Book picks similar to
Geo-Engineering Climate Change: Environmental Necessity or Pandora's Box? by Brian Launder
enviro-econ
environment
non-fiction
planetary-science
The Coming Storm
Michael Lewis - 2018
Weather can be deadly — especially when it strikes without warning. Millions of Americans could soon find themselves at the mercy of violent weather if the public data behind lifesaving storm alerts gets privatized for personal gain.In his first Audible Original feature, New York Times best-selling author and journalist Michael Lewis delivers hard-hitting research on not-so-random weather data — and how Washington plans to release it. He also digs deep into the lives of two scientists who revolutionized climate predictions, bringing warning systems to previously unimaginable levels of accuracy. One is Kathy Sullivan, a gifted scientist among the first women in space; the other, D.J. Patil, is a trickster-turned-mathematician and a political adviser.Most urgently, Lewis's narrative reveals the potential cost of putting a price tag on information with the potential to save lives, raising questions about balancing public service with profits in an ethically-ambiguous atmosphere.
The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850
Brian M. Fagan - 2000
Building on research that has only recently confirmed that the world endured a 500year cold snap, renowned archaeologist Brian Fagan shows how the increasing cold influenced familiar events from Norse exploration to the settlement of North America to the Industrial Revolution. This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in history, climate, and how they interact.
Mason Bee Revolution: How the Hardest Working Bee Can Save the World - One Backyard at a Time
Dave Hunter - 2016
Honeybees Make Honey; Mason Bees Make Food.
The Case for the Green New Deal
Ann Pettifor - 2019
In 2008, the first Green New Deal was devised by Pettifor and a group of English economist and thinkers, but was ignored within the tumults of the financial crash. A decade later, the ideas was revived within the democratic socialists in the US, forefront by Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. The Green New Deal demands a radical and urgent reversal of the current state of the global economy: including total de-carbonisation and a commitment to fairness and social justice. Critics on all sides have been quick to observe that the GND is a pipe dream that could never be implemented, and would cost the earth. But, as Ann Pettifor shows, we need to rethink the function of money, and how it works within the global system. How can we bail out the banks but not the planet? We have to stop thinking about the imperative of economic growth-nothing grows for ever. The program will be a long term project but it needs to start immediately.
The Perfection Point: Sport Science Predicts the Fastest Man, the Highest Jump, and the Limits of Athletic Performance
John Brenkus - 2010
The Perfection Point is ideal for sports fans interested in the scientific basis of athletic excellence and a fascinating read for science fans interested in the physics of sports.
When the Adults Change, Everything Changes: Seismic Shifts in School Behavior
Paul Dix - 2017
It is the only behaviour over which we have enough control. Creating a seismic shift in behaviour across a school requires adult behaviour to be adjusted with absolute consistency. This creates a stable platform on which each school can build its authentic practice. It will result in shifts in daily routines, in how to deal with the angriest learners, in restorative practice and in how we appreciate exceptional behaviour. The book is peppered with case studies from schools across five continents, from the most challenging urban schools to the most privileged schools in the world. This is exceptional behaviour management and leading-edge practice. The approach is practical, transformative and rippling with respect for staff and learners.
Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution
Heather Rogers - 2010
But can earth-friendly products really save the planet? This narrative explores how the most readily available solutions to environmental crisis may be disastrously off the mark. Rogers travels the world tracking how the conversion from a "petro" to a "green" society affects the most fundamental aspects of life, food, shelter, and transportation. Reporting from some of the most remote places on earth, Rogers uncovers shocking results that include massive clear-cutting, destruction of native ecosystems, and grinding poverty. Relying simply on market forces, people with good intentions wanting to just "do something" to help the planet are left feeling confused and powerless.Green Gone Wrong reveals a fuller story, taking the reader into forests, fields, factories, and boardrooms around the world to draw out the unintended consequences, inherent obstacles, and successes of eco-friendly consumption. What do the labels "USDA Certified Organic" and "Fair Trade" really mean on a vast South American export-driven organic farm? A superlow-energy "eco-village" in Germany's Black Forest demonstrates that green homes dramatically shrink energy use, so why aren't we using this technology in America? The decisions made in Detroit's executive suites have kept Americans driving gas-guzzling automobiles for decades, even as U.S. automakers have European models that clock twice the mpg. Why won't they sell these cars domestically? And what does carbon offsetting really mean when projects can so easily fail? In one case thousands of trees planted in drought-plagued Southern India withered and died, releasing any CO2 they were meant to neutralize. Green Gone Wrong speaks to anyone interested in climate change and the future of the natural world, as well as those who want to act but are caught not knowing who, or what, to believe to protect the planet.
The Wollemi Pine: The Incredible Discovery of a Living Fossil From the Age of the Dinosaurs
James Woodford - 2002
The discovery has been described as "the equivalent of finding a small dinosaur still alive on Earth."
