Book Description
Long known for her insightful and thought-provoking political journalism, author Elizabeth Kolbert now tackles the controversial and increasingly urgent subject of global warming. In what began as groundbreaking three-part series in the New Yorker, for which she won a National Magazine Award in 2006, Kolbert cuts through the competing rhetoric and political agendas to elucidate for Americans what is really going on with the global environment and asks what, if anything, can be done to save our planet. Now updated and with a new afterword, Field Notes from a Catastrophe is the book to read on the defining issue and greatest challenge of our times.
Customer Reviews:
Eloquent But Only Notes.......2007-10-09
The title of this book is apt: Field Notes. Whether the word Catastrophe is equally apt, or merely good salesmanship, can be left undecided for the moment. Chapter by chapter, Ms Kolbert has written honestly and earnestly. Chapter 2, for instance, recounts the historical development of the concern over global warming, clearly and fairly, in a mere nine pages. Chapter 3 outlines the recent studies of glaciers, and the possible implications of those studies, with equal brevity and clarity. Chapter 1 sets a passionate tone for the whole book, confronting the fearful sense of global warming at the level of villagers whose lives are already impacted; I have kayaked many times in the Seward Peninsula region, over a span of 25 years, and I've personally felt the real urgency that Ms. Kolbert reports. Each chapter of the book is in fact an essay unto itself. Ms. Kolbert is a front-line journalist, not a climatologist. That is the source of her stylistic clarity, obviously, and of her daring in reporting on the crisis at multiple levels. It also makes her vulnerable to the dogmatic deniers of anthropogenic climate change, as is colorfully exhibited in the several ranting one-star reviews on this page.
This is the University of Washington common book for 2007-8.......2007-10-04
The University of Washington has selected this book as its "Common Book" for the 2007-2008 academic year. That means each of the UW's 10,000+ incoming freshman this year have received a copy of the book and are reading it.
An Extraordinary Work: Important and Readable.......2007-09-23
`Field Notes From a Catastrophe' is Elizabeth Kolbert's masterpiece of conciseness and clarity explaining current climate change science and the political obstacles (read the US, Republicans, and Bush Administration in ascending order) to getting serious about attacking the problem. Originally published in 2005, the paperback version has an afterword written in 2006.
Kolbert takes a journalist's approach to explaining the climate change phenomenon (the book began as a series in the New Yorker). She takes the reader to Shishmaref, Alaska an island village rapidly becoming an untenable place to live due to climate-induced sea ice changes, to the North Slope, to the great Greenland ice shield and she brings the story down to a human scale.
Kolbert also leads the reader through the science of global warming making understandable seemingly arcane topics like "dangerous anthropogenic interference" (DAI), which is basically the point where something truly major goes haywire. Kolbert brings the joy of learning to the reader, until one ponders the potential consequences of what she lays out for us. Perhaps most disturbing is the evidence she marshals that the climate has already changed. For example, the climate has warmed sufficiently to allow numerous butterfly species to migrate to new previously too cold locations and to cause the extinction of certain frog species.
Scientists do not, of course, understand everything about climate change (indeed, it is in the very nature of science that an endpoint of total knowledge is never achieved). Those political and economic forces (primarily in the United States) that benefit from the status quo latch on to the uncertainties to create doubt among the public and forestall action. Her interviews with Bush administration officials strike an odd note - they stonewall with robotic incantations. While Europe and most of industrialized world has acted, the US has dithered, delayed, and denied.
Kolbert explains why scientists conclude that it is virtually certain that under the current `business as usual' approach, greenhouse gas concentrations will reach a level that causes massive coastal flooding, large scale extinctions, and crop failures leading to starvation (DAI). These outcomes will not be evenly distributed and are likely to fall heaviest on the poorest countries. Scientists do not, however, know what level of greenhouse gas concentration will cause these impacts. The Bush administration uses that uncertainty as a reason to do essentially nothing and Congress too has failed to force any action.
Kolbert's book inspires the reader to search out even more current information (NOAA's Arctic Change web site is one good source). And the news is alarming. This stuff is not just a tree hugger's paranoid delusion: global heating is happening, it is happening now, and it is getting worse faster than anticipated.
Kolbert's book is a work of journalism (and given the rapidly changing reality, journalism is probably the best source of information) that informs on both the science and the politics of climate change without stridently hectoring the reader. Kolbert presents the facts. The reader would have to be a dim bulb indeed not to get the picture.
Absolutely the very highest recommendation. Kolbert's Field Notes From a Catastrophe deserves more than 5 stars.
Some very misleading reviews here.......2007-08-09
Reviewer T. Ferrell says "The author comes from an assumption that climate was once stable and has recently become unstable. She states this directly several times and it is the overall impression she intentionally leaves."
I'm not sure if the reviewer didn't actually read the book or is deliberately trying to smear it, but Kolbert states many times that the climate has changed in the past.
This is clearly written sober account of global warming and the effects it is having, and will have, on the environment. An excellent, concise read.
Climate has never been "stable".......2007-07-04
While the book was well written as prose, it was intellectually myopic. The author comes from an assumption that climate was once stable and has recently become unstable. She states this directly several times and it is the overall impression she intentionally leaves. Certainly climate change has an effect on people, flora and fauna, but that does not mean that you ignore the fact that there are winners with climate change as well as losers. Example, as the globe warms agriculture moves north expanding into areas previously too frigid to support farming. No mention of this?
But it is not that she just focuses just on the losers. She glosses over issues that might complicate her simple thesis that man is responsible for climate change as "not understood." This is the explanation she gives for example when discussing how atmospheric CO2 was historically low during the ice ages and was high during periods of warming. This is "unknown." She simply ignores the fact that the worlds oceans hold most of the planets CO2 both directly as an absorbed gas, its concentration being directly related temperature. She also ignores the carbon bank in phytoplankton. I believe she does this because it would bring into question her simple thesis. What warmed or cooled the worlds oceans before man was on the scene.
This is a problem for me because a wider view of climate change would reveal the true issues. At one point in time the earth was a snowball entirely covered with ice. At another point in our past the oceans were much higher and the poles were nearly devoid of ice. If global climate has always been in flux do we now propose that man should control the world's climate? If so, what is the best climate? Is it the best thing to have a sizeable portion of the worlds surface are covered in ice or too cold to support agriculture? Who decides? If man does control the weather is the only way to do it to cut back on fossil fuel useage? The author appears to believe so. Does the entity who controls climate take responsibilty for the weather and its effects? A freeze occurs in a temperate agricultural region. Is this now someone's fault?
It's very easy to look who loses with climate change. It is much more difficult to consider the bigger picture. I was not impressed by this book.
Amazon.com
Everybody knows the Dark Ages weren't really dark, right? Not so fast, counters archaeological journalist David Keys, maybe it's more than just a slightly judgmental metaphor. His book Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World, based on years of careful research spanning five continents, argues that sometime in A.D. 535, a worldwide disaster struck and uprooted nearly every culture then extant. Given contemporary reports of the sun being blotted out or weakened for nearly a year and a half, followed by famine, drought, and plague, it's hard not to think that so many reports from all over the world must be related.
Keys shows a keen grasp of both the written historical record from Asia, Africa, and Europe and the archaeological evidence from the Americas, and tells many tales of great havoc destroying old empires and laying the ground for new ones. Rome may have fallen, but Spain, England, and France rose in its place, while farther east, Japan and China each unified and gained strength after the chaos. Could an enormous volcanic eruption have had such influence on the world as a whole, and could the same thing happen tomorrow? Catastrophe makes no predictions, but leaves the reader with a new sense of history, nature, and destiny. --Rob Lightner
Book Description
It was a catastrophe without precedent in recorded history: for months on end, starting in A.D. 535, a strange, dusky haze robbed much of the earth of normal sunlight. Crops failed in Asia and the Middle East as global weather patterns radically altered. Bubonic plague, exploding out of Africa, wiped out entire populations in Europe. Flood and drought brought ancient cultures to the brink of collapse. In a matter of decades, the old order died and a new world—essentially the modern world as we know it today—began to emerge.
In this fascinating, groundbreaking, totally accessible book, archaeological journalist David Keys dramatically reconstructs the global chain of revolutions that began in the catastrophe of A.D. 535, then offers a definitive explanation of how and why this cataclysm occurred on that momentous day centuries ago.
