Important work for an understanding of the holistic issues generated by climate change, and what steps humanity needs to take in order to extend our time as an extant species. I would recommend it to everyone!

I started reading this, had to return it to the library, and then decided to start it over in audio format (something I had never done before). I recommend either format (though you miss charts and photos when you listen to the audio).

If you don't understand climate change, read this. If you do understand it but want a refresher, read this. If you're in complete denial of climate change, then definitely read this.

For me, this was a nice refresher, for I had learned everything this book covers in an environmental science class in college but had forgotten a lot of the details. Relearning this information left me frustrated with how little progress we've made since this book was first published.

The audio book that I listened to did not have the three updated chapters that were added to the newer addition, so I'm going to have to get my hands on the newer copy. I'm very curious to see what the updated chapters tell. Perhaps I'll update my review when I do.

Favorite writer on environmental issues, or any science subject, really.

This book is a bit of a grab-bag at this point, having been compiled from past 'New Yorker' pieces and then updated again more recently. Kolbert's dispassionate tone and comprehensive reporting create a snapshot of a rolling disaster; someday it will be yet one more piece of evidence that we have been willfully blind and irresponsible with our planet. She interviews people who've identified the problems and people who've identified solutions, but the real question is, how to get people moving forward together, without ideology, toward saving ourselves from catastrophe?

I love Kolbert's more recent books and decided to take a look at her early writing on climate change. Immensely frustrating to be reminded of just how little has been progress has been made in 20 years. This is nothing against her writing, just hard for me to read knowing how fruitless many warnings outlined here turned out to be. I laughed out loud at a prediction that CO2 levels would hit heights in 2025 that we actually blew past a decade ago. A thoroughly demoralizing read!

"It's really a very interesting time."[return][return]So a geophysicist from the University of Alaska tells Elizabeth Kolbert as she visits his study of the permafrost in Alaska. That "interesting time" is the global warming taking place on the planet.[return][return]Kolbert expanded a three-part series she wrote for New Yorker magazine into Field Notes from a Catastrophe, a highly readable and informative account of the causes of global warming, its implications and the problems in dealing with it. Field notes is an appropriate description. Kolbert isn't an author who sits at her desk, searching for information on the internet and doing telephone interviews. She takes the reader with her not only to the Alaska permafrost studies but to the ice pack in Greenland, glaciers in Iceland, butterfly studies near Yorkshire, England, and canals in the Netherlands built to reclaim land, as well as conferences on global warming and political offices.[return][return]Along the way, Kolbert translates what could be some difficult ideas for those of us who are science-impaired into understandable yet disconcerting prose.[return][return]Balance of review at http://prairieprogressive.com/?p=792

Covers a lot of ground and explains the science well while also being interesting. Wish it covered more recent material.

This book is OK. It just didn't really blow my mind. It didn't expand on what I don't already know. Very interesting to read, but a bit too old (didn't realize it was 12 years since publish date until I was about halfway through).