The Kolbert Report on climate change
We have two reports from Elizabeth Kolbert's lecture on global climate change, presented at Town Hall Seattle. Read on for the full story (actually, stories) and for our "save the date" notice of a future meeting with Kolbert:
By Hannah Hickey
Northwest Science Writers Association
A packed room in the basement of Town Hall heard a stark statement: It’s time we face the facts about global warming.
The speaker was Elizabeth Kolbert, author of an award-winning series on climate change published last spring in The New Yorker magazine. The articles are now expanded into a book, “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change.” She spoke on March 23 as part of the Seattle Science Lectures.
Kolbert doesn’t mince words. After reviewing the history of climate science, and visiting communities bearing the brunt of current weather shifts, her 30,000-word New Yorker series concluded: “It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”
Kolbert’s lecture was similarly unsettling. She underlined that we understand the process behind climate change and can forecast its devastating effects, yet so far we have failed to act.
“Global warming is an example of the power of science, but also of its impotence,” Kolbert said. “To a remarkable degree we can look into the future and see where we are headed. And yet we choose not to see.”
A brief history of global warming
In her talk, Kolbert reviewed the science that underpins today’s understanding of global warming. As far back as the 1850s, Irish physicist John Tyndall showed that some gases in the air, like oxygen and nitrogen, let solar radiation pass through freely, while other gases — notably carbon dioxide and water vapor — do not. Tyndall realized that without these gases, average temperatures on Earth would be a frigid zero degrees Fahrenheit.
A few decades later, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius used Tyndall’s finding to research how atmospheric changes might have influenced past climates. Arrhenius also realized that by burning fossil fuels, which produces carbon dioxide gas, industrialization would inevitably lead to warmer global temperatures. He coined the term “greenhouse effect” in 1896. Using painstaking calculations, Arrhenius estimated that doubling the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase temperatures on Earth by 9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit. Climate models have improved since then (equivalent estimates now predict only 3.5 to 7 degrees warming), but the basic principle has remained unchallenged for the past 150 years. Maybe it’s understandable that Arrhenius, being a Swede, viewed warmer temperatures as a change for the better.
“This story that I’ve just told is, in one sense, a scientific triumph,” Kolbert remarked. Right now there may be more climate researchers employed in Washington state alone, she suggested, than there were scientists working in Tyndall’s day. But when it comes to the impact of science on society, global warming research is “a pretty devastating story of failure.”
Fuel efficiency for motor vehicles peaked in the mid-1980s and decreased in the age of the SUV. While America puts out the most carbon dioxide emissions of any country, the U.S. government continues to avoid taking a position on global warming. Estimates show that if we don’t cut back on burning fossil fuels, carbon dioxide levels could triple by the end of the century. At that point, the changes in weather, sea level and living organisms will be so great that, in the words of NASA chief climate scientist James Hansen, the Earth will “constitute practically a different planet.”
Touring the ‘hot spots’ of climate change
Kolbert’s starting point for her articles was the northern village of Shishmaref, Alaska. Absent sea ice has made the island community vulnerable to winter storms, and in 2002 the residents voted to relocate to the mainland. (They are still waiting for the roughly $180 million required for the move.) Kolbert also visited other global warming landmarks: Greenland, where scientists drilling into glaciers show that historic changes in carbon dioxide levels were linked to sudden shifts in global climate; Fairbanks, where thawing permafrost has opened enormous cracks on the University of Alaska’s campus; and the city of New Orleans, dealing with the tragic aftermath of this year’s record-breaking hurricane season.
“We are creating enormous, quite possibly insuperable, difficulties for our children and grandchildren, and for what?” Kolbert asked the audience. “In the end, no good reason.”
Seattle’s plan to cut the gas
Mayor Greg Nickels introduced the speaker. She had participated earlier that day in what Nickels nicknamed “climatepalooza”: a series of events leading up to an announcement of Seattle’s plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
A little more than a year ago, “I had an epiphany,” Nickels said. “I decided global warming was an issue that was not far away or long into the future, but an issue that affects us directly.” After the United States failed to sign the Kyoto Protocol, Nickels launched a program last February for cities to voluntarily curb their emissions. By the evening of Kolbert’s lecture, 218 cities across the country had signed on to “meet or beat” Kyoto’s emissions targets.
The mayor called Kolbert “one of the most astute observers and reporters on this issue.”
Some audience members predicted the former New York Times reporter will sway discussions of climate change in this country. The question now is not whether climate change is happening, she says, but what we will do about it. In her words: “So much evidence has piled up that the debate — and I use that term advisedly — has to shift.”
If you missed the lecture, you can find a video recording on the Web here.
Coming soon…
NSWA members will have a chance to meet with Elizabeth Kolbert in early May when she returns on a book tour. Board member Michael Bradbury will be sending more details.
Another prominent writer on climate change, Australian zoologist Tim Flannery, is coming to town April 13. His book “The Weather Makers” has reportedly influenced Australian climate change policy.