The Roman Empire, the greatest power in Europe and the Middle East for centuries, lost half its territory in the century following the catastrophe. During the exact same period, the ancient southern Chinese state, weakened by economic turmoil, succumbed to invaders from the north, and a single unified China was born. Meanwhile, as restless tribes swept down from the central Asian steppes, a new religion known as Islam spread through the Middle East. As Keys demonstrates with compelling originality and authoritative research, these were not isolated upheavals but linked events arising from the same cause and rippling around the world like an enormous tidal wave.
Keys's narrative circles the globe as he identifies the eerie fallout from the months of darkness: unprecedented drought in Central America, a strange yellow dust drifting like snow over eastern Asia, prolonged famine, and the hideous pandemic of the bubonic plague. With a superb command of ancient literatures and historical records, Keys makes hitherto unrecognized connections between the "wasteland" that overspread the British countryside and the fall of the great pyramid-building Teotihuacan civilization in Mexico, between a little-known "Jewish empire" in Eastern Europe and the rise of the Japanese nation-state, between storms in France and pestilence in Ireland.
In the book's final chapters, Keys delves into the mystery at the heart of this global catastrophe: Why did it happen? The answer, at once surprising and definitive, holds chilling implications for our own precarious geopolitical future. Wide-ranging in its scholarship, written with flair and passion, filled with original insights, Catastrophe is a superb synthesis of history, science, and cultural interpretation.
Download Description
In A.D. 535-536, a climatic catastrophe occurred. It was of such mammoth proportions, it blotted out much of the heat and light of the sun for eighteen months and resulted -- directly or indirectly -- in climatic chaos, famine, migration, war, and massive political change on every continent. In other words, it altered history.
In this breakthrough examination, British archaeological journalist David Keys traces the identity and roots of this catastrophe -- continent by continent and virtually country by country -- showing how it is directly linked to the development of our modern world. The Plague, the rise of Islam, the fall of the Roman Empire, the movement of Asiatic tribes, the beginnings of the great South American empires -- Keys connects all these events that have previously been considered separate and shows us the far-reaching effects of incidents that first appear only localized. He makes us see history in holistic terms, as an integrated, planet-wide phenomenon.
In this fascinating, impeccably researched, and accessible book, Keys's innovative conclusions demonstrate how closely entwined global events truly are, and prove we must change the way we look at our past -- and thus, our future.
Customer Reviews:
My 100-word book review.......2007-03-28
In Catastrophe, author David Keys builds a convincing case for sudden climate change having occurred in the early 6th century, an abrupt dip in worldwide temperatures that would have had massive long-term consequences for civilisations all over the globe. Results could have included the weakening of the Byzantines, the downfall of Teotihuacan and the rise of Islam. This is a fascinating book, and the author's identification of a super volcano as the culprit is highly plausible. However, I think Keys possibly over-estimates this event as a shaper of our modern world, given the existence of so many other important factors.
A truly fascinating history.......2006-12-14
This is truly one of the most fascinating theories in ancient history. A volcano that shaped the modern world by forcing the migration of the huns, the crop failures in the Middle East that led to the rise of Islam and the start of the barbarian migrations towards Rome. It is almost too hard to summarize but if you believe that climate can change history than this is the book that will provide excellent evidence on that idea. Truly a masterpiece of an idea.
Looking for a catstrophe?.......2006-09-12
How much of human history has been shaped by catastrophic events? This exhaustively researched document seems like a natural place to find the answer. Unfortunately, the author's fascination with lurid details of human torture and dismemberment caused me to put the book down after just 60 blood-soaked pages. It's pretty clear that Mr. Key's interests in history do not run parallel to my own. I also found myself wondering about Key's qualifications as "Archaeological Journalist." I guess there are plenty of people who like reading tabloid-style history, and good luck to them, but I much prefer a calmer and scientific perspective of Derek Ager, in his book "The New Catastrophism, The Importance of the Rare Event in Geological History." -- Auralgo
FORCED CONCLUSIONS?.......2006-03-12
Mr. Key's authoritative research created a unique and new approach to the writing of history. His synthesis of science, culture and history was informative and entertaining. He identifies the volcanic eruption between Sumatra and Java in 535 that led to a climatic disaster that he believes helped create the modern world. He did convince this reader that the "Dark Ages were more literal than figurative." However, many of his historical conclusions were overstated. Chapters 19-29 lacked a depth of evidence and were too speculative. His constant use of words like "undoubtedly" made the reader question if he truly beleived his entire thesis? I concluded that he was at most one third correct, but ended in disagreeing that climate changes "alone" caused the birth of the modern world. I give it 4 stars for effort, but only 3 in its totality.
Interesting, relevant, but sometimes a bit stretched........2005-06-28
For the most part I found this book to be enjoyable, but it seems that Keys attempted in some areas to force his conclusion. Also, the same arguement seemed to be repeated far too often. Although I liked that the evidence of climate change was presented for essentially the entire planet, the conclusions at the end of each civilization were repetitive, simply restating the same thing (although, I suppose that was the point). I began to lose patience about 1/3 way through the book, but was able to persist through the conclusion. Perhaps it would have been better had Keys not spent so much time on minutae of Roman history and decline and had moved through the evidence quicker. The latter chapters on Asian and American experience were a little faster reading, likely due to the lack of minutae, largely due to the lack of records from which Keys could draw on. The final arguement on the causes of so much misfortune was compelling, but also left me feeling like our participation in the environment may all be for naught, since the Yellowstone caldera could explode at any moment, wiping us all out. I could not determine if this book wanted to be a book about climate change, history, or science.
Book Description
Why do catastrophes happen? What sets off earthquakes, for example? What about mass extinctions of species? The outbreak of major wars? Massive traffic jams that seem to appear out of nowhere? Why does the stock market periodically suffer dramatic crashes? Why do some forest fires become superheated infernos that rage totally out of control?
Experts have never been able to explain the causes of any of these disasters. Now scientists have discovered that these seemingly unrelated cataclysms, both natural and human, almost certainly all happen for one fundamental reason. More than that, there is not and never will be any way to predict them.
Critically acclaimed science journalist Mark Buchanan tells the fascinating story of the discovery that there is a natural structure of instability woven into the fabric of our world. From humble beginnings studying the physics of sandpiles, scientists have learned that an astonishing range of things–Earth’s crust, cars on a highway, the market for stocks, and the tightly woven networks of human society–have a natural tendency to organize themselves into what’s called the “critical state,” in which they are poised on what Buchanan describes as the “knife-edge of instability.” The more places scientists have looked for the critical state, the more places they’ve found it, and some believe that the pervasiveness of instability must now be seen as a fundamental feature of our world.
Ubiquity is packed with stories of real-life catastrophes, such as the huge earthquake that in 1995 hit Kobe, Japan, killing 5,000 people; the forest fires that ravaged Yellowstone National Park in 1988; the stock market crash of 1987; the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs; and the outbreak of World War I. Combining literary flair with scientific rigor, Buchanan introduces the researchers who have pieced together the evidence of the critical state, explaining their ingenious work and unexpected insights in beautifully lucid prose.
At the dawn of this new century, Buchanan reveals, we are witnessing the emergence of an extraordinarily powerful new field of science that will help us comprehend the bewildering and unruly rhythms that dominate our lives and may even lead to a true science of the dynamics of human culture and history.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
Caos theory.......2007-06-14
I was unable to finish this book though it was recommended by a cousin. I just found that I got lost in all the formulas and expected outcomes. but I am sure that it is good research, just not for me.
Dissapointing ...........2007-01-09
It was well recommended to me but I found it quite boring and found myself fast forwarding through the chapters. It has an interesting theme - the cause of natural catastrophes - but for a science book I found it quite dissapoiting...
Good, but no answers really........2006-07-24
Its an interesting read. The reason I didnt give it 5 stars is that I have already read one of Marks previous books (Nexus) which has some overlap (not a lot) with this book. In fact it would be beneficial to readers to read the Nexus book before reading this one as what he writes about in that book really helps to understand this book.
I was really hoping for some more answers on how to predict things based on what Mark talks about but that is the essential outcome of the book, you cant predict things!
