Welcome To The Anthropocene - Notes From Elizabeth Kolbert's Book

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Ms. Kolbert, a former reporter for The New York Times, doesn't doubt that human-induced global warming is real and will likely have dire consequences; the title of her book includes the word "catastrophe." The pages are replete with bad news: perennial sea ice, which 25 years ago covered an area of the Arctic the size of the continental United States, has since lost an area "the size of New York, Georgia and Texas combined." Carbon dioxide levels, if emissions go unchecked, could reach three times pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.

Based on a series of articles that appeared in The New Yorker magazine, the book is organized around notes Ms. Kolbert took on "field trips," not only to places where climate change is affecting the natural world but also to ones — labs, offices, observatories — where humans are trying to understand the phenomenon of human-induced global warming. Hers is the latest in a large crop of books on the subject — she notes that "entire books have been written just on the history of efforts to draw attention to the problem" — and there are inevitably some places where other authors have trod before.

In language that is clear, if somewhat dry, she examines the major pieces of the story, shedding light on some insider concepts of climatologists, like "dangerous anthropogenic interference," as she goes. The book may make a good handbook; it is both comprehensive and succinct. (If you have ever wondered how a climate model is put together, that's in there, too.)

She visits the Netherlands, where rising sea levels caused by global warming are expected to swallow up large parts of the country. In areas where there are already periodic floods, a construction firm has started building amphibious homes (they resemble toasters, Ms. Kolbert says) as well as "buoyant roads." Another field trip took her to Washington, where she was treated to double-speak by an under secretary charged with explaining the administration's position on climate change. "Astonishingly," she comments in a rare show of heat, "standing in the way" of progress seems to be President Bush's goal. Not only did he reject the Kyoto Protocol, she notes, with its mandatory curbs on emissions, almost killing the treaty in the process, but he also continues to block meaningful follow-up changes to it.

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http://www.ecoearth.info/articles/reader.asp?linkid=53928