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Field Notes From A Catastrophe
This book is written by Elizabeth Kolbert and her story of going around the world and learning how pollution impacts the world and how we can stop it. Kolbert travels around the world where climate change is affecting the environment in significant ways. The environmental effects that are apparent consist of rising sea levels, thawing permafrost, diminishing ice shelves, changes in migratory patterns, and increasingly devastating forest fires due to loss of precipitation. These locations include Alaska, Greenland, the Netherlands, and Iceland. Leading this resistance, she explained, was the Bush administration, which was opposed to the Kyoto protocol since it was ratified in 2005. She also writes about America’s reluctance in the global efforts to reduce carbon emissiCons.

Chapter 1: Shishmaref, Alaska
Kolbert opens the first chapter of her book by confronting the reader with the harsh reality global warming. The Alaskan town of Shishmaref had to be relocated on account of its increasing vulnerability to storm surges. In effect, if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere increase, the earth is thrown off its energy balance and as a means to restore this balance, it is forced to heat up, as Kolbert explains.Organizations like the National Academy of Sciences, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the Ad Hoc Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate, also known as the Charney Panel, have long confirmed the seriousness of this global trend. The warming signs, present for several decades already, are becoming ever more prominent, including the shrinking of glaciers, the severity of forest fires, permafrost melting, the warming and increasing acidity of the oceans, the growing similarity between daytime and nighttime temperatures, the Northward shifting of animal ranges, and the melting of the Arctic. In effect, if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere increase, the earth is thrown off its energy balance and as a means to restore this balance, it is forced toC heat up.

Chapter 2: A Warmer Sky
In chapter two, Kolbert examines the work of three prominent scientists, who have raised the issue of global warming long before it has reached the world press. During the 1850s, John Tyndall, an Irish physicist, constructed the first spectrophotometer. With the help of this instrument, he was able to determine that several selectively transparent gases are mainly responsible for the climate of the planet, namely nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor. The planet radiates 235 watts per square meter, meaning that greenhouse gases such as the ones above can have a great effect on the global climate. Evidently, with gases present that impede the transfer of heat between space and the earth, the earth is not in equilibrium and the increase in global temperatures result from this unbalanced distribution of heat. Tyndall was one of the first to observe this effect, which can today be explained by referring to the Stefan-Boltzmann law, which states that radiation emitted by an object is proportional to its absolute temperature raised to theC fourth power.

Chapter 3: Under The Glacier
Chapter three addresses the problem of melting ice, previously touched upon in chapter one. Ice records are read by analyzing tiny bubbles of air within them, which contain samples of past atmospheres. The isotopic composition of the ice also allows scientists to deduce the temperature at the time at which the ice solidified. The records have repeatedly confirmed that global temperatures are rising at alarming and unprecedented, causing, many glaciers and ice sheets to melt and finally attracting the attention of the major Arctic nations. Ice records are about to become a scarce commodity, however, as the ice caps and glaciers are diminishing. Greenland ice alone is predicted to raise sea levels by 23 feet. The rate at which Greenland ice sheets melt could be accelerated still further, as surface melt water drills small tunnels, called moulins, into the ice and sif ts to the bedrock.

Chapter 4: The Butterfly and The Toad
“The Butterfly and the Toad” is primarily concerned with the effect that global climate destabilization has on natural habitats and on the lives of many species around the globe. Vast biological changes, attributed to climate change include the migration to higher latitudes and altitudes, in response to changes in temperature, moisture, and seasonality, as well as the alteration and shift in time of routines, such as hibernation of the laying of eggs. Darwin already proposed the idea of the vast migration of species due to the advance and retreat of glaciers in his On the Origin of Species, but the extent to which this could be true is only becoming truly alarming during our time. These adjustments can in some cases be attributed to the innate flexibility of a species to adapt to its environment, they could, however, also indicate a rearrangem ent of its genetic code.