One of the best.......2006-05-28
This is the book that I would like to have written. Although being a popular account, it is scientifically accurate and carefull in its suggestions, always informing the reader what is consolidated science and what is scientific speculation.
In contrast to a previous review, I have read all the pages of this book. Since I am a physicist working in this very subject (self-organized criticality), I probably can say that if someone use the example of a Gaussian (bell shaped curve) to illustrate that the power laws discussed in the book are trivial, well, this person have not understood anything.
Gaussians have exponential decays, so they predict that very larg events (catastrophes) will occur with vanishing probability. For example, the heigh of people is distributed as a Gaussian. What is the probability of finding a 3 meter person?
Zero.
Distributions wich have power law tails, depending on the power exponent, may have no well defined variance or even average value. This means that there is no "average" earthquake, and that very big earthquakes (or other cathastrophes) are not "acts of God" but have a no desprezible chance of occur due to simple chain reactions of events.
I have introduced my students to ideas like critical states and modern physical thinking by using this book. So, I can recommend it to any reader without reserve. The emphasis by the author that critical chain reactions of events must be accounted by any view of History and Society is an important mind tool in our increasing interconnected (and, because it, prone to global chain reactions) world.
Much ado about nothing.......2006-03-19
I found this book incredibly boring. OK, I know this goes against the grain of other reviewers here. And I'll admit I'm only through the first 85 pages. But I already have that Ayn Rand feeling that the entire book is just going to rehash what's already been said.
I agree there are some interesting ideas, basically that we can't predict stuff very well. But here are a couple of examples of where Buchanan makes me suspicious that he really has the "Ph.D. in theoretical physics" stated on the back. The most egregious example so far, I think, is his statement on p. 85 that "take some really small number, such as .0001, change it by 10 percent, or even multiply it by 2 or 10 or 100 and you still have a very small number."
This, coming from a guy who has written page after page about scale invariance, seems just ludicrous. What on earth can he possibly mean by this nonsense??
Another example is his discussion of getting the friction issues wrong with the sliding blocks. Then he says, hey, but what about heat? (Bottom of p. 59). As if this great insight takes care of the problem of friction. How can a Ph.D. physicist make the mistake of thinking that heat is a new way of dealing with friction (duh?)
Another is his comment (bottom of p. 80) that the use of constants in the great differential equations of physics is some way mitigates the problem of tuning the blocks. He gives "c" in Maxwell's Equations and "h" in Quantum Mechanics, as examples of these. He writes "almost every good theory in the world has some numbers in it that have to be tuned to make the theory fit reality." But the "tuning" he's talking about with the sandpile and other games, has to do with the basic structure of the differential equations. "c" is a RESULT of Maxwell's Equations, not some "tuning" factor. It is true that the existence of Planck's constant is a fundamental feature of the equations, but its VALUE is simply a number that makes experimental observations work in SI units. Now Einstein's "cosmological constant" is much more like what Buchanan is talking about. But by this time one wonders if he really has a point here, or is just rambling on to cover up his hand-waving, and hoping he can get his book sold.
In my opinion, here is what this book is saying:
Let's take the example of the average temperature for my city on a given calendar date. The facts are these: the temperature over history for that date follows a bell-shaped curve. There IS a typical temperature. But the VARIATION of the actual temperature TODAY (i.e. a particular day) from the typical temperature is NOT very easy to predict. In fact, there is no TYPICAL VARIATION.
All we can say is that most days will have a small variation from the norm, and fewer days will have a larger variation from the norm. The "power law" concerns this variability. The larger the variability, the less likely it is to occur. If the average over time is 65 degrees, a lot of days in history will have had an average of 66 degrees on that date, and only a very few will have an average of 76 degrees on that date. Why is this fact worth writing an entire hold-your-breath book about?
Most days have no earthquakes. But when an earthquake DOES occur, we can't predict how big it will be. All we can say is that there will be more small earthquakes than large ones.
Well, duh!!
Yawn.
Book Description
Charles Perrow is famous worldwide for his ideas about normal accidents, the notion that multiple and unexpected failures--catastrophes waiting to happen--are built into our society's complex systems. In The Next Catastrophe, he offers crucial insights into how to make us safer, proposing a bold new way of thinking about disaster preparedness.
Perrow argues that rather than laying exclusive emphasis on protecting targets, we should reduce their size to minimize damage and diminish their attractiveness to terrorists. He focuses on three causes of disaster--natural, organizational, and deliberate--and shows that our best hope lies in the deconcentration of high-risk populations, corporate power, and critical infrastructures such as electric energy, computer systems, and the chemical and food industries. Perrow reveals how the threat of catastrophe is on the rise, whether from terrorism, natural disasters, or industrial accidents. Along the way, he gives us the first comprehensive history of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security and examines why these agencies are so ill equipped to protect us.
The Next Catastrophe is a penetrating reassessment of the very real dangers we face today and what we must do to confront them. Written in a highly accessible style by a renowned systems-behavior expert, this book is essential reading for the twenty-first century. The events of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina--and the devastating human toll they wrought--were only the beginning. When the next big disaster comes, will we be ready?
Customer Reviews:
Too much politics, too little thoughtful analysis.......2007-05-17
Perrow's book, Normal Accidents, is a classic in its field. I purchased The Next Catastrophe assuming that it would be a worthy successor. Boy, was I disappointed. Instead of careful argumentation, Perrow gives political commentary, based on nothing more than his own biases and preconceived notions. Normal Accidents was marred in a few places by clear political bias, but the overall analysis of the book was so well-done that overlooking those few places was easy. This is not true of The Next Catastrophe, in which good analysis and argumentation is hard to find amidst the diatribe. If you are interested in knowing about Perrow's political views, buy this book; otherwise, do not waste your money.
Book Description
Newly discovered scientific proof validating the legends and myths of ancient floods, fires, and weather extremes
• Presents new scientific evidence revealing the cause of the end of the last ice age and the cycles of geological events and species extinctions that followed
• Connects physical data to the dramatic earth changes recounted in oral traditions around the world
• Describes the impending danger from a continuing cycle of catastrophes and extinctions
There are a number of puzzling mysteries in the history of Earth that have yet to be satisfactorily explained by mainstream science: the extinction of the dinosaurs, the vanishing of ancient Indian tribes, the formation of the mysterious Carolina Bays, the disappearance of the mammoths, the sudden ending of the last Ice Age, and the cause of huge underwater landslides that sent massive tsunamis racing across the oceans millennia ago. Eyewitness accounts of these events are chronicled in rich oral traditions handed down through generations of native peoples. The authors’ recent scientific discoveries link all these events to a single cause.
In The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes Richard Firestone, Allen West, and Simon Warwick-Smith present new scientific evidence about a series of prehistoric cosmic events that explains why the last Ice Age ended so abruptly. Their findings validate the ubiquitous legends and myths of floods, fires, and weather extremes passed down by our ancestors and show how these legendary events relate to each other. Their findings also support the idea that we are entering a thousand-year cycle of increasing danger and possibly a new cycle of extinctions.
Customer Reviews:
Have we passed our "Extinct By" Date?.......2007-04-17
This book is about the "Event" that took place about 12,000 years ago that is recorded in myth and legend variously as the Fall of Atlantis and Noah's Flood. Plato describes a destruction that occurred in a day and a night, and the Bible recounts the story of torrential rains and an immense flood in which most of the life on earth perished. There is also a rich body of Native American literature about a worldwide cataclysm of fires, followed by floods and death raining down from the skies. As many as fifty different cultures around the globe record versions of this story, and physicist Firestone, along with his geologist co-authors, have put together a book, based on hard scientific evidence, describing a cosmic chain of events that they believe culminated in the global catastrophe of circa 12,000 years ago. They believe that the Event was triggered by a nearby supernova that occurred 41,000 years ago.
Firestone et al propose that we are still traversing an "extinction cycle" related to that event and that may very well be so, but it may also be true that there is more to the matter.
On March 13, 2005, the UK Observer published an article entitled "Bad news - we are way past our 'extinct by' date" which tells us:
"After analysing the eradication of millions of ancient species, scientists have found that a mass extinction is due any moment now.
"Their research has shown that every 62 million years - plus or minus 3m years - creatures are wiped from the planet's surface in massive numbers. Even worse, scientists have no idea about its source.
