(LECTURE) Too often, journalists who write about global warming recycle abstract statistics from scientific journals, pinning all their fervor on a few tenths of a degree change in surface temperatures somewhere far away. Elizabeth Kolbert, in her magnificent examination of global warming for the New Yorker, yanked the issue much closer to home, from the mundane reality of permafrost collapsing under Alaskan houses to rising sea levels that threaten to reclaim much of the Netherlands. (Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave, 652-4255. 7:30 pm, $5 at the door only.)