That was the clear message at Benaroya Hall last night, where New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert presented a sampling of the climate change research she covers in her much-lauded book (Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change), and then joined a few colleagues on-stage for a panel discussion. Touching on a few of the main locations and research findings from her book, the punchline is a real punch in the gut, or as Kolbert summarized: "Society is not essential, it is contingent." more ›

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. more ›

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Seattlest has been thinking a lot about the metropolitan flora and fauna in Seattle recently, which was potentially touched off when we came across The Street-Smart Naturalist: Field Notes from Seattle over at Amazon. Hopefully, it arrives today and we can dive right into how, "living in a major city doesn't have to separate us from the natural world." more ›