"'There is no doubting the existence of this cycle of mass extinctions every 62m years. It is very, very clear from analysis of fossil records,' said Professor James Kirchner, of the University of California, Berkeley. 'Unfortunately, we are all completely baffled about the cause.'"
This part of the article is actually quite disingenuous. It is well known that there are other major extinctions and the cycle is not ONLY every 62 million years! There is also a very strong signal for a 26 million year extinction cycle. The different estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years are due mainly to what the individual researcher chooses as the threshold for naming an extinction event as "major" as well as what set of data he selects as the determinant measure of past diversity. As it happens, the 62 million event data stems mainly from marine fossil evidence. The article goes on to say:
"But what is responsible? Here, researchers ran into problems. They considered the passage of the solar system through gas clouds that permeate the galaxy. These clouds could trigger climatic mayhem. However, there is no known mechanism to explain why the passage might occur only every 62m years.
"Alternatively, the Sun may possess an undiscovered companion star. It could approach the Sun every 62m years, dislodging comets from the outer solar system and propelling them towards Earth. Such a companion star has never been observed, however, and in any case such a lengthy orbit would be unstable, Muller says.
"Or perhaps some internal geophysical cycle triggers massive volcanic activity every 62m years, Muller and Rohde wondered. Plumes from these would surround the planet and lead to a devastating drop in temperature that would freeze most creatures to death.
"Unfortunately, scientists know of no such geological cycle.
"'We have tried everything we can think of to find an explanation for these weird cycles of biodiversity and extinction,' Muller said. 'So far we have failed."
The fact is, the above article doesn't even mention the Pleistocene extinction which is the subject of "The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes," yet a mountain of evidence points to the fact that this extinction was global and catastrophic.
Back in the 1940s Dr. Frank C. Hibben, Prof. of Archeology at the University of New Mexico led an expedition to Alaska to look for human remains. He didn't find human remains; he found miles and miles of icy muck just packed with mammoths, mastodons, and several kinds of bison, horses, wolves, bears and lions. Just north of Fairbanks, Alaska, the members of the expedition watched in horror as bulldozers pushed the half-melted muck into sluice boxes for the extraction of gold. Animal tusks and bones rolled up in front of the blades "like shavings before a giant plane". The carcasses were found in all attitudes of death, most of them "pulled apart by some unexplainable prehistoric catastrophic disturbance."[Hibben, Frank, The Lost Americans (New York: Thomas & Crowell Co. 1946)]
The killing fields stretched for literally hundreds of miles in every direction.[ibid.] There were trees and animals, layers of peat and moss, twisted and tangled and mangled together as though some Cosmic mixmaster sucked them all in circa 12000 years ago, and then froze them instantly into a solid mass. [Sanderson, Ivan T., "Riddle of the Frozen Giants", Saturday Evening Post, No. 39, January 16, 1960.]
Just north of Siberia entire islands are formed of the bones of Pleistocene animals swept northward from the continent into the freezing Arctic Ocean. One estimate suggests that some ten million animals may be buried along the rivers of northern Siberia. Thousands upon thousands of tusks created a massive ivory trade for the master carvers of China, all from the frozen mammoths and mastodons of Siberia. The famous Beresovka mammoth first drew attention to the preserving properties of being quick-frozen when buttercups were found in its mouth.
What kind of terrible event overtook these millions of creatures in a single day? Well, the evidence suggests an enormous tsunami raging across the land, tumbling animals and vegetation together, to be finally quick-frozen for the next 12000 years. But the extinction was not limited to the Arctic, even if the freezing at colder locations preserved the evidence of Nature's rage.
Paleontologist George G. Simpson considers the extinction of the Pleistocene horse in North America to be one of the most mysterious episodes in zoological history, confessing, "no one knows the answer." He is also honest enough to admit that there is the larger problem of the extinction of many other species in America at the same time. [Simpson, George G., Horses, New York: Oxford University Press) 1961] The horse, giant tortoises living in the Caribbean, the giant sloth, the saber-toothed tiger, the glyptodont and toxodon. These were all tropical animals. These creatures didn't die because of the "gradual onset" of an ice age, "unless one is willing to postulate freezing temperatures across the equator, such an explanation clearly begs the question." [Martin, P. S. & Guilday, J. E., "Bestiary for Pleistocene Biologists", Pleistocene Extinction, Yale University, 1967]
Massive piles of mastodon and saber-toothed tiger bones were discovered in Florida. [Valentine, quoted by Berlitz, Charles, The Mystery of Atlantis (New York, 1969)] Mastodons, toxodons, giant sloths and other animals were found in Venezuela quick-frozen in mountain glaciers. Woolly rhinoceros, giant armadillos, giant beavers, giant jaguars, ground sloths, antelopes and scores of other entire species were all totally wiped out at the same time, at the end of the Pleistocene, approximately 12000 years ago.
This event was global. The mammoths of Siberia became extinct at the same time as the giant rhinoceros of Europe; the mastodons of Alaska, the bison of Siberia, the Asian elephants and the American camels. It is obvious that the cause of these extinctions must be common to both hemispheres, and that it was not gradual. A "uniformitarian glaciation" would not have caused extinctions because the various animals would have simply migrated to better pasture. What is seen is a surprising event of uncontrolled violence. [Leonard, R. Cedric, Appendix A in "A Geological Study of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge", Special Paper No. 1 ( Bethany: Cowen Publishing 1979)] In other words, 12000 years ago, something terrible happened - so terrible that life on earth was nearly wiped out in a single day.
Harold P. Lippman admits that the magnitude of fossils and tusks encased in the Siberian permafrost present an "insuperable difficulty" to the theory of uniformitarianism, since no gradual process can result in the preservation of tens of thousands of tusks and whole individuals, "even if they died in winter." [Lippman, Harold E., "Frozen Mammoths", Physical Geology, (New York 1969)] Especially when many of these individuals have undigested grasses and leaves in their belly. Pleistocene geologist William R. Farrand of the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, who is opposed to catastrophism in any form, states: "Sudden death is indicated by the robust condition of the animals and their full stomachs ... the animals were robust and healthy when they died." [Farrand, William R., "Frozen Mammoths and Modern Geology", Science, Vol.133, No. 3455, March 17, 1961] Unfortunately, in spite of this admission, this poor guy seems to have been incapable of facing the reality of worldwide catastrophe represented by the millions of bones deposited all over this planet right at the end of the Pleistocene. Hibben sums up the situation in a single statement: "The Pleistocene period ended in death. This was no ordinary extinction of a vague geological period, which fizzled to an uncertain end. This death was catastrophic and all inclusive." [Hibben, op. cit.]
This is the event that Firestone, West and Warwick-Smith discuss in their book, The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization. They suggest that, as a result of the above mentioned supernova, Planet Earth encountered a massive "swarm" of cometary bodies that nearly destroyed every living thing on Earth about 12000 years ago. They write:
"Until recently, the astronomical mainstream was highly critical of Clube and Napier's giant comet hypothesis. However, the crash of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in 1994 has led to a change in attitudes. The comet, watched by the world's observatories, was seen split into 20 pieces and slam into different parts of the planet over a period of several days. A similar impact on Earth, it hardly needs saying, would have been devastating."
Readers of my Cassiopaea website and the experiment in superluminal communication that I began in 1992 are aware that this experiment finally bore fruit in 1994 on the very day that the fragments of Comet Shoemaker Levy began impacting the planet Jupiter. We find it amusingly synchronous that one of the themes of the Cassiopaean experiment is planetary destruction via a Comet Cluster that cycles through the solar system every 3,600 years as a consequence of the orbit of our Sun's solar Companion, a smaller, dark, Twin Sun. I discuss this and the Carolina Bays in "The Secret History of the World and How to Get Out Alive".
With the idea that there is a Cometary Bombardment Cycle, we have naturally been alert to the fact that the last few years have brought increasing evidence that this theory is the correct one. This evidence includes the fantastic increase in the number of "moons" attached to Jupiter that have so recently been "discovered", as well as the increase in frequency of comets over the past few years, along with the astonishing increase in meteorites and fireballs entering Earth's atmosphere and falling to earth. In some cases, these events have resulted in damage to human beings and property, and one recent case even resulted in death.
