It's the In Cold Blood of global climate change

If, like Seattlest, you're a dead-tree-media reading tool of a dying paradigm, you might have read Elizabeth Kolbert's three-part series "The Climate of Man" last spring when it was published in The New Yorker. If you prefer your dead-tree media in hardcover, however, you're in luck -- Kolbert's new book Field Notes from a Catastrophe collects all three parts in handy pulped-plant form.

Seattlest read the series last spring, and it's a lucid, compelling, and frankly kind of depressing look at just how much we've altered our environment in ways that we didn't intend or care for. People (well, most people) may have a muted response to global warming because it lacks compelling drama, but Kolbert offers a possible emotional spur. (Of course, if the Americanizers of Godzilla can't open our eyes to the problem, does The New Yorker stand a chance?)

If you prefer to read online, the series is no longer available on the New Yorker site (though there is an interview with Kolbert). However, a bit of Google-fu turned up a copy that'll probably be yanked for copyright violations any time now.

Kolbert's in town today, appearing this morning on KUOW's Weekday at 10:00, then speaking at Town Hall tonight at 7:30, sponsored by the Seattle Science Lectures, the UW Bookstore, Town Hall itself, the Pacific Science Center, and the PI.

It's just $5 at the door to get in.