Product Description

The world has known about global warming since the late 1970s, yet little has been done to halt it. The threat, if we fail, is nothing less than catastrophe - the flooding of coastal communities, the extinction of species and entry into a climate regime of which humans have no experience. Exploring the relationship between what we know and what we refuse to know, Elizabeth Kolbert takes us on an urgent journey from the Arctic to Central America, interviewing researchers, environmentalists and traditional Inuits whose lives have already been dramatically altered by climate change.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61357 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
'Kolbert mesmerises with her poetic cadence in this riveting view of the apocalypse already upon us' Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. 'The most frightening book I've read this century Field Notes from a Catastrophe holds a powerful message for us all and we would do well to heed it' Times Literary Supplement 'A detailed and very readable account of the problems many communities are faced with as the puddles form in the Arctic and how we continue to cover our eyes to the visible changes happening around us' Ecologist 'A superbly crafted, diligently compressed vision of a world spiralling towards destruction' Observer

Bill McKibben, Boston Globe
`Among the few irreplaceable volumes yet written about climate
change. Kolbert offers the best summary yet'

Times Literary Supplement
`The most frightening book I've read this century ... holds a
powerful message for us all and we would do well to heed it'

Customer Reviews

A great summary of the global warming problem
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.

Be frightened, very frightened
I read this as the Stern Report was published in the UK, which added a certain zest to Kolbert's excellent work. The subtext to this frightening book is that we have sleepwalked our way to disaster, but still haven't woken up. The prospects of there being any kind of meaningful agreement on emissions between the US, the EU, India and China to avert a global catastrophe seem remote indeed. But hey ho, at least Kolbert and Stern can both say they did their best. I can't speak for the Stern report as I haven't read the whole 600-odd pages, but Kolbert's book is compelling, brilliantly well presented and thoroughly depressing. Everyone who cares about our future should read it.

Great Condition
The item was sent promptly and was well packaged allowing it to remain in its great condition.