The third edition of the university textbook Exploration of the Universe, by George O. Abell, published in 1975, informs us that Jupiter has 9 moons as of 1974. It says:
"The outer seven, however, have rather eccentric orbits, some of which have a large inclination to Jupiter's equator. The four most distant satellites revolve from east to west, contrary to the motions of most of the other objects in the solar system. They may be former minor planets captured by Jupier. [p. 324]"
Please note that Abell is suggesting that some of Jupiter's moons have been captured by Jupiter's gravity.
Now let's time travel back to the future, and see what the latest information tells us about Jupiter's moons:
"Jupiter is now given 63 satellites." Forty-seven of those satellites have been discovered since 1999. What if they weren't there before?
What about Saturn. Our 1975 text tells us that Saturn has 10 satellites. In 2007? Well, there are so many that one source declines to give a precise number!
However, counting the named satellites on the Timeline of discovery of solar system planets and their natural satellites gives us a count of 62, with 41 being discovered since 2000 and another ten in the 80's and 90's.
Moving outward, we come to Uranus, given five satellites in 1975, it now has 28, with ten being discovered in the 1980's, six in the 90's, and 7 since 2000.
Neptune had two satellies in 1975, now it has 13.
The explanation given most often to explain this surge in the numbers of satellites for these planets is that telescopes have gotten better. That is, we can see further, with greater detail, and can therefore find things that we couldn't see before. It is an explanation that makes sense. One small problem with this theory is that the "new" moons of Neptune and Uranus showed up before the new moons of Jupiter and Saturn. One would think that powerful telescopes capable of finding moons as far away as the seventh and eighth planets would have found the hard to see moons of the fifth and sixth first.
Another possible explanation, and one which fits with new moons appearing around Nepture and Uranus prior to appearing around Jupiter and Saturn, is that these new moons, or some of them, are objects that have been trapped into orbits around these planets only recently, that they were captured by the gravity of these planets and removed from the incoming comet cloud. Passing the orbits of the outer planets first, they would arrive at the inner planets afterwards.
We also note that the much derided Immanuel Velikovsky, in his book Worlds in Collision, gives a time frame of nine years as the time it would take for a comet to cover the distance between Jupiter and Earth. The new Jovian moons were discovered beginning in the late nineties.
Do the math.
Anybody with eyes and ears and a bit of scientific knowledge can look around and see that something is going on "out there". The problem is, of course, that the masses of humanity are so distracted by all the concerns of everyday life - many of which are quite serious nowadays, especially the threat of nuclear war brought to us by George W. Bush and the Ziocons - that most of them haven't got a clue that they probably don't have to worry about Global Warming. (And just because I say that people don't have to worry about Global Warming doesn't mean they don't have to worry!)The evidence that is all around us nowadays even helps us to realize that there was nothing really magical or mysterious about the story of Noah.
When I read Velikovsky's "Worlds in Collision" that I realized that the "plagues of the Exodus" was very likely a description of a bombardment of the Earth by rocks and bolides from space. Velikovsky, of course, attributed it to an errant planet Venus that came careening into the solar system just as Firestone et al attribute it to a supernova 41,000 years ago. The Cyclic Comet Cluster related to a Companion Sun explanation is a better fit to all the data, though a supernova could also be involved as well as a "Newcomer" to the Solar System.
In any event, what is perfectly clear is that the story of the Exodus and Noah and the story of Atlantis are apocryphal: many groups of people survived the event of 12,000 years ago here and there, and very likely many of them survived because they realized what was coming. As Firestone, West and Warwick-Smith write:
"It begins with meteors failing like raindrops, a few here and there. Perhaps a few hit the sun, provoking large solar flares. The solar flares provoke colourful auroras even in the daytime sky. Then the day of the comets arrive. From horizon to horizon, growing larger every second, they streaked into the atmosphere, lighting up brighter than the sun."
In the final pages of the final pages of The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization, Firestone et al write:
"If you want more evidence for what happened to the mammoths, you need only to look up at the clear night sky. In almost any month, you can see shooting stars from one of many meteor showers. Nearly every fiery streak you see is the tiny remnant of some giant comet that broke up into smaller pieces. Of course, most of those pieces are microscopic, but their parent comet was not - it was enormous. Astronomers know that, even today, hidden in those cosmic clouds of tiny remnants, there are some huge chunks of comet pieces. We pass through their clouds every year like clockwork, so eventually we will collide with some of bigger pieces.
"In 1990, Victor Clube, an astrophysicist, and Bill Napier, an astronomer, published The Cosmic Winter, a book in which they describe performing orbital analyses of several of the meteor showers that hit Earth every year. Using sophisticated computer software, they carefully looked backward for thousands of years, tracing the orbits of comets, asteroids, and meteor showers until they uncovered something astounding. Many meteor showers are related to one another, such as the Taurids, Perseids, Piscids, and Orionids. In addition, some very large cosmic objects are related: the comets Encke and Rudnicki, the asteroids Oljato, Hephaistos, and about 100 others. Every one of those 100-plus cosmic bodies is at least a half-mile in diameter and some are miles wide. And what do they have in common? According to those scientists, every one is the offspring of the same massive comet that first entered our system less than 20,000 years ago! Clube and Napier calculated that, to account for all the debris they found strewn throughout our solar system, the original comet had to have been enormous.
"So was this our megafauna killer? All the known facts fit. The comet may have ridden in on the supernova wave, [or was knocked into the solar system by the Companion Sun - LKJ] then gone into orbit around the sun less than 20,000 years ago; or, if it was already here, the supernova debris wave may have knocked it into an Earth-crossing orbit. Either way, any time we look up into the night sky at a beautiful, dazzling display of shooting stars, there is an ominous side to that beauty. We are very likely seeing the leftover debris from a monster comet that finished off 40 million animals 12 to 13,000 years ago.
"Clube and Napier also calculated that, because of subtle changes in the orbits of Earth and the remaining cosmic debris, Earth crosses through the densest part of the giant comet clouds about every 2 ,000 to 4,000 years [or 3,600 years?]. When we look at climate and ice-core records, we can see that pattern. For example the iridium, helium-3, nitrate, ammonium, and other key measurements seem to rise and fall in tandem, producing noticeable peaks around 18,000, 16,000, 13,000, 9,000, 5,000, and 2,000 years ago. In that pattern of peaks every 2,000 to 4,000 years, we may be seeing the "calling cards" of the returning megacomet.
"Fortunately, the oldest peaks were the heaviest bombardments, and things have been getting quieter since then, as the remains of the comet break up into even smaller pieces The danger is not past, however. Some of the remaining miles-wide pieces are big enough to do serious damage to our cities, climate, and global economy. Clube and Napier (1984) predicted that in the year 2000 and continuing for 400 years, Earth would enter another dangerous time in which the planet's changing orbit would bring us into a potential collision course with the densest parts of the clouds containing some very large debris. Twenty years after their prediction, we have just now moved into the danger zone. It is a widely accepted fact that some of those large objects are in Earth-crossing orbits at this very moment, and the only uncertainty is whether they will miss us, as is most likely, or whether they will crash into some part of our planet. [...]
"We are years away from being able to control our own destiny as it relates to supernovae and giant comets and asteroids, but scientists are working on solutions. This is not a high priority with the world's governments, however, which typically prefer to confront terrestrial threats rather than cosmic ones. To prevent one of those giant objects from smashing into us, collectively, we spend about $10 to $20 million annually, an amount less than the cost of one or two sophisticated fighter jets. Almost no money is spent trying to detect imminent supernovae [or comets or asteroids].
"Our politicians are seriously underestimating these severe threats, which are capable of ending our species, just as they snuffed out the mammoths a mere 13,000 years ago, only an eyeblink in cosmic terms. There are few threats of that magnitude facing us today. The survival of the human race is not seriously threatened by the avian flu, Al Qaeda attacks, the end of the Age of Oil, monster hurricanes, giant earthquakes, or enormous tsunamis; if any of those occur, most of us will continue with our lives. Furthermore, nothing on that list is broadly accepted as having caused worldwide extinctions in the past. The same cannot be said about supernovae and massive [cometary] impacts. Those two cosmic events are implicated in many of the largest extinctions on our planet over the last millions of years. Fortunately, we survived them, but many of our fellow species did not. Humankind might not survive the next one. It seems reasonable to forgo several of our military fighter jets each year to decrease our chances of being" nuked" from space by a supernova or a comet."
