The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016 Read online

  Contents

  * * *

  Title Page

  Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Introduction

  CHELSEA BIONDOLILLO. Back to the Land

  BRYAN CHRISTY. Tracking Ivory

  HELENE COOPER. They Helped Erase Ebola in Liberia. Now Liberia Is Erasing Them.

  GRETEL EHRLICH. Rotten Ice

  ROSE EVELETH. Why Are Sports Bras So Terrible?

  AMANDA GEFTER. The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic

  ROSE GEORGE. A Very Naughty Little Girl

  GABRIELLE GLASER. The False Gospel of Alcoholics Anonymous

  ANTONIA JUHASZ. Thirty Million Gallons Under the Sea

  ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN. The Bed-Rest Hoax

  ELIZABETH KOLBERT. The Siege of Miami

  KEA KRAUSE. What’s Left Behind

  ROBERT KUNZIG. The Will to Change

  AMY LEACH. The Modern Moose

  APOORVA MANDAVILLI. The Lost Girls

  CHARLES C. MANN. Solar, Eclipsed

  EMMA MARRIS. Return of the Wild

  SARAH MASLIN NIR. Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers

  MADDIE OATMAN. Attack of the Killer Beetles

  STEPHEN ORNES. The Whole Universe Catalog

  RINKU PATEL. Bugged

  OLIVER SACKS. My Periodic Table

  KATHRYN SCHULZ. The Really Big One

  GAURAV RAJ TELHAN. Begin Cutting

  KATIE WORTH. Telescope Wars

  Contributors’ Notes

  Other Notable Science and Nature Writing of 2015

  Read More from The Best American Series®

  About the Editors

  Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

  Introduction copyright © 2016 by Amy Stewart

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  The Best American Science and Nature Writing™ is a trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. The Best American Series® is a registered trademark of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the proper written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. With the exception of nonprofit transcription in Braille, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is not authorized to grant permission for further uses of copyrighted selections reprinted in this book without the permission of their owners. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein. Address requests for permission to make copies of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt material to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

  www.hmhco.com

  ISSN 1530-1508

  ISBN 978-0-544-74899-6

  Cover design by Christopher Moisan © Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  Cover photograph © Science Photo Library/SuperStock

  eISBN 978-0-544-74964-1

  v1.0916

  “Back to the Land” by Chelsea Biondolillo. First published in Orion, March–April 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Chelsea Biondolillo. Reprinted by permission of Chelsea Biondolillo.

  “Tracking Ivory” by Bryan Christy. First published in National Geographic, September 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Bryan Christy. Reprinted by permission of Bryan Christy.

  “They Helped Erase Ebola in Liberia, Now Liberia Is Erasing Them” by Helene Cooper. First published in the New York Times, December 9, 2015. © 2015 by the New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the copyright laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this content without express written permission is prohibited.

  “Rotten Ice: Traveling by Dogsled in the Melting Arctic” by Gretel Ehrlich. First published in Harper’s Magazine, April 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Harper’s Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduced from the April issue by special permission.

  “Why Are Sports Bras So Terrible?” by Rose Eveleth. First published on Racked.com, October 29, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Racked.com. Reprinted by permission of Vox Media, Inc.

  “The Man Who Tried to Redeem the World with Logic” by Amanda Gefter. First published in Nautilus, February 5, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Nautilus. Reprinted by permission of Nautilus.

  “A Very Naughty Little Girl” by Rose George. First published in Longreads, March 10, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Rose George. Reprinted by permission of Rose George.

  “The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous” by Gabrielle Glaser. First published in The Atlantic, April 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Gabrielle Glaser. Reprinted by permission of Gabrielle Glaser.

  “Thirty Million Gallons Under the Sea” by Antonia Juhasz. First published in Harper’s Magazine, June 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Harper’s Magazine. All rights reserved. Reproduced from the June issue by special permission.

  “The Bed-Rest Hoax” by Alexandra Kleeman. First published in Harper’s Magazine, December 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Alexandra Kleeman. Reprinted by permission of Harper’s Magazine.

  “The Siege of Miami” by Elizabeth Kolbert. First published in The New Yorker, December 21 and 28, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Elizabeth Kolbert. Reprinted by permission of Elizabeth Kolbert.

  “What’s Left Behind” by Kea Krause. First published in The Believer, Fall 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Kea Krause. Reprinted by permission of Kea Krause.

  “The Will to Change” by Robert Kunzig. First published in National Geographic, November 2015. Copyright © 2015 by National Geographic Society. Reprinted by permission.

  “The Modern Moose” by Amy Leach. First published in Ecotone, Spring 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Amy Leach. Reprinted by permission of the Wylie Agency, LLC.

  “The Lost Girls” by Apoorva Mandavilli. First published in Spectrum, October 19, 2015. Copyright © 2005 by the Simons Foundation. Reprinted by permission of Apoorva Mandavilli.

  “Solar, Eclipsed” by Charles C. Mann. First published in Wired, December 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Charles C. Mann. Reprinted by permission of Charles C. Mann.

