I suspect several people here will already be familiar with this, but
I came across a newish book this week entitled 'Sustainable Energy -
without the hot air' by David MacKay.

(It's actually available for free as a (large!) PDF download from
www.withoutthehotair.com , but the properly printed book is obviously
a nicer object, although inevitably it costs!)

To give you a flavour, the preface of this book starts off: 'I'm
concerned about cutting UK emissions of twaddle - twaddle about
sustainable energy. Everyone says getting off fossil fuels is
important, and we're all encouraged to 'make a difference', but many
of the things that allegedly make a difference don't add up.'

In other words, this is a (highly lucid) attempt at a constructive
critique of alternative energy options, which aims to be as
scientific/objective as it's possible to be and is suitably back up by
a considerable body of explanations and references, while somehow
managing to remain pretty readable. No mean achievement!

In case you think I've forgotten that this is usw, my reason for
mentioning this is as follows: I asked here a year or two back whether
anyone was aware of a similar sort of book in relation to GW/AGW as a
topic, ie something that doesn't start out from a flagrantly pro or
anti stance but tries to present and explain the data and the science
that is available as objectively and in as much useful detail as
possible, including credible evidence that might be contrarian to a
particular point of view.

But there didn't seem to be a book at that time that anyone could
recommend. Has the situation changed at all?

John Dann
www.weatherstations.co.uk