So, indeed, perhaps humanity has passed its "extinct by" date and, just as it was in the days of Noah...
"They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
"Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all."
More like 3.9 stars--generally liked 2/3 of it.......2007-03-17
Gad I love/hate books like this. I think these guys are 75% clearly onto something but the book is not the best-written (my guess as to one reason why it ended up with a dinky New-Age-ish publisher), some of the linking ideas are a bit muddy, and I'm not thrilled with the logic of supernova radiation bath (OK), followed by supernova debris wave (OK), followed by (a stretch to me) comet impacts.
Much better linkage needed to be established between the supernova and the comet appearances other than "they were knocked out of orbit" by the supernova--that's kitchen table physics; the kind of thinking about how the "out there" physical world works based on small scale home observation. If that was in fact the case, then the comet(s) could have come from nearly any direction, but the authors make minor hay of the idea that the comet(s) came from the same direction in the sky as the alleged supernova. The physics of orbital dynamics is not the same thing as the physics of making shots in a game of pool (meaning if you get your pool cue, the moon, and the Earth all in a line, and tap the orbiting moon with your cue, it's not going to sail straight at the Earth).
Oddly, the book by a certified expert in orbital dynamics, astronomer Tom Van Flandern ("Dark Matter, Missing Planets, and New Comets" from another metaphysical rinky-dink press) maintains that the comets are debris produced by the explosion of a gas-giant planet within our solar system. All comet orbits, he claims, roughly trace back to a single point of origin. His is yet another frustrating book full of stupendous insights and appalling credibility-blowing observations (he doesn't rule out the possibility that aliens blew up the planet!). Do some of these writers intentionally sabotage their own work?
Otherwise, the authors of this book make note of a lot of in-the-face oddities that other scientists should have been all over ages ago, like the Carolina bay "craters" (the accepted theories for their formation almost sound like pseudo-science) and the "Black Mat"--a layer of organic material that, beneath a certain level in the soil, seems to blanket nearly everything in North America, and dates to the extinction of the mega-fauna 13,000 years ago. We all know mainstream scientists are conservative, but to ignore this "Mat" and its potential implications one would have to be fossilized.
So you should probably pick this up and add it to the stack of variable-quality outsider Ancient Catastrophe books. It's better and more straight-up than nearly all of them. The authors need to push the supernova of 40,000 years ago theory; it's well-argued and palatable for stone-sober science types. They're over their heads on the comet impact idea for 13,000 years ago, though. Something big happened back then (at least that's what all the natives tell us), and it may have been a comet, but other ideas need to be examined and worked out more comprehensively.
To conclude on a sour note, few legit scientists seem to read these things (most won't jeopardize their reputations by even being seen with copies), and they'll instead get read and critiqued generally by people looking for Atlantis, or ley lines, or ancient astronauts. In other words the biggest fans will probably contribute to keeping the material at the margins of acceptance or consideration. The atrocious cover and title alone will keep this forever out of the hands of academics--it's up there with Chris Dunn's "The Giza Power Station," an amazing and thought-provoking book with cover art so insufferably knuckleheaded that I'm ashamed to show it to people.
Marketing.
You can tell a "soft science"..........2007-03-16
You can tell a "soft science" when it's central dogmas can be permanently disrupted by a physicist messing around in his spare time. The best example is how you can still detect the "post-traumatic-stress" in the voices of paleontologists even decades after "Comet Alvarez" crashed their party. Hey, they had a century head-start and like Ted Turner says, they should be prepared to "Lead, follow, or get out of the way..."
Firestone and his colleagues may be initiating a repeat along the same lines as Walter Alvarez and his stalwarts did with the K/T extinction back in the 1980's. While this book has it's minor flaws, there seems to be enough evidence here to foresee the demise of the overkill theory of megafaunal extinction. And not a minute too soon. As a big fan of Vine Deloria's Red Earth, White Lies, I found this both predictable and highly entertaining. So, just as Dr. Alvarez found pieces of the "smoking bullet" spread around the planet, so also Firestone and his colleagues have found impressive evidence sprayed out onto vast areas of North America at the exact end of the so-called Clovis era. Mark your calender and start counting how many decades it takes the overkill advocates to die off...
Yet, evidence, and interpretation-of-evidence are two different things. The evidence convinces that the Clovis era and it's embattled beasties came to a sudden demise by an extraterrestrial cause. But what was that cause? Firestone and crew interpret the evidence in ways that suggest a nearby supernovae set the whole deadly chain of events in motion. Even if the evidence is solid for a group of related cataclysms, is a supernove, per se, the best or only explanation? I have only gotten 3/4's of the way through the book and I am not yet wholly sold on that. One can take a leisurely look at pictures of the Crab nebula and ponder the 6 light year diameter remnant, 6300 light years distant, as it expands at 600 miles per second. Would such an event deliver enough mass in particles to fill the entire expanding spherical shell so densely that, after traveling hundreds of light years.... it could still plausibly deliver swarms of impactors to earth to form the Carolina Bays? It seems that the surface area of the spherical shell would be too great. Could smaller particles enter the atmosphere fast enough to embed themselves in Mammoth tusks, without also having had enough velocity to burn up much higher above ground before they could reach the surface? It seems there is something wrong here, but perhaps the explanation is that the particles found embedded in the tusks were like secondary cosmic rays: just fragments of much larger chunks of hypervelocity bodies that did detonate at high altitudes. Who knows? Maybe the particles found embedded in the tree trunks at the Tunguska ground zero will be instructive here.
If a supernovae did the dirty deed, we should be able to find the remnant, or at very least a huge cavity in the interstellar gases within our neighborhood of the Milky Way. If, on the other hand, it is implausible that a supernovae could deliver such mass and disruption to our solar system at Firestone's proposed distance of hundreds of light years, than perhaps a more modest cataclysm at closer range might better explain the evidence. Is there anything in the solar sytem that suggests such an explosive event? Perhaps, but the time scales do not jive. Pardon the digression but I refer to Thom VanFlandern's theory on the origin of comets. If Thom VanFlandern is correct, something very interesting happened in the solar system about 3.2 million years ago. Whatever could have caused that event, could also have deposited alot of hell on earth, but again, the time scales do not jive.
So, the book is an A+ for the evidence it presents, and a solid "A" for the theory of causation. This is a must-read book. It is another wonderful proof of the notion that the difference between dinosaurs and men might turn out to be due to the work of physicists. Not to suggest that "soft" scientists are like dinosaurs...but you know, it might just turn out that way....once again.
A "must-read" book on a massive cosmic event.......2006-12-16
"The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes" is a must-read for any thinking and aware person. First, the evidence amassed is overwhelming that an ET/ELE (extraterrestrial/extinction level event) took place at some point in the past, culminating in a massive event at about 12,500 yrs BP. The authors of the book, most specifically Allen West and Richard Firestone, and I all totally agree something happened that was cosmic, catastrophic, and sudden. Firestone and I do not disagree, but rather are dealing with different levels of causality. For instance, whatever happened started with the Big Bang. Much later in time, there is no question but that supernovae did take place relatively near our solar system and those supernovae, or even one, must have had some effect on our sun ranging from ~ 0.1% to X%. I am focused on the immediate causation for what happened at about 12,500 yrs BP, and personally I see no way out of concluding that that event involved a massive and lethal neutron event, as you can read on a paper entitled, "Response to Comments" on Bob Kobres website, which makes the evidence clear.
Considering all of the available evidence that involves a massive neutron event, inverse radiocarbon resets from 14C being produced in situ, and the worldwide pattern as noted in the piece above, my own conviction is that only a giant solar flare could have done or caused all that happened, and it was over in one very, very bad day. If readers take some time to investigate giant solar flares, they will find the necessary conditions: antimatter to obliterate much of the atmosphere, entrapped neutrons in the flare's magnetic field, and a relatively short time span of less than one earth day which fits the evidence completely.
