Citation: Kolbert, E., 2006, Field notes from a catastrophe: man, nature, and climate change: New York, Bloomsbury USA
Link to Amazon.com
I just finished reading Elizabeth Kolbert's "Field Notes From A Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change." Each chapter in "Field Notes" is essentially based off of a different journalistic assignment of Kolbert (she writes for the New Yorker). So in each chapter Kolbert explains why she was in a particular place, recounts her interviews, and adds aditional context so that the reader realizes the gravity of the situation she is investigating. In short the book explores how climate change is already affecting the globe and how it will in the future. Kolbert also explores how politics and big corporations skew our perceptions of global warming, but I'll get to that in a different post. I highly recommend reading this book. It is short, very readable, and compelling.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Saturday, July 6, 2013
Book Review: The Little Ice Age
Citation: Fagan, B.M. , 2000, The Little Ice Age: how climate made history, 1300-1850: New York, Basic Books
Link to Amazon.com
In The Little Ice Age, author Brian Fagan explores the role of climate changes in shaping societies. Specifically he examines a period stretching from about 1000 AD to 2000 AD, which encompasses the climatic intervals known as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and also covers our climate since the industrial revolution. He stresses that his story is not one advocating environmental determinism, but he does argue, convincingly, that changing climatic intervals indeed influenced major shifts in socioeconomic patterns (e.g. in England, the shift from "common" agricultural lands to privately owned farms practicing more diversified agriculture was partly a response to a less favorable climate interval where cereal crops failed more often and the security of a diversified food supply was warranted.). He accomplishes this by uncovering accounts (and in later centuries, measurement) of weather patterns, annual crop yields, fishery reports, changing diets, trade records, disease outbreaks, and occurrences of famine, for all of Europe. His focus is on Western Europe, perhaps because of more available information, but importantly his focus has a wide latitudinal range and he explores changes from Iceland to Spain. At times, some climatic changes would benefit the northern countries while negatively affecting mainland Europe, and vice versa. This of course is due to the complexity of our Earth's climate system, but in some ways the effect of a climate change on a society depends on how well prepared that society is to face it technologically, economically, culturally, and politically. For example, political and cultural systems in France delayed the shift to agricultural diversification and advanced crop rotation for hundreds of years after the Dutch and English transition. This was to the detriment of the French peasantry, who continued to suffer poor cereal harvests and bread shortages as colder and wetter years dominated. This delay was mainly due to 1) the lack of interest/investement in agriculture by French nobility and royalty, and 2) the adherence to cultural/gastronomical norms and the resistance to new food products such as potatoes. Writes Fagan, "no one, whether monarch, noble, or peasant, gave much thought to broadening the diet or of encouraging new farming methods in the face of real declines in productivity (p.155)." Could we experience a similar problem as our population continues to grow?
Link to Amazon.com
In The Little Ice Age, author Brian Fagan explores the role of climate changes in shaping societies. Specifically he examines a period stretching from about 1000 AD to 2000 AD, which encompasses the climatic intervals known as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and also covers our climate since the industrial revolution. He stresses that his story is not one advocating environmental determinism, but he does argue, convincingly, that changing climatic intervals indeed influenced major shifts in socioeconomic patterns (e.g. in England, the shift from "common" agricultural lands to privately owned farms practicing more diversified agriculture was partly a response to a less favorable climate interval where cereal crops failed more often and the security of a diversified food supply was warranted.). He accomplishes this by uncovering accounts (and in later centuries, measurement) of weather patterns, annual crop yields, fishery reports, changing diets, trade records, disease outbreaks, and occurrences of famine, for all of Europe. His focus is on Western Europe, perhaps because of more available information, but importantly his focus has a wide latitudinal range and he explores changes from Iceland to Spain. At times, some climatic changes would benefit the northern countries while negatively affecting mainland Europe, and vice versa. This of course is due to the complexity of our Earth's climate system, but in some ways the effect of a climate change on a society depends on how well prepared that society is to face it technologically, economically, culturally, and politically. For example, political and cultural systems in France delayed the shift to agricultural diversification and advanced crop rotation for hundreds of years after the Dutch and English transition. This was to the detriment of the French peasantry, who continued to suffer poor cereal harvests and bread shortages as colder and wetter years dominated. This delay was mainly due to 1) the lack of interest/investement in agriculture by French nobility and royalty, and 2) the adherence to cultural/gastronomical norms and the resistance to new food products such as potatoes. Writes Fagan, "no one, whether monarch, noble, or peasant, gave much thought to broadening the diet or of encouraging new farming methods in the face of real declines in productivity (p.155)." Could we experience a similar problem as our population continues to grow?
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