Published by: Maria (Karma: 3098.81) on 17 May 2007 | Views: 1858
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Field Notes from a Catastrophe
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. Kolbert 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.
