The publishing industry is fairly well known for being afraid of nonfiction environmental books, especially on subjects like global warming. What a snooze, publishers often think. Moreover, they have data to show that a number of books on this subject have not sold particularly well in the past. (What data? Er, I don't know precisely, but trust me, they have it.)
Anyway, that's why I've been watching the fate of Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers and Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes From a Catastrophe quite closely. Neither has appeared on any bestseller lists yet, so far as I know. But Flannery is in the top 100 on Amazon, and Kolbert is around 200. That ain't nothing.
So, perhaps one of these global warming books will finally be the runaway success that I've been expecting and waiting for. They have certainly gotten a lot of attention. Or, perhaps that distinction will fall to another author. But I have little doubt that as the salience of global warming continues to grow, someone will find a way to write about it in order to achieve a big market success. (And then everybody else will pile on.)
Meanwhile, the latest Seed contained a brief unsigned review, written by yours truly, of Kolbert's book, which I very much enjoyed. Here's my take:
Adapted from a series of New Yorker articles, Kolbert's book provides colorful dispatches from the front lines of climate change. By visiting with research teams in far-flung places, she successfully weaves the latest scientific observations of ongoing climate change into a fluid travelogue. All is keenly observed and often deeply memorable, as when one Arctic scientist remarks that melting permafrost creates tipsy, "drunken trees."
Kolbert manages to provide ample context for her narrative but, as even she admits, a book as slim as Field Notes can only present a small sampling of the diverse ways in which global warming is altering (or will alter) the earth. Nevertheless, the picture she draws is compelling, and very scary.
So, that's definitely one to check out....Flannery I haven't read yet.
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Perhaps one reason GW books don't sell is because, until these recent two, they didn't exist (except for Ross Gelbspan's two books spaced many years apart). At least I couldn't find any with a fairly concerted effort over the last few years.
I was amazed to stumble across Flannery's book in the bookstore last month, and am reading it now (about 3/4 through). It's extremely well written and well worth the money. But I have been concerned in places that his alarm over GW is perhaps overstated (at least from a scientific standpoint).
One point that concerned me was the assertion that carbon cycle feedbacks from the Amazon rainforest is one of 3 "tipping points" as global warming progresses--whereby the rainforest is replaced by desert and huge amounts of carbon currently stored are released into the atmosphere.
I am not very familiar with the details, but the evidence for this appears to come from a single modelling group. And carbon cycle modelling appears to be new and active area of research--implying that this result is very far from definitive and not worth being mentioned in the same category as the shutdown of the Gulf Stream, which is on a much more solid scientific footing (again, based on my interested-layman's understanding).
But a great book, despite these concerns of mine.
For me, and I'm sure for many others, your short but no chaff piece, "Some like it hot," in Mother Jones last May was among the best that ever confronted the worst. I read it concurrently with Elizabeth Kolbert's first New yorker segment, "The climate of man."
The feed backs and acceleration of abrupt (ABRUPT) climate change is the primary variable now. And yes, the possibility that we can all go the way of Easter Island and Colin Turnbull's decayed Ik (The Mountain People) escalates every second. When the Ik lost their ecosystem, it took but two generations for the word, love, to disappear from their language.
Here is the rub of rubs. The continually expanding economy and its attendant glorious profits and compound interest payments meets the ever increasing probability of ecocide. James Lovelock's morbid fever, indeed.
FYI: Grist has a review of Flannery's book (along with two other new climate-change books) here:
http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2006/03/09/warming/
And a review of Kolbert's book here:
http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2006/03/09/hayes/
Also, there's an interview with Flannery today in Wired News:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,70405-0.html?tw=rss.index
Re: Amazon as a tipping point in the Earth System
Lots of researchers have thought about 'Tipping Points' in the Earth System. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and research director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK. Has made a 'Tipping Points Map� that identifies regions where the balance of particular systems has reached the critical point at which potentially irreversible change is imminent, or actually occurring.