  “Return of the Wild” by Emma Marris. First published in Boom: A Journal of California, Fall 2015. Copyright © Emma Rohwer (Emma Marris). Reprinted by permission of Emma Rohwer.

  “Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers” by Sarah Maslin Nir. First published in the New York Times, May 11, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by the New York Times. All rights reserved. Used by permission and protected by the copyright laws of the United States. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this content without express written permission is prohibited.

  “Attack of the Killer Beetles” by Maddie Oatman. First published in Mother Jones, May/June 2015. Copyright © 2015 by the Foundation for National Progress. Reprinted by permission.

  “The Whole Universe Catalog” by Stephen Ornes. First published in Scientific American, July 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Stephen Ornes. Reprinted by permission of Stephen Ornes.

  “Bugged” by Rinku Patel. First published in Popular Science, August 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Purvi Patel. Reprinted by permission of Purvi Patel.

  “My Periodic Table” by Oliver Sacks. First published in the New York Times Sunday Review. July 24, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Oliver Sacks. Reprinted by permission of the Wylie Agency, LLC.

  “The Really Big One” by Kathryn Schulz. First published in The New Yorker, July 20, 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Kathryn Schulz. Reprinted by permission of Kathryn Schulz.

>   “Begin Cutting” by Gaurav Raj Telhan. First published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Fall 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Gaurav Telhan. Reprinted by permission of Gaurav Telhan.

  “Telescope Wars” by Katie Worth. First published in Scientific American, December 2015. Copyright © 2015 by Katie Worth. Reprinted by permission of Katie Worth.

  Foreword

  IF, BY CHANCE, this anthology is read a century from now, what might those future readers make of it? First they would need to place the book in the context of its era, a pivotal one for all the world’s inhabitants, human and nonhuman alike. Perhaps they’ll recall that 2015 was the year our civilization established a grim new benchmark: the concentration of carbon dioxide in our planet’s atmosphere reached 400 parts per million for the first time in recorded history, a level not seen since at least two million years ago, during the Pliocene epoch. Earth might as well have been another world then. Our own species, Homo sapiens, had not yet evolved; the average global temperature was five to seven degrees warmer; sea levels were anywhere from 16 to 130 feet higher than today.

  In what sort of world will those future readers dwell? That depends on us and the choices we make over the next decade. Will we finally end our dependence on fossil fuels and avoid disaster? Will we be praised for our foresight or cursed for our shortsighted selfishness? Will historians in the 22nd century condemn our reckless dismissal of the increasingly urgent warnings of our best scientists? This much is certain: if we fail to act, it won’t be because we didn’t understand the magnitude of the threat.

  As I began writing this foreword, James Hansen, the eminent Columbia University climate scientist, discussed the crisis in a video released to coincide with the publication of a startling new paper. The paper, which Hansen wrote with 18 coauthors from around the world, makes for sobering reading. He and his colleagues argue that we are perilously close to irreversibly dooming our descendants to the most catastrophic effects of climate change. “Have we passed a point of no return?” he asked in the video. “I doubt it, but it’s conceivable.” He added: “We are in a position of potentially causing irreparable harm to our children, grandchildren, and future generations. This is a tragic situation because it is unnecessary. We could already be phasing out fossil fuel emissions.” All that’s lacking is a commitment to action.

  Hansen, who first testified before Congress—in 1988—that we were on a dangerous path, said it’s very likely that the climate is changing even faster than computer models have been predicting. Specifically, the severity of future storms and the extent of sea-level rise later in this century may disastrously outpace current forecasts, according to his recent paper. If the seas rise by several meters—which can’t be ruled out—the world’s coastal cities would have to be abandoned. Imagine the loss of London, Shanghai, Tokyo, New York, Miami . . . And yet, given the enormous stakes, we haven’t made much progress since Hansen’s initial warnings nearly three decades ago. Greenhouse gas emissions are still rising, and so are the oceans.

  Here’s one disheartening gauge of our society’s concern: How much time did the nation’s leading nightly news programs—on ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox—devote to the subject of climate change last year? It is, after all, the most pressing issue facing humanity. Without concerted international action, crops will fail; refugees will flee—are fleeing—flooded and drought-stricken lands; the extinction of species will accelerate. So, a big story, one worthy of serious, sustained reporting. There was even a religious angle when Pope Francis urged the world’s leaders to act. Care to hazard a guess now about the coverage? Twenty minutes a week? Two hours a month? The correct answer: 146 minutes—for the entire year, for all the networks combined. Not even 3 minutes a week. Quarterback Tom Brady’s “deflategate” imbroglio received twice as much airtime. Only one network, Fox, upped its “reporting” on the issue from the previous year—with a parade of talking heads denying the reality of climate change.

