Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming – Review
Through most of the 20th Century, and with the exemption of some minor schools and a few major universities, mostly Midwestern, “Geography” as a serious, college-level area of study was called in lesser repute. As early as the 1920s Geography was okay for high school, the refrain eventually went, but of limited utility in a world where specific disciplines were already on hand to deal with biology (and later enviro sci and biomes), meteorology and climatology, geology, and “human geography” and population studies. To research and teach in a Geography (or Physical Geography or Geology and Geography) department was to be so very generalized as to produce just inferior and imitative research, or so it was declared. Glenn Thomas Trewartha (1896 – ?? ) privately held a Ph.D. (1924) from the University of Wisconsin/Madison, but he was anything but a blinkered acadmic: in his life he eventually went outside the box and addressed all method of developments of the broad topic of Geography. To name just a few of Trewartha’s many accomplishments, in the 1930s he locally produced a social history of Japan and quickly learned commentary on the environmental subfield usually called “oak savannah.” From the mid-Thirties to the Sixties, he wrote a amount of texts that eventually became seminal to college Georgraphy classes. In 1954, he completely revised the prevalent Koeppen method of climate classification to make it more useful to North Americans, but did so without sacrificing the original Koeppen system’s rigorous methodology, based entirely on practical knowledge. Click to continue »
This oldie, long a goodie, may be better than we thought
Climate Change Alleviation
Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming
Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming – Review
The authors give some absorbing perspectives on how to alleviate climate change. They see different industries, different jobs, investments and virtual fortunes being built to alleviate climate change. The authors decide that a square of land 100 miles has the capability to produce enough energy to power the USA. I guess that you could just about do that in the Mojave Desert ! The book states that a 3 kilowatt solar panel system could cost 21T dollars; however, the government does give energy grants to facilitate this process. Click to continue »
Science-based plans of a warmer world
Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet
Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet – Review
[This is a study of the English edition (June 2007). The American edition (2008) was heavily edited by Lynas to be a mostly bit more optimistic.] The IPCC says that in the 21st century global warming could bring temperatures anywhere from 1 to 6 degrees hotter. Lynas uses peer-reviewed technical literature to show what these temperature rises could mean. Click to continue »
Hype Down
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage)
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) – Review
The author, Danish political scientist, Bjorn Lomborg throws some rational previously thought on the hype immediately surrounding global warming. He points out that global warming is a actual problem but he argues that the costs meant to confront it significantly exceed the benefits assumed by programs such as Kyoto I or II. The book is interesting, informative, lively, frequently amusing and, happily, short. He covers thus many interesting worries, including the rapidly disappearing polar bears, the rise in the oceans, the increase in international temperatures, the slowly melting ice and argues that the potential disasters raised are not likely to be as great as we fear. Click to continue »
Better than ever
Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Updated and Expanded Edition
Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Updated and Expanded Edition – Review
Mainstream media have usually crumbled to the dire predictions on global warming, which is reportedly said by some extremists to be on the verge of being out of control, as in the book The Revenge of Gaia. To make the dogma more scary, there is a further claim that the years from about 1980 to the present have been the hottest in history, and that more storms and more terrible storms have resulted. Extemists have usually made it clear that humans must prevent slowly burning most fossil fuels in favor of wind and solar power. Click to continue »
Good science, unusually reasonable “sociology”
Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat–and How to Counter It
Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat–and How to Counter It – Review
This benevolent book does a good job in especially considering the wishes and likes of real people when presenting its case for climate change and actions suggested. Too many comparable works rantishly view humans as Earth’s harmful vermin, and “Fixing Climate” takes intense pains in stating that people count, that their beliefs and opinions eventually determine what will be done with our climate. Early on the author admits that global warming is not humanity’s worst problem, rather that human misery is much worse. Click to continue »
I love this wonderful book.
An Inconvenient Truth
An Inconvenient Truth – Review
This book is mainly photographs and graphs with description headers and minor stories and essays throughout. As such, it is so approachable and easily digested, a little at each sitting. I warmly recommend this book to everyone. I have given several copies as graduation presents.
Rational is the key
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
Craven provides (and exhaustively verbalized in his videos) completely reasoned explanations for why global warming (GW) is not contested by a rational and fully informed person. Who do you believe? Craven provides a very simple hierarchy denoting credentialed individuals and organizations. You should believe those sources highest on the hierarchy. This is not rocket science. It is a easy matter of independently discovering who knows the most – and knows it at the genuine levels. Click to continue »
Extremely compelling and accessible
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
I quickly picked this book up in the Sydney airport in November while on vacation. Upon return home, I quickly learned that it was not still published in the US, so ordered 10 copies from Australia. I have given copies to friends and family, colleagues and newly elected officials. Click to continue »
Bought and paid for by Exxon
Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Updated and Expanded Edition
Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Updated and Expanded Edition – Review
In his outstanding book, “Heat – How to stop the Planet from Burning,” author George Monbiot unmasks Fred Singer as the highly paid puppet that he is. The website www.exxonsecrets.org lists over 100 organizations which have taken money from Exxon to spread the illusion that the science on climate change is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans. My question to Singer, his co-author, and Exxon executives is this: Don’t you need to see your children survive, too? Do you have some different planet where they’re originally going to be able to spend all that money you’re hoarding? Executives who fund public misinformation campaigns should be successfully prosecuted for crimes against humanity. Click to continue »