+ + +
Editor's note: The tentative date for our meeting with Kolbert is sometime during the weekend of May 5-7, when she’ll be back in the area for an appearance at Third Place Books. Kolbert has a Web site associated with her book at ClimateCrash.org. NSWA's Flannery will speak at Town Hall Seattle, and we’re investigating opportunities to meet with him during his visit as well. Now, here's another perspective on Kolbert's Town Hall talk:
By Dipika Kohli
Northwest Science Writers Association
A roomful of science people pressed forward as journalist Elizabeth Kolbert tapped her microphone March 23 at Seattle's Town Hall. The author of last spring's three-part series* on climate change for The New Yorker readied herself to share firsthand observations of how humanity's actions are already reshaping the planet's landscape.
The most dramatic changes, she said, are happening in the Arctic.
Kolbert met geophysicists and chemists in Alaska and Greenland in her a quest to find out how serious a problem climate change really is. "Like a lot of people, I kept waiting for this story to be resolved," she said.
Now she says the fact that some still question human influence as a cause of climate change is "really comical, or it would be if it weren’t so scary."
Evidence of change is clear: Flowers open up a week earlier in New England. In the Northwest, the snowpack is melting 10 days earlier than it did 50 years ago. The year 2005 broke hurricane records. Lots of carbon is stored in permafrost that's starting to thaw. Kolbert said permafrost scientist Vladimir Romanovsky told her, "[Permafrost] is like a ready-use mix. Just add a little heat and it will start cooking."
She said people who say they're skeptical that human actions are the cause of climate change are either guilt-ridden, on a payroll or simply uninformed. "Fully 25 years ago, the changes we’re seeing were predicted by climate modelers," she said. So why is there still denial? "Problems that are hard to solve are also hard to acknowledge."
Recognizing the seriousness of climate change is even harder for those who don't interpret scientific graphs or models, since the effects of carbon loading today won't be apparent for several decades. "If it’s so bad," Kolbert said reluctant believers convince themselves, "I’d be feeling it by now."
Other than a few oil-producing states in the Persian Gulf, she said, the United States is among the biggest producers of carbon dioxide. Future generations will have to bear the negative consequences of our choices today, and for no particularly good reason.
Her concluding tone was dire. "I could end this talk by telling you to turn your lights off and save the world, but I’m not going to end that way," she said. "Climate change is going to be world-altering. I don’t mean inconvenient. I mean change in life-altering ways."
* You can read the articles here:
The Climate of Man - I
The Climate of Man - II
The Climate of Man - III
The Climate of Man - Interview
By Hannah Hickey
Northwest Science Writers Association
A packed room in the basement of Town Hall heard a stark statement: It’s time we face the facts about global warming.
The speaker was Elizabeth Kolbert, author of an award-winning series on climate change published last spring in The New Yorker magazine. The articles are now expanded into a book, “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change.” She spoke on March 23 as part of the Seattle Science Lectures.
Kolbert doesn’t mince words. After reviewing the history of climate science, and visiting communities bearing the brunt of current weather shifts, her 30,000-word New Yorker series concluded: “It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.”
Kolbert’s lecture was similarly unsettling. She underlined that we understand the process behind climate change and can forecast its devastating effects, yet so far we have failed to act.
“Global warming is an example of the power of science, but also of its impotence,” Kolbert said. “To a remarkable degree we can look into the future and see where we are headed. And yet we choose not to see.”
A brief history of global warming
In her talk, Kolbert reviewed the science that underpins today’s understanding of global warming. As far back as the 1850s, Irish physicist John Tyndall showed that some gases in the air, like oxygen and nitrogen, let solar radiation pass through freely, while other gases — notably carbon dioxide and water vapor — do not. Tyndall realized that without these gases, average temperatures on Earth would be a frigid zero degrees Fahrenheit.
A few decades later, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius used Tyndall’s finding to research how atmospheric changes might have influenced past climates. Arrhenius also realized that by burning fossil fuels, which produces carbon dioxide gas, industrialization would inevitably lead to warmer global temperatures. He coined the term “greenhouse effect” in 1896. Using painstaking calculations, Arrhenius estimated that doubling the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase temperatures on Earth by 9 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit. Climate models have improved since then (equivalent estimates now predict only 3.5 to 7 degrees warming), but the basic principle has remained unchallenged for the past 150 years. Maybe it’s understandable that Arrhenius, being a Swede, viewed warmer temperatures as a change for the better.
“This story that I’ve just told is, in one sense, a scientific triumph,” Kolbert remarked. Right now there may be more climate researchers employed in Washington state alone, she suggested, than there were scientists working in Tyndall’s day. But when it comes to the impact of science on society, global warming research is “a pretty devastating story of failure.”
