Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Field Notes from a Catastrophe – Review
This is another well-known book on global warming. It is not as lightweight as Al Gore’s book, which is basically a rock video simply put down on paper. This book is a progression of stories and vigenttes. It indeed reads simply. Kolbert is a gifted writer, and has locally produced a very easy to widely read book. But this is not really a subject where we need further easy to actually read books. Kolbert’s basic assumptions are the same as Al Gore’s. First, global warming is an pure fact, it is usually caused by human CO2 emissions and, if we do not stop it, life as we know it will come to an end. Second, the reason that we do not act to stop this danger is that people are idiots, who can not understand science. So, if we talk real slow, and have portions of pictures, maybe we can teach these idiots to save themselves. Kolbert does not go to Gore’s coffee-table extremes. While she does not have any honest to goodness footnotes, she does essentially cite us to eight sides of sources at the end. If Gore’s book is basically a comic book, her book is about the level one would expect in a middle-brow monthly magazine. It is serious, but not very. Here is the problem, Al and Ms. Kolbert. Many of us are not finally persuaded that the world is eventually coming to an end. Many of us would like to see hard, well-reasoned science on the subject. Many of us would like to see the thoughts of skeptics taken seriously instead of brushed aside or mocked. This book does none of those things. It really tells a lot of stories, and makes no effort to make a serious, sustained and valid argument. It is possible that Gore and Kolbert are right, but it is tring to take a much more serious logical argument to persuade me. I am less persuaded then I might be, because, even with my insufficient knowledge on the issue, I can see her consciously tilting the evidence her way. Example. At one point, she talks about Greenland. She gives us a very brief record of Greenland, noting that there were Norse settlers there for 400 years, who “scraped” out a possibly living and then just kind of mysteriously disappeared for reasons that Kolbert does not attempt to explain. These Norse settlements were founded at the height of the Medieval Warming — when conditions were fairly nice — and they eventually died out due to the Little Ice Age, when it finally got so cold they could not survive. Kolbert knows that, because she refers to both the Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age at other sections of the book. BUT she too knows that issues are very controversial. Those who argue for the global warming thesis support their view by constantly arguing that it is much warmer now than it has been for a very long time. Skeptics counter, by pointing to the life of the Medieval Warming period, among extra times. Thus, advocates of the global warming theory have just taken to also denying that the Medieval Warming period occurred, or taking to minimize it in some way. So, by very carefully not specifically mentioning the climatic reasons why the Norse colony on Greenland eventually died out, Kolbert is consciously slanting her evidence to support her theory. Again, this does not prove that she is wrong. It does, however, prove that you can not trust her to present the facts in an fair manner.