Hans Ohanian is a physicist who has taught at several universities before retiring to engage in full-time research, writing, and acting as reviewer for several scientific journals. In one of his first books he included two chapters on “Energy, entropy, and environment” and “Nuclear energy.” This gave him valuable expertise for reviewing the five great books he recommends here.
When Greta Thunberg first appeared in public as a schoolgirl-on-strike, I admired her talent as a performer of political theater. By now, as a young woman, she has become a phenomenon, and I admire her talents as a writer.
In her new book, she deftly intersperses essays of her own with those of a hundred other environmentalists. She raises the alarm over the cataclysmic shipwreck that is heading our way and also over the incompetence, mendacity, and lethargy of our political leaders.
I fully agree with Greta’s alarm, and I found some of the possible environmental disasters outlined in her book totally scary, especially those described in the charts of tipping points in oceanic currents, polar ice sheets, the Amazon rainforest, and the monsoon rains.
We still have time to change the world. From climate activist Greta Thunberg, comes the essential handbook for making it happen.
You might think it's an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against all the odds. There is hope—but only if we listen to the science before it's too late.
In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts—geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and Indigenous leaders—to equip us all with the knowledge we…
Bill Gates is a philanthropist and environmentalist, and—as I learned from reading his book—he is also a competent physicist with an abundance of common sense. He paints a clear and grim picture of the approaching climate changes, and gives an honest estimate of what it will cost to abandon cheap coal and oil, and halt carbon emissions by a shift to clean energy.
Contrary to the thinking fashionable among environmentalists, he regards nuclear energy as clean. That’s fine by me, but I worry about his wish list for new breakthrough technologies to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050. Many of these technologies won’t be available soon enough to meet our global warming deadlines. I would edit Gates’ overambitious list by, say, accepting existing ordinary fission instead of waiting for next-generation fission.
In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical - and accessible - plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.
Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions…
This is a pie-in-the-sky 30-year plan for reducing CO2 in the atmosphere by joint worldwide implementation of 80 “solutions.” For each of these, the book proposes a number of giga-tons of CO2 to be removed from the atmosphere and the resulting dollar cost and savings.
I admire Hawken for his quantitative approach and his imaginative list of “solutions.” The numbers reveal the enormity of the drawdown enterprise. Some “solutions” are merely the usual renewables. Some came as a nice surprise to me, such as LED lanterns with batteries and small solar panels for residents in off-the-grid regions.
But I fear many of the solutions will never be rigorously implemented and would have a high policing cost to ensure compliance. For instance, the first solution involves the collection of refrigerant gases from expiring air conditioners. Who will voluntarily pay for this?
The 100 most substantive solutions to reverse global warming, based on meticulous research by leading scientists and policymakers around the world
“At this point in time, the Drawdown book is exactly what is needed; a credible, conservative solution-by-solution narrative that we can do it. Reading it is an effective inoculation against the widespread perception of doom that humanity cannot and will not solve the climate crisis. Reported by-effects include increased determination and a sense of grounded hope.” —Per Espen Stoknes, Author, What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming…
The first edition of this charming book was published in 2011 under the title How Bad are Bananas? For Mike Berners-Lee, this question is about the carbon footprint of bananas, but for me, it evokes the memory of some awful days I once spent on a riverboat on the Amazon with nothing to eat but bananas.
The book is a genuine delight, full of interesting carbon footprints arranged from small to large. Here are a few samples: short e-mail is 0.0004 kg CO2, Google search is 0.0006, grocery paper bag is 0.012, apple is 0.032, banana is 0.110, ice cream is 0.500, driving a midsize car 1 mile is 0.630, energy of 1 kW-hr taken from US electric grid is 0.650… The largest human carbon footprint listed is 56 trillion for all worldwide activity in a year.
The Carbon Footprint of Everything breaks items down by the amount of carbon they produce, creating a calorie guide for the carbon-conscious. With engaging writing, leading carbon expert Mike Berners-Lee shares new carbon calculations based on recent research. He considers the impact of the pandemic on the carbon battle—especially the embattled global supply chain—and adds items we didn’t consider a decade ago, like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Supported by solid research, cross-referenced with other expert sources, illustrated with easy-to-follow charts and graphs, and written with Berners-Lee’s trademark sense of humor, The Carbon Footprint of Everything should be on everyone’s bookshelf.
James Hansen is our leading expert on climatology, whose research established that the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere arising from human activities forces the global temperature upward. He recounts his strenuous efforts to alert the public and our political leaders to the dangers of greenhouse gases.
For me, the most intriguing tale told by Hansen is the mysterious mass killing of life 55 million years ago. After much sleuthing, Hansen decided this was caused by an outburst of frozen methane accumulated in the ocean, which escaped into the atmosphere and forced the temperature catastrophically upward. He reckoned that a similar accumulation of methane in today’s ocean poses a similar risk. After discussions with Bill McKibble, he urged that we must decrease atmospheric CO2 to 350 parts per million to eliminate this risk and other oceanic risks.
In his Q&A with Bill McKibben featured in the paperback edition of Storms of My Grandchildren, Dr. James Hansen, the world's leading climatologist, shows that exactly contrary to the impression the public has received, the science of climate change has become even clearer and sharper since the hardcover was released. In Storms of My Grandchildren, Hansen speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: The planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return. In explaining the science of climate change, Hansen paints a devastating but all-too-realistic picture…
Although Einstein was the greatest genius of the 20th century, many of his groundbreaking discoveries were blighted by mistakes, ranging from careless errors in mathematics to misconceptions in physics and failures to grasp some subtleties of his own creations. This book dissects two dozen of these mistakes and explains them in simple, unmathematical language.
Einstein was often in the grip of irrational and mystical inspirations, but his extraordinary intuition about physics permitted him to discover profound truths despite the mistakes he made along the way. He was a sleepwalker: his intuition told him where he needed to go, and he somehow managed to get there without quite knowing how. He had an uncanny talent for using his mistakes as stepping stones to formulate his revolutionary theories.
After Dr. Shawn Jennings, a busy family physician, suffered a brainstem stroke on May 13, 1999, he woke from a coma locked inside his body, aware and alert but unable to communicate or move. Once he regained limited movement in his left arm, he began typing his story, using one hand and a lot of patience.
With unexpected humour and tender honesty, Shawn shares his experiences in his struggle for recovery and acceptance of his life after the stroke. He affirms that even without achieving a full recovery life is still worth…
Locked In Locked Out: Surviving a Brainstem Stroke
After Dr. Shawn Jennings, a busy family physician, suffered a brainstem stroke on May 13, 1999, he woke from a coma locked inside his body, aware and alert but unable to communicate or move. Once he regained limited movement in his left arm, he began typing his story, using one hand and a lot of patience.
With unexpected humour and tender honesty, Shawn shares his experiences in his struggle for recovery and acceptance of his life after the stroke. He affirms that even without achieving a full recovery life is still worth…