Fuel efficiency for motor vehicles peaked in the mid-1980s and decreased in the age of the SUV. While America puts out the most carbon dioxide emissions of any country, the U.S. government continues to avoid taking a position on global warming. Estimates show that if we don’t cut back on burning fossil fuels, carbon dioxide levels could triple by the end of the century. At that point, the changes in weather, sea level and living organisms will be so great that, in the words of NASA chief climate scientist James Hansen, the Earth will “constitute practically a different planet.”
Touring the ‘hot spots’ of climate change
Kolbert’s starting point for her articles was the northern village of Shishmaref, Alaska. Absent sea ice has made the island community vulnerable to winter storms, and in 2002 the residents voted to relocate to the mainland. (They are still waiting for the roughly $180 million required for the move.) Kolbert also visited other global warming landmarks: Greenland, where scientists drilling into glaciers show that historic changes in carbon dioxide levels were linked to sudden shifts in global climate; Fairbanks, where thawing permafrost has opened enormous cracks on the University of Alaska’s campus; and the city of New Orleans, dealing with the tragic aftermath of this year’s record-breaking hurricane season.
“We are creating enormous, quite possibly insuperable, difficulties for our children and grandchildren, and for what?” Kolbert asked the audience. “In the end, no good reason.”
Seattle’s plan to cut the gas
Mayor Greg Nickels introduced the speaker. She had participated earlier that day in what Nickels nicknamed “climatepalooza”: a series of events leading up to an announcement of Seattle’s plan to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
A little more than a year ago, “I had an epiphany,” Nickels said. “I decided global warming was an issue that was not far away or long into the future, but an issue that affects us directly.” After the United States failed to sign the Kyoto Protocol, Nickels launched a program last February for cities to voluntarily curb their emissions. By the evening of Kolbert’s lecture, 218 cities across the country had signed on to “meet or beat” Kyoto’s emissions targets.
The mayor called Kolbert “one of the most astute observers and reporters on this issue.”
Some audience members predicted the former New York Times reporter will sway discussions of climate change in this country. The question now is not whether climate change is happening, she says, but what we will do about it. In her words: “So much evidence has piled up that the debate — and I use that term advisedly — has to shift.”
If you missed the lecture, you can find a video recording on the Web here.
Coming soon…
NSWA members will have a chance to meet with Elizabeth Kolbert in early May when she returns on a book tour. Board member Michael Bradbury will be sending more details.
Another prominent writer on climate change, Australian zoologist Tim Flannery, is coming to town April 13. His book “The Weather Makers” has reportedly influenced Australian climate change policy.
+ + +
Editor's note: The tentative date for our meeting with Kolbert is sometime during the weekend of May 5-7, when she’ll be back in the area for an appearance at Third Place Books. Kolbert has a Web site associated with her book at ClimateCrash.org. NSWA's Flannery will speak at Town Hall Seattle, and we’re investigating opportunities to meet with him during his visit as well. Now, here's another perspective on Kolbert's Town Hall talk:
By Dipika Kohli
Northwest Science Writers Association
A roomful of science people pressed forward as journalist Elizabeth Kolbert tapped her microphone March 23 at Seattle's Town Hall. The author of last spring's three-part series* on climate change for The New Yorker readied herself to share firsthand observations of how humanity's actions are already reshaping the planet's landscape.
The most dramatic changes, she said, are happening in the Arctic.
Kolbert met geophysicists and chemists in Alaska and Greenland in her a quest to find out how serious a problem climate change really is. "Like a lot of people, I kept waiting for this story to be resolved," she said.
Now she says the fact that some still question human influence as a cause of climate change is "really comical, or it would be if it weren’t so scary."
Evidence of change is clear: Flowers open up a week earlier in New England. In the Northwest, the snowpack is melting 10 days earlier than it did 50 years ago. The year 2005 broke hurricane records. Lots of carbon is stored in permafrost that's starting to thaw. Kolbert said permafrost scientist Vladimir Romanovsky told her, "[Permafrost] is like a ready-use mix. Just add a little heat and it will start cooking."
She said people who say they're skeptical that human actions are the cause of climate change are either guilt-ridden, on a payroll or simply uninformed. "Fully 25 years ago, the changes we’re seeing were predicted by climate modelers," she said. So why is there still denial? "Problems that are hard to solve are also hard to acknowledge."
Recognizing the seriousness of climate change is even harder for those who don't interpret scientific graphs or models, since the effects of carbon loading today won't be apparent for several decades. "If it’s so bad," Kolbert said reluctant believers convince themselves, "I’d be feeling it by now."
Other than a few oil-producing states in the Persian Gulf, she said, the United States is among the biggest producers of carbon dioxide. Future generations will have to bear the negative consequences of our choices today, and for no particularly good reason.
Her concluding tone was dire. "I could end this talk by telling you to turn your lights off and save the world, but I’m not going to end that way," she said. "Climate change is going to be world-altering. I don’t mean inconvenient. I mean change in life-altering ways."
* You can read the articles here:
The Climate of Man - I
The Climate of Man - II
The Climate of Man - III
The Climate of Man - Interview
posted by Alan Boyle at 4:30 PM
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