Brittany Sproule

Prof Ike Sharpless

Book Critique

“Field Notes from a Catastrophe-Man Nature and Climate Change”:By Elizabeth Kolbert

Since the 1970s, Americans have been warned about the buildup of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere, which threatens to melt our ice caps. This event will result in changes to our climate in a way that we may not overcome. Little has been done to alter this dangerous path we are headed in. The world has reached a critical point, some scientist’s feel we must change our ways right away; others feel it is too late. The book states that by the end of the twenty first century it will be hotter than any point in the last two million years, this change will determine our way of life for coming generations.

Elizabeth Kolbert talks about her experiences with scientists, on all the mathematical evidence as well as physical evidence and data that our earth is warming rapidly. She discusses how single species might adapt to change or just get up and relocate to a better environment for survival; otherwise the specie will cease to exist. Chapter 6 talks about how humans might be able to adapt and new blueprints of floating houses for the expected rise of sea levels. Homes that literally float, rise with the water and retract when the water retracts are said to be a huge upcoming market.

Her first chapter describes the devastation in an Alaskan Village of Shishmaref which sits on an island known as Sarichef, five miles off the coast of the Seward Peninsula which is only twenty-two feet above sea level. When the Chukchi Sea froze early, the layer of ice protected the village, the way a tarp prevents a swimming pool from getting roiled by the wind. Now the sea freezes later so Shishmaref is now more vulnerable to storm surges. A storm in October 1997 blew away a hundred -and –twenty- five- foot- wide strip from the town’s northern edge; houses were destroyed, and more than a dozen had to be relocated. Another storm in October 2001 brought twelve –foot waves. A complete relocation of the village would cost the U.S Government $180 million, since weather conditions aren’t easy for building or transporting and there are barely any roads.

Journalist Kolbert does a great job explaining the facts of what Scientist are saying is climate change, and it is really happening, there is no turning back. Scientists that study permafrost say that it is disintegrating at a rapid speed. The ice is melting so fast and the weather is getting hotter and dryer every year. This is causing fires and holes to form in the permafrost. The first person to measure atmospheric CO2 in 1958 was Charles David Keeling, this is where we get the graph that explains the levels of CO2 rising steadily since the 1950s (p.42). In the summer of 2005 CO2 levels stood at 378 parts per million and by now it has risen to 380 parts per million, nearly doubled preindustrial levels (p.44).

Any piece of ground that has been frozen for longer than two years is, by definition permafrost (p.15). There are places in Alaska where holes have thawed holes have formed in the permafrost. Permafrost gets warmer the farther down you go. Under equilibrium conditions-when climate is stable-the warmest temps are at the bottom and temperatures will decrease steadily as you go higher (p.20). In this circumstances temps will be found at permafrost’s surface, so that plotted on a graph the results will be a tilted line (p.20). In recent decades, though, the temperature profile of Alaska’s permafrost has drooped. Now, instead of a straight line, what you get is shaped more like a sickle (p.20). The permafrost is warmer at the bottom, but instead of being coldest at the top, it’s coldest somewhere in the middle, and warmer again toward the surface. This is a sign of the earth warming up (p.20).

Scientist explained to Kolbert that it was very difficult to look at trend in air temperature, because it’s so variable. In the air temperature, the signal is very small compared to noise. What permafrost does is it works as low-pass filter, that’s why we can see trends much easier in permafrost temperatures than we can see in the atmosphere. In most parts of Alaska the permafrost has warmed by three degrees since the 1980s, in some parts it has warmed by nearly six degrees. Scientists state that if you were in space ship and flying over the North Pole and looking down, the ice is covered with snow and really bright and white, it reflects over 80 percent of the incident sunlight The albedo’s around 0.8, 0.9, now if we melted all the ice and left with the ocean, the ocean’s albedo is less than 0.1, it’s like 0.07. So what you are doing is replacing the best reflector of light with the worst reflector of light. The more open water is exposed the more solar energy goes into heating the ocean.

