On May 23, 11:03*am, John Dann wrote:
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 Dannwww.weatherstations.co.uk

I'll have a look at http://www.withoutthehotair.com but anything that
I personally do will have little effect. We only have one car but I am
living in the town with the largest proportion of three car households
in the country! The entire carbon consumption of the UK is less than
the amount by which the USA has increased over the last ten years. In
the same time China has caught up with the USA. so even if we in the
UK stopped all fossil fuel burning it would have virtually no effect
on global CO2 production.

I think I can safely say that there are no books which do not come
down one way or other regarding the GW debate. Even if such a book
were written - I've studied global warming for ten years and can't
decide if its happening, far less it it is due to man's activities -
is hardly going to be bought even is someone is foolish enough to
publish it.

I am afraid you have to make a choice between books by scientists who
see the dangers of AGW such as: Sir John Houghton "Global Warming, the
Complete Briefing" and Mark Maslin "Global Warming - a Very Short
Introduction" or books by politicians and statisticians (could there
be anything worse) who try to argue them away: Sir Nigel Lawson "An
Appeal to Reason: a Cool Look at Global Warming" and Bjorn Lomborg
(Danish, not from the UK like the others, hence the misspelling of
sceptical) "The Skeptical Environmentalist".

There is also a proAGW book from list he
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php.../01/our-books/
and a scientific antiAGW book he
http://www.drroyspencer.com/climate-confusion/ .
If you click on the link to Amazon you will get more of the same, but
they do tend to show that they come from the stable of right wing
Americans. Dr Roy Spencer, the author of "Climate Confusion" believes
in Intelligent Design! (Creationism to you and me.)

I recommend one of the first books I mentioned: Mark Maslin's "Global
Warming: A Very Short Introduction". It deals with the science and the
politics from an objective perspective, and it's cheap £6.99 :-).

HTH,

Cheers, Alastair.