Chapter 5: The Curse of Akkad
By providing the example of the collapse of the Akkadian Empire, Kolbert illustrates the fate of countless other civilizations and makes it clear that climate change has, in the past, had a severe impact on human life. Likewise, the Tiwanaku civilization, and the Old Kingdom of Egypt fell victims to climate change. Today, Kolbert notes, we can identify the causes of the collapse of these cultures and we can apply this knowledge to our current situation. Climate models by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies have traced the carbon dioxide concentration in the air from pre-industrial times to today from 280 parts per million to 378 parts per million and the methane from 0.78 parts per million to 1.76 parts per million. Some forcings, greenhouse gases, for example, are difficult to integrate. Man-made aerosols, for example, which result from the combustion of coal, oil, and biomass, reflect sunlight and can counter the greenhouse effect, but only as long as they are suspended in the air i n the form of small droplets.

Chapter 6: Floating Houses
This chapter is dedicated to the rise in sea levels, caused mainly by the melting of major ice sheets. Flooding can be attributed simply to the thermal expansion of water. Changing precipitation patterns can also cause flooding and so can the impeding flow of rivers to the ocean. The melting of the West Antarctic and of the Greenland ice sheets, however, could raise sea levels by 35 feet. Dura Vermeer, for example, has completed the construction of its first amphibious homes in the fall of 2004. These homes may become very useful in the future. Even today, scientists measure unprecedented carbon dioxide concentrations in the air. The levels of dangerous anthropogenic interference (DAI), however, are still being debated, suggestions ranging from 400 parts per million to 500 parts per million.

Chapter 7: Business As Casual
Having addressed the major effects of global climate destabilization, the question is now, how to confront it. Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala propose a set of 15 stabilization wedges, each of which should prevent one billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted by 2054. Out of these fifteen, however, an entire twelve are needed to simply maintain the current trajectory of increase. This demands the constant addition of infrastructure. Some Socolow’s and Pacala’s wedges therefore include the installation of photovoltaic cells (five million acres of cover would be required) or the harnessing of wind energy. A further wedge is the method of carbon capture and storage, which involves the injection of captured carbon at high pressure into underground geological formations such as depleted oil fields. It is, however, uncertain, whether the stored carbon can be contained within the storage area.

Chapter 8: The Day After Kyoto
The United States of America produces roughly 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, yet today it is frustratingly inactive in tackling this figure, to the great frustration of the international community. Different nations, however, had different obligations in this framework: While Annex 1 countries, the industrialized nations, were committed to reduce their emissions; all other nations were merely responsible for mitigating theirs. When the former President Bush presented the convention to the senate three months later, it was unanimously approved. This resolution was the product of tireless lobbying campaigns, costing roughly $13 million, by corporations like Chevron, Chrysler, ExxonMobil, Ford, General Motors, Shell, and Texaco. The Bush administration bowed to the pressure exerted by these companies and withdrew the United States from the Kyoto negotiations under George W. Bush.

Chapter 9: Burlington, Vermont
Awareness of the effects of climate change and of possible means to confront them has encouraged some to seek solutions to the problem, as seen in chapter seven, and others to oppose such measures, as seen in chapter eight. Mayor Peter Clavelle of Burlington, Vermont, remains hopeful however, introducing the “10 Percent Challenge” to his city to urge its citizens to save energy. The campaign consists of recycling and composting among other measures. Within four months, 170 mayors, dedicated to achieving the goals of the Kyoto Protocol, had signed. This enthusiasm, however, is overshadowed by developments in the Third World, which is not restricted by the Kyoto Protocol. China, for example, intends on doubling the size of its economy within the next 15 years.

Chapter 10: Man In The Anthropocene
This chapter addresses the dangers of a less commonly known greenhouse gas, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). These “odorless, colorless, nonreactive” gases were first used as refrigerants in the 1930s. In the 1940s, they were used in Styrofoam and it was only in the 1970s, that researchers discovered their destructive effects on the ozone layer. CFCs are very unstable in the stratosphere, breaking down ozone into oxygen. In the 1980s, a large hole was eventually discovered over Antarctica. The problem was addressed by the Montreal Protocol of 1987, which marked the beginning of the process to “phase out” CFCs.