The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World
William D. Nordhaus - 2013
We have entered the Climate Casino and are rolling the global-warming dice, warns economist William Nordhaus. But there is still time to turn around and walk back out of the casino, and in this essential book the author explains how. Bringing together all the important issues surrounding the climate debate, Nordhaus describes the science, economics, and politics involved—and the steps necessary to reduce the perils of global warming. Using language accessible to any concerned citizen and taking care to present different points of view fairly, he discusses the problem from start to finish: from the beginning, where warming originates in our personal energy use, to the end, where societies employ regulations or taxes or subsidies to slow the emissions of gases responsible for climate change. Nordhaus offers a new analysis of why earlier policies, such as the Kyoto Protocol, failed to slow carbon dioxide emissions, how new approaches can succeed, and which policy tools will most effectively reduce emissions. In short, he clarifies a defining problem of our times and lays out the next critical steps for slowing the trajectory of global warming.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: The Highs and Lows of an Air Ambulance Doctor
Tony Bleetman - 2019
And, should you ever get to hold one, you will find the human heart to be rubbery and shockingly light.'What Could Possibly Go Wrong? is a report from the front line of emergency medicine, the first ever account of what it is like to work as an air ambulance doctor. Whether describing cutting through a patient's breastbone to plug a stab wound or barrel rolling a light aircraft at 5,000 feet, Tony Bleetman captures the sheer adrenaline of racing through the sky to save lives. You will learn how to land a helicopter on the side of a mountain, what it means to encounter death every day, and how to perform a tracheotomy in real life (clue: it doesn’t involve a ball-point pen).Funny, shocking and moving, What Could Possibly Go Wrong? is a glimpse at a world where the wrong decision can mean the difference between life and death.Originally published as You Can't Park There: The Highs and Lows of an Air Ambulance Doctor.
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics
Zhivko - 2018
Mind Games: Inside the Serial Killer Phenomenon
Paul Harrison - 2018
It will shock, surprise and astound the reader. Paul Harrison has a unique set of skills and experiences based upon his life in the British police service and later as a crime writer. Now, for the first time ever, you can read of his gripping experiences as a profiler dealing with the world's most notorious serial killers and violent offenders. Mind Games is a forensic examination of the psyche of the world's most vicious and evil offenders in their own words, just as they related it. It's an exploration into the darkest recesses of the criminal mind and possibly the most in-depth examination of the serial killer phenomenon ever published. Includes exclusive interviews with Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, Kenneth Harrison, Henry Lee Lucas, Aileen Wuornos, Ted Bundy, Carl Watts, Donald 'Pee Wee' Gaskins, Donald Neilson, Kenneth McDuff, Jeffrey Dahmer, Joe 'The Cannibal' Metheney.
The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World
Oliver Morton - 2015
The difficulty of doing without fossil fuels is daunting, possibly even insurmountable. So there is an urgent need to rethink our responses to the crisis. To meet that need, a small but increasingly influential group of scientists is exploring proposals for planned human intervention in the climate system: a stratospheric veil against the sun, the cultivation of photosynthetic plankton, fleets of unmanned ships seeding the clouds. These are the technologies of geoengineerin--and as Oliver Morton argues in this visionary book, it would be as irresponsible to ignore them as it would be foolish to see them as a simple solution to the problem."The Planet Remade" explores the history, politics, and cutting-edge science of geoengineering. Morton weighs both the promise and perils of these controversial strategies and puts them in the broadest possible context. The past century's changes to the planet--to the clouds and the soils, to the winds and the seas, to the great cycles of nitrogen and carbon--have been far more profound than most of us realize. Appreciating those changes clarifies not just the scale of what needs to be done about global warming, but also our relationship to nature.Climate change is not just one of the twenty-first century's defining political challenges. Morton untangles the implications of our failure to meet the challenge of climate change and reintroduces the hope that we might. He addresses the deep fear that comes with seeing humans as a force of nature, and asks what it might mean--and what it might require of us--to try and use that force for good.
A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal
Kate Aronoff - 2019
We need profound, radical change. A Green New Deal can tackle the climate emergency and rampant inequality at the same time. Cutting carbon emissions while winning immediate gains for the many is the only way to build a movement strong enough to defeat big oil, big business, and the super-rich—starting right now.A Planet to Win explores the political potential and concrete first steps of a Green New Deal. It calls for dismantling the fossil fuel industry and building beautiful landscapes of renewable energy, guaranteeing climate-friendly work and no-carbon housing and free public transit. And it shows how a Green New Deal in the United States can strengthen climate justice movements worldwide. We don’t make politics under conditions of our own choosing, and no one would choose this crisis. But crises also present opportunities. We stand on the brink of disaster—but also at the cusp of wondrous, transformative change.
Waking Up Blind Lawsuits Over Eye Surgery
Tom Harbin - 2009
The shocking story of blinded eyes, and the medical school that allowed it.