Kolbert

Ultimately it doesn't matter whether you "believe" in climate change, said Elizabeth Kolbert, because it's happening anyway.

"I am not a scientist, but I find it increasingly hard to find a serious scientist to debate this one," said Kolbert, a writer for New Yorker magazine and the author of the book "Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change."

Over the past year or so the debate about global warming has changed, she said in a recent interview.

"The conversation has moved on and not a moment too soon," said Kolbert, who will speak at a free lecture Thursday at UC Santa Barbara's Campbell Hall as part of the campus's Global Warming Science & Society series.

Stacks of her book have been given out at the two previous lectures in the series. More than 3,000 have been handed out to students and community members to spark a communitywide discussion of the issue. Ventura-based Patagonia bought 1,000 to give to its employees, the UCSB campus bookstore discounted the book and more still have been included as part of coursework for various classes.

Gene Lucas, the university's executive vice chancellor, said the intent was to spark discussion.

"This is an effort to integrate our campus learning environment by encouraging faculty, staff, students and community members to read a contemporary book and engage in discourse and activities evoked by the subject matter," Lucas said in a letter to the campus community. Kolbert, who lives in Massachusetts and is the mother of three, said she welcomed the idea.

The book communicates the sometimes complicated science and history of climate change. It was spun off from a series of articles she wrote in 2005 for the New Yorker.

Kolbert's field notes come from her travels to Alaska, Iceland, Greenland and parts of Europe to document how the changes in climate are already drastically altering the world.

In the Netherlands, where the rising sea level could inundate much of the country, Kolbert found the government marketing homes that are made to float when waters flood the countryside. She talked to Inupiat villagers in Shismaref, Alaska, where sea ice has melted, exposing the island to storms and waves and cutting them off from their traditional hunting practices. The town is being moved inland.

She talked to scientists who on an expedition on the Arctic ice sheets could not find the thick perennial and stable ice. She looks at the demise of a small butterfly in England and a toad in Costa Rica.

But she makes the point that she could have gone almost anywhere.

"This book is about watching the world change," Kolbert wrote. "Such is the impact of global warming that I could have gone to hundreds if not thousands of other places from Siberia to Austrian Alps to the great Barrier Reef to the South African fynbos (grasslands) to document its effects."

The implications of her book at times appear overwhelming.

"To a certain extent I think that's good," Kolbert said. "I don't want to absolve people, myself included."

Without being Pollyannaish, she said there are things people can do to reduce their own impact changing to energy-saving light bulbs, using public transportation when possible, or hanging clothes out to dry instead of using a dryer, for instance.

"But in the case of global warming, I don't have my own 10-point plan," she said. "I can only tell you that if we want to tackle this we have to drastically reduce our carbon emission. That's based on the contention of thousands of scientists."