolbert
Well Worth Reading
Long known for her insightful and thought-provoking political journalism,
author Elizabeth Kolbert now tackles the controversial and increasingly
urgent subject of global warming. In what began as groundbreaking three-
part series in the New Yorker, for which she won a National Magazine
Award in 2006, Kolbert cuts through the competing rhetoric and political
agendas to elucidate for Americans what is really going on with the global
environment and asks what, if anything, can be done to save our planet.
Now updated and with a new afterword, Field Notes from a Catastrophe is
the book to read on the defining issue and greatest challenge of our times.
Personal Review: Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature,
and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert

An excellent, brief, readable summary of the evidence for global warming,
its scientific explanation, its consequences and the sorry history of our
leaders' response to the problem over the last thirty years. The anecdotes
and character sketches of the scientists involved bring the issues to life.
The weakness of the book is the lack of pictures and colour graphics to
complement the excellent writing. Let us hope that the next edition will
remedy this and bring the book to a wider audience.
Paraphrasing the last two paragraphs of the book to show its excellence:
'Ice cores show the last glaciation was a time of frequent and traumatic
climate swings. During that period, humans who were, genetically
speaking, just like ourselves produced nothing permanent other than
isolated cave paintings and large piles of mastodon bones. Then, 10,000
years ago the climate settled down and so did we, building towns and
inventing agriculture, metallurgy, writing and the other technologies that
future civilisation would rely upon. These developments would not have
been possible without human ingenuity, but, until the climate cooperated,
ingenuity, it seems, wasn't enough.'
'Ice core records also show that the earth will soon be hotter than it has
been at any time since our species evolved. The feedbacks that have been
identified in the climate system - the ice-albedo feedback, the water vapour
feedback, the feedback between temperatures and carbon storage in the
permafrost - take small changes to the system and amplify them into much
larger forces. Perhaps the most unpredictable feedback of all is the human
one. With six billion people, the risks are everywhere apparent. A
disruption in monsoon patters, a shift in ocean currents, a major drought -
any one of these could easily produce millions of refugees. Will we find an
adequate global response to global warming or will we retreat into ever
narrower and more destructive forms of self interest? It may seem
impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could
choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the
process of doing.'
Read the whole book for the compelling story behind this message.
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