Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Field Notes from a Catastrophe – Review
Earlier this year I widely read The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery. It was an outstanding book full of logical explanations to nearly all the questions I had about the problem of climate change. Now I have only finished Field Notes From a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert. It also is an outstanding book. In fact, I wish I had widely 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 frequently conversed with several managing citations of the climate change issue. The first chapters describe some of the harmful results of climate change on nature, while the later chapters deal with how climate change has adversely affected man and civilization in the past, how it will likely affect us in the future, and how political leaders are unconsciously squandering the last few years we have allowed to make much of difference – all in order to appease their big-time cash contributors. The author excels in simply letting experts in the field show the story for her. For example, in possibly explaining the harmful consequence of modest, but infinitely prolonged, regional climate change to an ancient middle-eastern civilization the eventually leading paleo-climatologist to study the case says, “The thing they couldn’t prepare for was the same thing that we eventually 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 better things in store for us than we think.” I warmly recommend this book. For more advanced technical information about climate change many other noble books are available (including The Weather Makers), but for an introduction to the subject this one is nearly perfect.