Curt Stager

Well. Where do I begin.

On the plus side, Stager is obviously enormously qualified to discuss his own field of expertise, climates and ecosystems in the very distant past. These discussions were informative and fascinating and if he occassionally delved a bit too deeply into the minutia he can be forgiven for it.

However. "Too optimistic" does not really begin to describe the book's major failings, which is his utter failure to treat any global warming subject that didn't fit neatly into his "it's a big problem for sure but nothing to panic over" thesis. So, he's got two climate change scenarios: one where we see a further 2-3C warming, and one where we see another 5C or so. The first he calls "moderate," based on what will happen if we stop burning fossil fuels in the next few decades; the second he calls "extreme," based on what happens if we burn everything left in the ground. Except for one potential little problem, which is that every climate model I've seen recently concludes that we'll be lucky to only get another 2-3C of warming if we stop burning all fossil fuels TOMORROW, and if we continue on a business-as-usual path and burn everything left in the ground, we could see 8-10C.

So if you're going to read this, do keep in mind that the 5C path he describes is far the more likely one, and in itself will take a fair bit of work on the part of the human species in short order.

As well: Where are the Canfield Oceans? Where is desertification? Where are the agricultural problems brought on by declining aquifers, disappearing glaciers, changing growing seasons, issues with seed germination (already an issue in some countries, as seeds really only germinate in narrow temperature bands), etc.? Where in hell are the four previous mass extinction events caused by rapidly climbing carbon levels and the associated ocean acidification and global warming? Shouldn't a paleoecologist at least mention them in a book about long-term climate change, even if only to describe why he dismisses it as an option? Where is any even brief discussion of the positive feedback loops already being triggered, decades ahead of schedule at relatively low levels of atmospheric carbon? Where is any even brief discussion of how the rate of increase in carbon levels is unprecidented, so no one really knows how ecosystems will react? It doesn't even come up.

So: go ahead and read it, but don't think of it as a reliable guide to what we are actually facing. Having read the whole thing, my overall impression is that he went through his substantial data-sets and picked whatever scenarios and issues that best supported his wish to believe that global warming is not a catastrophe that can threaten the human species. He may or may not be right, but there are so many holes in his reportage that I am simply not convinced.… (meer)

I was exactly the Carl Sagan loving hippie atheist that this book was conceived/designed/written for. I knew I had to have it nearly the second I heard it existed. (First I had to check its bona fides to make sure that it wasn't a tome of woo. It wasn't.)

But early in the book I struggled to love it as much as I wanted to love it. Was Stager just not yet hitting his stride in balancing his scientific and poetic language? Were my expectations just unreasonable? Was it my common struggle of wanting to understand the issues at a deeper level than the book was written for? Specifically, a lot of the element tracking in this book is down by isotope analysis, yet not all the explanations of why that particular isotope of that element is preferentially absorbed/retained/concentrated were as successful as I would have liked.

Let me back up here. Stager organizes the book element by element -- carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, iron, etc. -- and devotes a chapter to each. So, carbon: where did the carbon in your body come from? How long does it stay there? How does it change (in what molecules is it involved)? How does it leave your body? And so on.

But I fell totally in love during a discussion of the rhizomatic bartering system -- the way that plants share and "buy" nutrients from their fungal neighbors in the soil. Magical and fascinating! I found myself spilling over and trying to explain it all to random people at work.

Once I was hooked, I stayed hooked, and ended up extremely pleased with the book overall. I brought the book to work to keep as a reference and am avidly hoping for some good excuse to look up isotopic accumulation and re-read the sections of the book that I struggled with the first time.

Clearly I need to pitch a "we are all stardust" camp, right?

There were those moments of "science mysticism" that I was longing for -- the "who am I, when I am constantly shedding atoms, molecules, sharing them with my neighbor, the potted plant on the other side of the room..." and also the "breathing the same air as Einstein, Aristotle, Hitler," and the "I remain." moments. Definitely worth a read. And even a re-read.… (meer)