There also is a tantalizing clue in the book that indicates "they saw it coming" and got out. I believe my own view, which is that Paleo-Indians travelled by boat (probably skin), now is the prevailing view which would explain the lack of any human remains at all, particularly teeth. About the only thing they could have seen coming was a giant flare manifested by greatly increased solar activity. Flares arrive at varying speeds.
Radiocarbon dating does work, but the evidence at hand strongly suggests (if not proves) that before ~ 12,500 yrs BP nobody can say much of anything at all about "real dates" because of the production of 14C in a younger direction. This raises the interesting possibility, suggested as far back as the 1960's, that Paleo-Indian actually is a Mousterian (European) tradition. Mousterian toolkits remained virtually unchanged for about 200,000 years (depending on which sources indicate what dates) while later prehistoric toolkits persisted (in terms of style) for perhaps ~ 500 yrs. Most importantly, again as noted in the web-published piece, if the dates for Lewisville are as old as the most recent radiocarbon dates suggest, and lignite was NOT in the firepits), then as two world-class scholars have concluded that the only difference between European Solutrean and American Paleo-Indian are identical with the once exception of "fluting" not present in Solutrean, then the most logical conclusion is that European Solutrean derived from a longstanding American Mousterian tradition when those American Mousterians (and I am NOT saying Neanderthals) crossed back across the North Atlantic. In that event, which I believe to be the case, we (or I) are/am ruffling feathers but so be it.
One thing is certain about this book. The evidence at hand did not come from dedicated work and enormous salaries and expenditures at laboratories and universities, but rather from a dedicated and somewhat obsessive small group of people both professional and avocational who spent many years and very much of their own monies at this project. In and of itself, this is a "must read" for anyone in the world who wants to know how much, if not most scientific discovery, actually comes about.
William H. Topping, Ph.D.
This well-written book reads like a captivating detective story and, in my view, is the best available popular account of the gr.......2006-10-15
Availing themselves of various sciences and mythology, the authors of this volume postulate a cosmic event--a supernova--that occurred 41,000 years ago and culminated some 13,000 years ago in sudden warming and the fifth mass extinction. Like other investigators, they believe that humanity remembers this catastrophe in its legends.
They present the available evidence in a systematic fashion, which makes it easy to follow their argument. This well-written book reads like a captivating detective story and, in my view, is the best available popular account of the great ice-age calamity that significantly shaped humanity's cultural evolution.
Copyright ©2006 by Georg Feuerstein. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in any form requires prior permission from Traditional Yoga Studies at www.traditionalyogastudies.com
Book Description
Catastrophe Modeling: A New Approach to Managing Risk is the first book that systematically analyzes how catastrophe models can be used for assessing and managing risks of extreme events. It focuses on natural disaster risk, but also discusses the management of terrorism risk. A unique feature of this book is the involvement of three leading catastrophe modeling firms, AIR Worldwide, EQECAT, and Risk Management Solutions, who examine the role of catastrophe modeling in rate setting, portfolio management and risk financing.
Using data from three model cities (Oakland, CA, Long Beach, CA and Miami/Dade County, FLA), experts from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania examine the role of catastrophe modeling to develop risk management strategies for reducing and spreading the losses from future disasters. Given the uncertainties associated with terrorism the book points out the opportunities for utilizing catastrophe models to set insurance rates and to examine public-private partnerships for providing financial assistance in the event of a terrorist attack.
"This book fills a critical need in setting forth the role of modern risk analysis in managing catastrophe risk. There is no comparable reference work for this important subject area. The book is well written and well organized. It contains contributions from many of the most distinguished experts in the fields of risk analysis and risk management. It strikes a good balance between the technical aspects of the subject and the practical aspects of decision making."
"This book is strongly recommended for individuals who must make decisions regarding the management of impacts of catastrophe risks including those in both the public and private sector."
Wilfred D. Iwan
Professor of Applied Mechanics, Emeritus
Director, Earthquake Engineering Research Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
"The authors have captured the essence of catastrophe modeling: its value, its utility and its limitations. Every practitioner in the catastrophe risk field should read this book."
Franklin W. Nutter, President
Reinsurance Association of America
Customer Reviews:
Disaster insurance rate determination (guessing or otherwise).......2005-08-11
An excellent survey of disaster insurance premium estimation. The volume is written by a variety of contributors, but they follow an outline predetermined by the editors. The material starts with an introduction to natural disasters (hurricanes and earthquakes), then reviews the primary 'technique' recommended by the authors: using GIS databases and sophisticated computer models to predict disaster costs (disaster models). Unfortunately, the details of running these models are hard to communicate without giving the reader access to an interface of a sample model.
Despite this difficulty, there is an excellent chapter detailing the legal battles between the insurance industry and consumer advocates. The battle was fought after the Northridge, CA earthquake, and the GIS data and disaster models were the heavy artillery employed by the insurance brokers. The authors review difficult issues regarding 'fair premium price' determination for regulated retail insurance policies. The purchasers of disaster insurance tend to see the brokers collecting risk-free profits. The brokers counter that the Northridge earthquake insurance payouts exceed all the premiums paid in California for over 20 years. Elsewhere the authors mention hurricane Andrew insurance payouts exceeded all insurance payments ever collected in Florida.
The final chapter covers 'terrorism insurance', and represents an excellent survey of issues facing the insurance industry after September 11. One of the interesting issues raised in the mismatch between industry assessment of 'fair premium' and public assumptions that a 9/11 type disaster could not happen, again. At least this is what sale of terrorism insurance demonstrates.
The book will probably suggest more questions than it answers. In particular, the chapter on terrorism raises interesting issues about 'governmental' coverage versus 'private' coverage. At a certain level, victims of terrorism can expect taxpayers to 'aid' those suffering from the disaster. 'Aid' is another term for insurance, but 'coverage' is universal and payments hidden in various taxes. Coming up with fair 'retail terrorism insurance premiums' seems beyond the capabilities of the US insurance system. The problems are structural and won't go away any time soon.
Catastrophe Modeling: A New Approach to Managing Risk .......2005-07-24
Excellent choice to educate user community -- topic well presented to lead "those less comfortable with statistics" through the Catastrophe Risk modeling history and process
Excellent!.......2005-04-03
This book covers so many great topics that it is impossible to go into all of them in an amazon review. Suffice to say, for anyone in the reinsurance business, or anyone interested in risk management in general, this is simply a terrific book. The subject matter is dense, but the writing is lucid and engaging. Nicely done!
Book Description
Catastrophic risks are much greater than is commonly appreciated. Collision with an asteroid, runaway global warming, voraciously replicating nanomachines, a pandemic of gene-spliced smallpox launched by bioterrorists, and a world-ending accident in a high-energy particle accelerator, are among the possible extinction events that are sufficiently likely to warrant careful study. How should we respond to events that, for a variety of psychological and cultural reasons, we find it hard to wrap our minds around? Posner argues that realism about science and scientists, innovative applications of cost-benefit analysis, a scientifically literate legal profession, unprecedented international cooperation, and a pragmatic attitude toward civil liberties are among the keys to coping effectively with the catastrophic risks.
Customer Reviews:
The Greatest Problems of the 21st Century...Solved!.......2007-03-05
With the emerging trends in healthcare, many of today's young children will be alive in 2100. This would be a remarkable achievement.
Then again, sometime in the next 100 years perhaps the entire human race including all today's children will die violent deaths.
In Catastrophe, US Appeals Court Judge Richard Posner shows that humanity enters the 21st century with a greater chance of annihilation than at any time in human history. Mankind faces new perils that our institutions are not addressing.
Posner does not just warn of dangers. He proposes solutions we can enact today that would reduce risk and improve world security for the next 100 years.
His facts are well researched; his analysis is well thought out. Unfortunately, his writing is heavy. He uses large amounts of hard science, legal theory, and economic analysis.
His major theme is that rapid scientific progress has created perils that our leaders are not addressing.
In a short book, he addresses a large number of doomsday scenarios that would otherwise require years of study.
None of the risks he discusses are likely to happen this year or in any particular year. However, as a group they pose a disturbing risk when looked at over a hundred years.
He collects these horrific events into four groups
1) Natural disasters - This includes asteroids striking the earth, pandemic disease, and huge volcanoes and earthquakes. These have always been around and have caused mass destruction in the past.
The other risks are new to the 21st century.