The Resilience Science weblog, which I contribute to, has a post on a Nature article about this map. The article contains further links - Tipping Points in the Earth System - an icon of climate change?, and the weblog has some other articles on global tipping points (such as the Sahel).
I reviewed the Flannery book here. Great book!
My comparative review of the two titles is scheduled soon in the Dallas Morning News and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel will be running individual reviews by three different reviewers of those two titles plus Winds of Change (a book I haven't seen). I reviewed the Kolbert book there.
My review will be online at http://www.scienceshelf.com/WeatherMakers_FieldNotes.htm once it has appeared in print. Meanwhile, that URL has the opening paragraphs. Let me add two salient paragraphs here that are not yet on that webpage but will be:
Of particular note is [Flannery's] discussion of "Time's Gateways," which mark abrupt, irreversible transitions in global or regional climate. He makes a plausible case that a "magic gate" opened in the western tropical Pacific Ocean in 1976. Before that year, the region's surface temperature frequently dropped below 67 degrees Fahrenheit. Since then, it has rarely been below 77. Another gateway came in 1998, which seems to mark a dramatic change in the El Nino-La Nina cycle. Both of these changes have resulted in dramatic shifts in rainfall patterns, including extended droughts in the African Sahel, Australia, and southeast Asia.
Arguably, those events may be no more than transitory fluctuations. But they may instead be harbingers of more serious transitions to come as the world's climate passes through other gateways later in this century. If they are the latter, the contrarian strategy of waiting for more data before acting is risky business indeed.
perhaps one of these global warming books will finally be the runaway success that I've been expecting [...] Or, perhaps that distinction will fall to another author
Unfortunately, it will probably be Michael Crichton.
Then again, maybe not.
I wasn't counting Michael Crichton as part of this discussion. His book was allegedly fiction, and moreover, anything with his name on it will automatically sell.
To climb back onto my hobby-horse for a moment...
The far right has devised ways to force their books onto the bestseller lists so that public takes notice and, hopefully, takes over and keeps them there. Psychomarketing [process manipulation]. Just a suggestion...
Hey Gerald! Nice reference to the Ik. I haven't thought about them in a long time. Now that I have, seems like a good analogy for the kind of society the far right is leading us into.
I know, the conservatives always sell the books of their rising stars. Liberals have to work at it. Why is that? Disorganization, to put it bluntly. It would be great if some blogs got together to do something about this situation...er, but of course, I'm self-interested.
Chris
We may be talking about the same thing, but I did mean force.
My understanding is that among other things, the right did research to figure out which book outlets were polled by bestseller listings, especially the NYT. Then they would get sugar-daddy money, I mean, funding, to actually buy thousands of copies early after a titles release.
I've seen this discussed in several places off-handedly. The only source I'm sure of is an interview with George Lakoff where he mentions this.
I've been trying to make the point in various places that these guys have been very, very smart and methodical about how they shifted the country's leadership and direction. I'd say liberal "disorganization" is putting it mildly.
For some more on their process manipulation, a paragraph on their handling of the media, I posted a long rant [my last for awhile] on Faithful Progressive last night.
I'm reading a short little book entitled "Climate Crash" by John D. Cox, which I recommend. It's an interesting introduction into abrupt climate change for laymen like myself, without The Day After Tommorrow nonsense. And for all the attention Michael Crichton is getting for getting the science wrong, we should also point out science fiction writers who get it right. Kim Stanley Robinson has two books out now in his "Science in the Capital" trilogy, "Forty Signs of Rain" and "Fifty Degrees Below." The books center around a near-future climate shift caused by global warming, handled realistically, and the politics of science in D.C. They're not his best work, being somewhat slow and meandering, but even mediocre Robinson is better than most writers.
I have a Science Shelf guest review of Climate Crash at http://www.scienceshelf.com/ClimateCrash.htm . The reviewer, David Laskin, agrees with Walter.
For a frank, wide-ranging interview with Eugene Linden, a former Time science writer, and author of the "Winds of Change," try http://www.vcreporter.com/article.php?id=3159&IssueNum=63