Brilliant, smart, startling book. For those who have doubts about the true effects of climate change on our planet and humanity as well as those who need a reminder that the Earth is going to shit at a rapid pace. Needed more charts and graphs! More visuals! ( )

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. ( )

Well written narrative of the state of global climate change in the 2000s. Now that we are in the 2010s, the book is even more sobering and will lead to some much needed self examination of ones lifestyle. Kolbert does an excellent job of avoiding or explaining scientific jargon/vocabulary and simplifying very complicated scientific findings without treating the reader like a child. ( )

Published in '06, Kolbert's Field Notes is more valid now than ever. With a president in office that is ignorant of the change's of the Earth due to man's hand, we learn, from real science, the price we are paying for the choices we have made. But there is a positive. There isn't a way we can undo what we have done, but Field Notes offers ways to cut down our emissions. As is said for most things, little changes go a long way. ( )

Don't know if I have 2 of these or just entered it twice On the burgeoning shelf of cautionary but occasionally alarmist books warning about the consequences of dramatic climate change, Kolbert's calmly persuasive reporting stands out for its sobering clarity. Expanding on a three-part series for the New Yorker, Kolbert (The Prophet of Love) lets facts rather than polemics tell the story: in essence, it's that Earth is now nearly as warm as it has been at any time in the last 420,000 years and is on the precipice of an unprecedented "climate regime, one with which modern humans have had no prior experience." An inexorable increase in the world's average temperature means that butterflies, which typically restrict themselves to well-defined climate zones, are now flitting where they've never been found before; that nearly every major glacier in the world is melting rapidly; and that the prescient Dutch are already preparing to let rising oceans reclaim some of their land. In her most pointed chapter, Kolbert chides the U.S. for refusing to sign on to the Kyoto Accord. In her most upbeat chapter, Kolbert singles out Burlington, Vt., for its impressive energy-saving campaign, which ought to be a model for the rest of the nation ? just as this unbiased overview is a model for writing about an urgent environmental crisis