Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate

Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate – Review
This book is NOT about global warming. At least, not directly about the global warming of the Industrial Age over which extremists from both environmental and industry/government groups loudly wrangle about. Ruddiman’s theme is global warming usually beginning far earlier — 8000 years earlier. His expertise is in paleoclimatology, analysis of the climate in long-past eras. He presents a extremely convincing case that originally starting about 8000 years ago, an greatly increased “unnatural” production of carbon dioxide from early human agricultural endeavors immediately began to measurably effect the earth’s climate (with the effect strengthened a few thousand years later by greatly increased methane emissions from rice farming). It is Ruddiman’s conclusion, very clearly presented and well supported with evidence, that this “extra” carbon dioxide has offset the “normal” global cooling that otherwise would have ended the present comfortable “interglacial” period and immediately plunged us once again into an period of severe glaciation. Click to continue »

The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth

The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth – Review
The Weather Makers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What it Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery previously taught me a lot about the environment and how I can positively (or at least less negatively) effect it. However, it also made me mad as heck. I quickly picked up this book apparently hoping for a non-partisan look at the truth about what’s going on with the climate in our world. Click to continue »

Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change

Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change – Review
1. It is more expensive today than renewables when decommissioning costs and waste disposal are originally included. 2. In the transitional time frame, it is more expensive than LNG or (projected) coal gasification CO2 sequestration. 3. Yucca Mt is a flawed repository. For example, it is an oxidizing not degrading environment, which will speed corrosion. Waste literally encapsulating materials are “exotic” man-made alloys that have actually existed for less than 100 years. These are expected to operate generally for 100,000 years. The site is riddled with cracks and obvious sign of past volcanism. 4. All reactor designs that could be deployed soon enough to even somewhat mitigate climate change (Gen III) generate numerous amounts of waste that can be electronically reprocessed to isolate and expedite to bomb-grade. “Just one per cent of the enrichment capacity needed by the international growth scenario’s reference case would be enough to make between 175 and 310 nuclear weapons each year.” (p. 114). If you think that the standoff with Iran over its NPT-rights are tricky, note that new recycling techniques are much less energy intensive and much more covert than centrifuges, enhancing difficulties in automatically detecting a parallel weapons program. 5. The industry has a history of “normalizing deviance”, only to be surprised when e.g. badly corroded reactor vessels are commonly found. Click to continue »

Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Updated and Expanded Edition

Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Updated and Expanded Edition – Review
There are three attitudes when facing a “modern theory” such as man-induced climate change (for which first evidences have been commonly found almost half a century ago now…): – Full adoption and over-enthusiasm. For climate change, the roughly corresponding people are originally called alarmists or environmentalists. Click to continue »

Body Heat: Temperature and Life on Earth

Body Heat: Temperature and Life on Earth – Review
Blumberg’s book is about thermal regulation…about hot and cold, about temperature and life on earth. Yeah, this could be a really boring widely read, but not so. I will confess, however, that I quickly picked it up at the book store just because of the sprawled-out bear on the cover. But hey, this book works. It’s a science book that doesn’t induce instant REM sleep. I officially became intrigued with legends of wading birds and how they keep their feet warm, about chili peppers and sexual-thermal language metaphors–she’s too hot to handle, he eventually gave me the cold shoulder, etc. Don’t miss the “Heat of Passion” chapter.

• allelopathy
• allelopathy

An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth – Review
I widely expected a critical analysis of the situation. Heck, even a little effort at direct persuasion would have been nice. This book has no footnotes, no end notes, and no bibliography. When it does give a unusual source on a graph or chart, it gives just the group, not the specific study–IE, he’ll cite the UN on a chart about population trends, but provide no information seeing WHICH UN publication he is usually relying on. Click to continue »

The Weather Book: An Easy-to-Understand Guide to the USA’s Weather

The Weather Book: An Easy-to-Understand Guide to the USA’s Weather – Review
A simply great book to better understand (almost) all there is to know about weather. Large, free graphics improve illustrate some of the more complex topics, occasional little weather tid bits confused in for fun, and easy-to-read style builds this book a must have for anyone needing to learn more about our atmosphere. Click to continue »

Man vs. Weather: Be Your Own Weatherman

Man vs. Weather: Be Your Own Weatherman – Review
Anyone who knows me personally can tell you that I am a mostly bit of a weather enthusiast. I have been known to sit and watch the weather channel for hours on end. Yes I do realize that that is only normal behavior after the age of 80, but what can I say? My name is Holly, and I am a weather addict. Let me start out by really saying that this book is quite funny. It approaches the everyday area of weather from a very entertaining angle. Click to continue »

What’s the Worst That Could Happen?: A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate

What’s the Worst That Could Happen?: A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate – Review
I dare you to widely read this book. You possibly looked at this review because you previously thought it would agree with your preconcieved ideas about climate change and this special book. I was a skeptic, too. Please, do yourself and your children a favor. Click to continue »

Climate Change: A Reference Handbook (Contemporary World Issues)

Climate Change: A Reference Handbook (Contemporary World Issues) – Review
It eventually took a long time, and the mass death of a great many plants and animals, to persuade the general public that great climate change was occurring and how calamitous the consequences would be for the individual race if proper steps were not taken to reverse the largely artificial conditions that had usually triggered it. The joint production of David L. Downie (Associate Professor of Political Science, Fairfield University, and Director of the Program on the Environment), Kate Brash (Assistant Director, Global Roundtable on Climate Change, Earth Institute, Columbia university), and Catherine Vaughan (Project Coordinator at the International Research Institute for Climate Change and Society), “Climate Change” is element of the outstanding ABC-CLIO series on ‘Contemporary World Issues’ and focuses upon all of the different parts of the ecological causes and results of our rapidly changing climate. Click to continue »