  Fortunately, some of the country’s best journalists don’t ignore the most important story of our time. In “The Will to Change,” Robert Kunzig covers Germany’s effort to engineer “an epochal transformation” that will, if successful, slash the nation’s planet-warming carbon emissions by 40 percent in 2020 and by 80 percent in 2050. If a cloud-shrouded, industrialized northern European country can end its long use of coal and other fossil fuels, maybe the rest of the world can, too.

  Should the United States, China, and other nations fail to follow Germany’s lead, there will be many more stories like Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Siege of Miami” and Gretel Ehrlich’s “Rotten Ice.” Large parts of Miami now regularly flood, Kolbert writes. The influx of salt water has started to threaten Florida’s freshwater aquifers. If the eight-inch rise in sea level over the last hundred years has caused such problems, what will be left of Miami at the century’s end, when seas will likely be at least three feet higher still? A significant part of that increase will come from Greenland’s melting glaciers, which every year add some 50 billion tons of water to the oceans. Ehrlich, who has spent many months living in Greenland, gives a firsthand account of what it’s like to travel by dogsled in the new, melting Arctic.

  But Amy Stewart, this year’s guest editor, hasn’t limited her selections to climate change. She has given us a collection of stories that range far and wide, from the creation of a 15,000-page mathematical proof (Stephen Ornes’s “The Whole Universe Catalog”) to the life-threatening hazards of working in nail salons (Sarah Maslin Nir’s “Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers”). Ornes’s piece is a rarity: an exciting story about mathematics. Only a few aging mathematicians understand the Brobdingnagian proof known as the Enormous Theorem, and there’s a real risk that they will die before passing on their expertise to a new generation of savants. Nir’s story features outstanding investigative reporting of a seemingly benign urban workplace. Manicurists—most of whom are poorly paid immigrants—are routinely exposed to a “toxic trio” of chemicals linked to miscarriages, cancer, and other painful maladies.

  One of the other stories Amy has chosen—Kea Krause’s “What’s Left Behind”—describes how the solution to an intractable problem might lie in a most unexpected place: the heavily polluted waters of an abandoned copper mine. And then there’s Amy Leach’s luminous “The Modern Moose,” which will make the day of anyone who reads it. I don’t want to spoil the other surprises that you’ll find in this anthology—our guest editor will have more to say about her selections in the next few pages—so I’ll stop here, and invite all readers, present and future, to dive in.

  With work on this year’s anthology now over, I’m already gathering candidates for the 2017 edition. Do your part! I try to read widely, but without the help of many thoughtful readers, writers, and editors from around the world, I would miss some very good stories. Nominate your favorites for next year’s anthology at http://timfolger.net/forums. I encourage writers to submit their own stories. The criteria for submissions and deadlines and the address to which entries should be sent can be found in the “news and announcements” forum on my website. Once again this year I’m offering an incentive to enlist readers to scour the nation in search of good science and nature writing: send me an article that I haven’t found, and if the article makes it into the anthology, I’ll mail you a free copy of next year’s edition. Maybe our next guest editor will sign it, too. I also encourage readers to use the forums to leave feedback about the new collection and to discuss all things scientific. The best way for publications to guarantee that their articles are considered for inclusion in the anthology is to place me on their subscription list, using the address posted in the “news and announcements” forum.

  I’d like to thank Amy Stewart for selecting such a diverse collection of stories for this year’s anthology. As in years past, I’m very grateful to Naomi Gibbs and her colleagues at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, who are responsible for the entire series of Best American anthologies. And finally, here’s to many more years spent on a habitable
and fair world with my beauteous wife, Anne Nolan. If I had to live in a Pliocene climate with anyone, it would be with her.

  TIM FOLGER

  Introduction

  SOME OF YOU are going to skip this introduction. Hey, I’m not judging—but I do want to catch your eye before you go. There were two extraordinary essays published in 2015 that you won’t find in this collection, but the only reason they didn’t make the cut is because of length. Combined, they would have taken up almost half the book and displaced many other worthy pieces. But you must know about them.

  You’ve probably heard that DNA evidence is being used to exonerate people who have been wrongly convicted of crimes, thus exposing the incompetence, impoverishment, and bias that plague the criminal justice system. DNA evidence is setting innocent people free, although not nearly enough of them. People are still behind bars who shouldn’t be.

  But that’s biology. What about the science of arson? In her impeccable essay “Playing with Fire,” which ran in The Intercept on February 24, 2015, Liliana Segura tells the harrowing story of a man convicted of first-degree murder on the basis of a flawed interpretation of the marks left behind when a house burned down. It turns out that certain kinds of burn patterns have long been considered unassailable proof that an accelerant had been poured or spilled around a room. However, we now know that the same marks can be made when “flashover” occurs—natural combustion caused by a buildup of radiant heat in a room.

  Ms. Segura recounts the handful of arson convictions that have been overturned after a fresh review of the evidence, and speaks to the National Academy of Sciences’ efforts to call attention to the outdated techniques still being employed by fire investigators and the faulty conclusions they draw from them. Her piece serves as a chilling reminder of the number of people who may have been convicted due to obsolete science, many of whom are still waiting for their cases to be reviewed.