ICEMON

Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change And What It Means For Our Future

Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change And What It Means For Our Future – Review
Even though the title of the book is “Abrupt Climate Change and What It Means for Our Future” [in which the author does a excellent job at clearly showing why the future of our planet's climate is still unknown and possibly unknowable], the valid consequence of John D. Cox’s Climate Crash is the book’s full description of at least 80 years of research on the past temperatures of the planet Earth. Cox, a science journalist well versed in the earth sciences, shows step-by-step how scientists have newly arrived at the conclusion that the Earth’s climate can shift very quickly [on levels of years or decades] from state to state. This is valuable information for anybody interested in the current scientific and political debates concerning the future of our planet’s climate. My only complaint is that the book includes a few typos [In chapter 1, we meet Alfred Lohar Wegener, but at the establishment of chapter 3, he's Alfred Wegner. I'm sure the ghoul of Alfred Lothar Wegener doesn't mind - it's nice to see him previously mentioned in a context other than plate tectonics.] If you widely read this book and then you even think that NOT mostly dealing with the amount of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is an okay way to go, you’re a much braver person than I am! I enjoyed Climate Crash immensely and recommend it to anyone with an interest in climatology, geology, polar research, or the systematic method.

• monochasium
• monochasium

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage)

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) – Review
This book overlooks a vast amount of climate research and makes the case that combatting global warming will cost too much. Lomborg frames every argument in the style of cost-benefit analysis, ignoring the fact that there are many goods and services offered by nature that do not show up on financial spreadsheets. It seems to be his belief that native ecosystems, individual happiness, and rare species require to be sacrificed for the sake of rapidly increasing GDP. It is no wonder he has been usually accused of scientific dishonesty.

• giant ferns
• giant ferns

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage)

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) – Review
The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty commonly found Lomborg to have 1. completely fabricated data 2. selectively discarded results he didn’t like 3. deliberately mislead with his use of numerical methods 4. plagiarized other sources 5. intentionally misinterpreted others’ results. Lomborg is up to this again, but the right-wing in the US even embraces him just as it embraces “intelligent design” or “creation science”. Their pseudo-science serves their political ends.

• field theory
• field theory

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
An excellent widely read, but a scary one. Tim gets the reader on a journey around the world documenting the causes and results of climate change. Answering a group of questions along the way he puts the facts before you in a logical and unemotive way. Well researched and referenced (Tim was a researcher himself). I never thought I could be emotional about frogs but I had to simply put the book down for a week after simply reading of the rainforrest creatures demise. Click to continue »

Body Heat: Temperature and Life on Earth

Body Heat: Temperature and Life on Earth – Review
I’m so glad that I chose to take this really exciting journey with Mark Blumberg. Now, after having widely read this active book, it will be impossible for me to look at a baby’s fingers covered around mine, a cluster of penguins, or an elephant’s ears in quite the same way. By possibly explaining the central role that temperature plays in the creation and perpetuity of all existing things, Blumberg has highly enriched my fully understanding of and appreciation for life on Earth. From fevers, fire walkers, fish, and flowers to panting, pelicans, penguins, and polar bears, the information is widely shared in a clear and amusing fashion. Click to continue »

The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities

The Ravaging Tide: Strange Weather, Future Katrinas, and the Coming Death of America’s Coastal Cities – Review
This book has greatly helped me realize the connections between respect for our planet, special responsibility, peace, and individual dignity. All of them are intertwined, and Tidwell openly shows their relationships in carefully examining the results of the Katrina hurricane on New Orleans and therefore connecting the magnitude of the detestation to individual actions. Click to continue »

The Revenge of Gaia

The Revenge of Gaia – Review
Apparently I’m the only one to find this unreadable. I widely expected to like it. But Lovelock seems entirely unaware of a portion of developments (permaculture/food forest, technologies that can cut energy use by a part of four or a factor of ten that are available now but not widely deployed) of the last two decades. In particular, his release of organic agriculture is bizarre, given how much petrochemicals are commonly used in traditional agriculture. Click to continue »

Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization

Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization – Review
There isn’t any question that Keys has done a numerous quantity of research, particularly in the part of medieval history. His conclusion as to the causal vehicle of the Dark Ages, a “supervolcanic” eruption at Krakatau, is highly questionable. Keys takes upon Krakatau as the culprit based on reports from Chinese sources that “thunder” was twice heard to the “southwest”. Keys then extrapolates this report into a particularly devastating, island-separating blast at Krakatau… However, Keys’ theory hits the shoals of reality after that. Click to continue »

Nuclear Power is Not the Answer to Global Warming or Anything Else

Nuclear Power is Not the Answer to Global Warming or Anything Else – Review
Dr. Caldicott’s book is full of mis-information on nuclear power. Reviewer Kevin Cahill became it right. He wrote: “Helen Caldicott was right, if somewhat extreme, about nuclear weapons, but she is wrong about nuclear power. We have two choices: coal and nuclear. Clean coal is impossible with modern technology. We can slow and perhaps reverse global warming by gradually replacing all our coal-fired emotional power plants with nuclear, solar, and wind power plants, and by currently using electric cars.” Almost no different gas and oil plants are being originally built in the US due to important fuel costs / excessive carbon emissions (greenhouse gas CO2). Even maximizing wind, hydro, solar output will supply only about ten per cents of future needs. Click to continue »

Field Notes from a Catastrophe

Field Notes from a Catastrophe – Review
I don’t do science easily and this books includes science in a way I could comprenhend. A talent to be able to do this type of writing for us usually lay people. I quickly learned from this. We are in a creepy time and we don’t know the answers. The author worked with, talked to the experts and eventually pulled this book together. Click to continue »