| FIELD NOTES FROM A CATASTROPHE Man, Nature, and Climate Change Elizabeth Kolbert New York: Bloomsbury, 2006 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
|||
| ISBN-13 978-1-59691-125-3 | ||||
| ISBN-10 1-59691-125-5 | 210p. | HC/GSI | $22.95 | |
| Page 10: | "Still, the results of their work were alarming enough that President Jimmy Carter called on the academy to investigate." |
| Capitalization: S/B "the Academy" since this refers to the National Academy of Sciences. |
| Page 18: | "(Because of the permafrost, the pipeline runs mostly aboveground, on pilings that contain ammonia, which acts as a refrigerant." |
| This is more an incomplete description than an error; it's not clear how this would work. Heat pipes are my guess. But from where is the heat taken, and to where is it dumped? Engineering minds want to know. |
| Page 21: | "Researchers in Sweden, for example, have been measuring the methane output of a bog known as the Stordalen mire near the town of Abisko..." |
| Capitalization: "Stordalen Mire" seems correct. However, a majority of Web sites that mention it spell it the way Ms. Kolbert does. |
| Page 41: | "In the case of doubling, he determined that average global temperature would rise between nine and eleven degrees, a result that approximates the results of the most sophisticated climate models in operation today." |
| Not if this is 9 to 11 degrees Celsius. I assume Fahrenheit is meant; but it should be specified. |
| Page 62: | "In among the shirts and ties, I spotted two men dressed in the brightly colored tunics of the Sami and several others wearing sealskin vests." |
| Since this is at a symposium in Barrow, Alaska, the wearers of the sealskin vests are clearly Eskimos. But Ms. Kolbert does not explain who or what the Sami are.1 |
| Page 97: | "The latest version of the GISS model, called ModelE, consists of 125,000 lines of computer code." |
| I gather that this is meant to suggest the vast complexity of the model. Alas, at 125,000 lines it is a mere pipsqueak. |
| Page 100: | "(The height of the box varies depending on altitude.)" |
| This tempts me to snarkiness: No doubt, just as the width of the box varies according to broadness. But seriously, to properly explain how the grid cells used in modeling of the atmosphere vary in size, a little more detail is necessary. (Or, just noting that the cells vary in size, without describing that variation, would work.) |
| Page 104: | "...no one is certain what brought about the Little Ice Age, a period that lasted in Europe from around 1500 to 1850." |
| Units missing: S/B "1500 to 1850 A.D.". |
| Page 110: | "On the other side of the Hudson River and slightly to the north of GISS, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory occupies what was once a weekend estate in the town of Palisades, New York." |
| Not to be confused with Palisades, New Jersey, which lies directly across the Hudson from Manhattan. |
| Page 131: | "Socolow had recently become codirector of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative, a project funded by BP and Ford..." |
| "Ford" is well enough known, but "BP" is an obscure term. How many U.S. readers know it means British Petroleum? It should be spelled out. |
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.