2) Perils caused by Economic Growth - This includes global warming, resource depletion, loss of biodiversity, and population growth. Posner looks critically at each.
3) Scientific Accidents - These include accidents with robots, artificial intelligence, robotic war machines, genetically modified crops, nanotechnology, and particle accelerators, These all sound like science fiction but Posner uses credible evidence to paint scenarios on how each could destroy the entire human race.
4) Intentional catastrophes - These include nuclear war, biological terror, cyber terror, surveillance, concealment, and encryption. His discussion of biological terror is especially disturbing. He cites evidence that nations, terrorist groups, or even crazed Unabomber type individuals may soon be able to create life forms that can kill billions of people.
This is frightening but Posner does not stop here. He proposes solutions we can work on today to reduce the risk of each catastrophe.
His solutions attempt to reduce each hazard while impairing our current standard of living as little as possible. Each proposal is painful and will disturb many people.
1) Fiscal solutions - He proposes increasing taxes and spending on science to address natural disasters and global warming. He uses economic tools to show that our current policies are inadequate to address these risks. His solutions will lead to a reduced standard of living for all of us.
2) Regulatory solutions -These include an international EPA, specialized science courts, a center for catastrophic risk assessment and response, an international bio-weaponry agency, and catastrophic risk review of new projects. They require international cooperation to work. These proposals will be controversial because they would require national governments like the US, Russia, and China to obey international agencies like the UN. How likely is this?
3) Reduction of civil liberties - As a judge, Posner is careful to defend the US tradition of human rights. However he questions whether the civil liberties of Western societies can continue.
With nuclear or bio-terror, we cannot afford to allow a single mistake. One crazed person can kill millions or perhaps all of us. Given this threat, should we restrict the right of unstable persons to learn dangerous technologies? Can we extend a right to privacy to people with the know how to develop viruses that can kill the entire human race? Should we profile people from certain areas of the world? Does free speech allow us to publish how to make nuclear weapons? Is there a role for torture and threats to families? Being a judge, he explains these ideas clearly and soberly.
4) Education - Posner's solutions are weakest in this areas. He does not trust generalist judges to adjudicate any case involving scientific matters but proposes a special court with judges trained in science.
In an early chapter he shows how the scientific ignorance of some people and the obsession with scientific progress of others work together to make these risks worse. However, he does not recommend improved science education for Presidents, legislators, journalists, or the general public--only judges.
Most important he does not recommend changing science education to emphasize the dangers and ethical responsibilities of scientists. Is it not important for everyone trained in science to understand the danger of what they could achieve and the responsibility to abide by ethical standards? Posner does not mention this.
In a short book, Judge Posner has done an outstanding service in explaining the most important issues confronting us in the 21st century and how they can be solved. However, his ideas should be viewed as intial ideas to stir a public debate not as final solutions. For our children's sake, I encourage everyone to do the heavy research needed to read the book and become active in working toward the best solutions.
OK Survey, but focused for attorneys & politicos.......2006-12-24
I purchased the book looking for interesting insights on catastrophes. I have to say I did not expand my knowledge of catastrophes much by reading the book. I did expand my knowledge of the relation between our legal/political systems and catastrophic defense/scientific research.
I thought Posner did a good job surveying different catastrophes and assigning rough estimations to them. However, I felt the key point of his book was promoting more attorneys learning about science so an intelligent discusssion could be made. I agree with the point...but it was such a recurring theme, it became dull for me, since I am not an attorney.
I had not read a book by Posner before. He is a judge, and I felt it read like a judge wrote it. I.e. in most areas he was very careful to be impartial. But then occasionally he would make a blanket opinion without any substantiation and move on as if he had proved some point. You can see examples of this in the other reviews below. I'll only point out I had different examples.
If you are soft skinned, conservative and liberal alike will probably find points of offense in the book. And I guess that is what surprised me the most, that this is a political book, not a scientific one.
A farrago of fear and frustration.......2005-07-02
The cliche of fearing only those who are afraid surely holds true for this book. Posner, a judge, wants lawyers to sit in judgement of which research should go forward and which curtailed. He has lined up a string of threats we face in terms of "catastrophic" loss of human life. There are bolides cruising in space eager to smash into our planet and repeat on us what one did to the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Physicists tinkering with subatomic particles could trigger a reaction that would shrink the Earth to a sphere 100 metres across. "Bioterrorism" is the next thrust from "America's" off-shore enemies. What to do to counter this litany of disasters? He insists we need a policy to address each of them.
Posner analyses the various challenges to continued human existence. For each threat there is a "risk assessment" examining the probabilities of its occurring. From the assessment, there is a "cost-benefit" calculation to determine how much to spend to prevent the catastrophe. How likely is the impact of another asteroid extinguishing much or all of human life? How much need we spend to deflect it? What is the true cost of the Kyoto protocol? Posner puts dollar values on each of these in terms of likelihood of the event transpiring and the cost of countering it.
Significantly, Posner posits the threats and their solutions to his countrymen. These are "American" problems and must be dealt with in an "American" environment. He patronisingly grants some UN agency involvement on a few issues, but these are limited to areas the UN is already dealing with or ones the USA has disdained. The British pre-emption of interest in rogue asteroid is given a nod, then passed over. Keeping the focus on what the USA must do in countering, Posner ignores the element of his society that must accept or reject these numbers and the costs involved. Even the most clumsy (clumsiest) estimate of cost per taxpayer would have given this analysis some basis in reality. Posner, however, must suspect that the figure would likely be too high for taxpayers to cope with. He concedes the point in his claim that the costs of adhering to Kyoto would be disproportionately high for his countrymen.
There are so many inconsistencies and self-contradictions in this book they defy listing here. He condemns the Kyoto Protocol as too restrictive on one hand and costing the USA too much on the other. He ignores the fact that this Protocol is a beginning, not an end. He also bypasses the reality of his own country being the world's biggest consumer of resources and exporter of greenhouse gases. He condemns foreign students who return to home countries and urges strengthening of restrictions on what they're allowed to study. This in the face of his braggadocio about the high levels of American science and education. That these departing foreign students are taking expertise to solve problems in their own lands seems to have eluded him. He rants about keeping foreign students away from "lethal toxins" and ignores the number of these that occur naturally and cause death or disfigurement in humans and livestock - even in the technologically superior USA. How many "enemies" would be generated by the constraints he proposes? Finally, how he expects lawyers to gain enough expertise in science to sit in judgement of which research should go forward in a nation unable to come to grips with natural selection remains an enigma. It's commendable that Posner raises the list of threats the entire planet faces. His chauvinist solutions bear little relation to the reality of today's world. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
"Preparing" For The Future.......2005-03-21
Looking out for future risk into the future. For example, asteroids pose a long-term risk hundreds and thousands of years into the future. We have the technology now to map asteroids and safeguard our future. To a large extent this is not being done. There is a lack of scientific enthusiasm to do this.
Global warming is another topic of interest. Glaciers are melting right now. The gravity of the problem is increasing. However, it would be very expensive to do anything about it. So, not much is being done to correct the problem. Even if we reduce emissions into the atmosphere, the build-up is cumulative so that the problem increases even with reduced emisssions. Heavy taxes on CO2 emissions would be scientifically helpful, but politically impossible.
Scientists tend to be either too pessimistic or too optimistic regarding the future. The reality, actually, is somewhere in the middle. Yet, the risks tend to be misstated.
How does the marketplace respond to future risks? Reinsurance companies are very concerned about global warming. The risk is difficult to quantify. Global warming will effect the weather in the future.
The author talks about the risks of terrorism. His position is that terrorism is very difficult to prevent. Our borders may be too porous.
The author covers possible future disasters in this book which include biodiversity loss, sudden global warming, bioterrorists, asteroid impacts, and nuclear meltdowns. The core problem in dealing with these extinction threats is the need to spend large amounts of present resources for speculative future benefits.
Science (C-Span 353/1)
Not a Dog in these Catastrophes.......2005-02-06
Great Book, thoughtful and somewhat idiosyncratic analysis of how we should think about and respond to low probability but very large consequence events.
Works very well paired up with Robert Shillers book "Macro Markets"
Disaster Relief
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The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It
The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
When the Rivers Run Dry: Water--The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century