When an animal changes its routine by, say, laying its eggs earlier, or going into hibernation later, there are a number of possible explanations. One is that change reflects an innate flexibility; as conditions vary, the animal is able to adjust its behavior in response. Biologists call such flexibility ‘phenotypic plasticity’, and it is the key to the survival of most species. Another possibility is that the shift represents something deeper and more permanent- an actual arrangement of the organism’s genetic code (p77). Kolbert talks about scientist studying the mosquitoes and their habits. In 1972 the first batch of mosquitoes was from Horse Cove in Macon County, North Carolina. Their files showed that the larvae’s critical photoperiod was fourteen hours and fifty-three minutes. The second batch collected in the same spot but in 1996 showed the critical photoperiod had dropped to thirteen hours and fifty-three minutes. These scientists discovered that in their files they had comparative data on ten different subpopulations-two in Florida, three in North Carolina, two in New Jersey, and one each in Alabama, Maine, and Ontario. Every single case the critical photoperiod had declined over time. Also their data showed that the father north you went the stronger the effect; a regression analysis revealed that the critical photoperiod of mosquitoes living at fifty degrees north latitude had declined by more than thirty-five minutes, corresponding to a delay in diapauses of nearly nine days (p.78). In a different mosquito, this could be an instance of the kind of plasticity that allows organisms to cope with varying conditions. But with this specie of mosquito there is no flexibility when it comes to timing the onset of diapauses. Warm or cold, the only thing the insect can do it read light. The scientists new the change they were seeing had to be genetic. As climate warmed, those mosquitoes had remained active until later in the fall had enjoyed a selective advantage, because they had been able to store a few more days’ worth of resources for the winter, and they passed this advantage onto their offspring (p.79).

A warming earth means changing precipitation patterns. Some regions will experience drought others will experience more intense amounts of rain. It is believed this effect will have punishing effects in the more densely populated regions on Earth. The disintegration of one of the planet’s remaining ice sheets is often held up as the exemplary catastrophe (p.125). The West Antarctic ice sheet is, at this point, the world’s only marine ice sheet, meaning that it rests in land that is below sea level. For this reason it is considered particularly vulnerable to collapse. Were the West Antarctic or the Greenland ice sheet to be destroyed, sea levels around the world would rise by at least fifteen feet. Were both ice sheets to disintegrate, global sea levels would rise by thirty-five feet (p. 126).

With scary flooding already happening, plans for survival for humans are underway. Instead of people completely relocating, blueprints for building “amphibious homes” have already taken place. The first of amphibious home were completed in the fall of 2004. The future isn’t promising for the Netherland’s; it is described as going to be swallowed by water. Building homes and greenhouses that float and can function while floating above water is amazing. They believe there is a flood market emerging. This doesn’t sound like it would work out to well. What if there is a minor leak, will the house leak?

Kolbert talks about the Kyoto Protocol and describes the people that worked in the Bush administration. Kolbert describes how it was going to be tough for the women representing the Bush administration’s position on global warming to the rest of the world. It seems as if the United States hasn’t been doing enough to make up for being the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It was clear the United States knew of the issue because in June 1992, the United States, along with the rest of the world, met at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, to discuss and enforce the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Turned out that was George Bush Senior’s last acts as president. Bill Clinton stated the country would be committed to reducing greenhouse admissions.

I feel this book talks a lot about ‘mitigation’ and ‘adaptation’, like we learned in class. Kolbert states the facts and whether it would be possible to man to survive in a catastrophic event that no one knows actually what will happen because it’s been millions of years since a drastic change. She also talks about what people are doing in some places of the world to live through it and change their way of life to go with the environment. People in Alaska feel they can’t fight Mother Nature so they need to be prepared to lose so they must protect themselves.

My favorite chapter was chapter 9, Burlington, Vermont. Parts of the state have new energy-saving projects that have already been working in reduces their contribution to greenhouse emissions. They have made changes to wind energy and newer and cleaner ways to dispose of the garbage, and energy efficient light bulbs. Businesses in Burlington have cut their energy usage more just by taking basic steps and turning down the thermostat. The Burlington Electric Department has estimated that the energy-saving projects that the city has undertaken will, over the course of their useful life, prevent the release of nearly 175,000 tons of carbon. They have devoted all of their buying to products that are produced right down the street and are local only. Farms have facilities that collect vegetable waste from local restaurants and turn it back into soil. It is stated in chapter 9 that Burlington’s experience demonstrates how much can, indeed, be accomplished through local action. It talks about the help of local business and home owners to keep control of their utility bills.

I feel more states should be doing more to help and make changes. The state should make it easy for everyone to participate in changing their lives for being safer for the environment. With a little guidance or using what is available to the people in the state changes can be and over time this can help heal what we have damaged.