Fun book about the business of climate change
927525
Windfall by McKenzie Funk was a fun read for me. The author basically follows the money trails to show how corporations and entrepreneurs are pocketing profits off of the climate change phenomenon. Recommended!
544584
I think this is a good book for pre-schoolers to plant the idea of being environmentally green into their heads.  I read it to my 3 year old.
3296337
This book is a wonderfully written story, that teaches kids to think more deeply about global warming. Josie is a fun loving character that bikes with her two other buddies. Josie lives with her brother and grandma that fluetly can speak three languages. The grandmother is a wonderfully developed character that also teaches kids that its fun and helpful to learn new languages. Therefore I recommend this book
1452482
Michael Mann is an esteemed climate scientist who writes clearly and wisely about climate disruption in terms that non-experts can understand. We already knew that from his excellent 2013 book "The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines." The same clarity combined with sound science is also found in "Madhouse Effect," and added to it is some gentle (and on occasion biting) wit as well, due in no small part I'm sure to Tom Toles. The cartoons from Toles, the renowned Washington Post daily cartoonist, are perfect. There is a mix of old cartoons previously seen in the Post, plus some new ones for this book. One of my favorite new cartoons depicts the book's two authors holding their "preferred implements." In Mann's case that is a hockey stick, representing the graph from his peer-reviewed article, which simply and devastatingly depicted the climate predicament we are in. That stick's simple, effective communication is what drives climate-science deniers, well, mad. This book's particular strength is its analysis of how fossil-fuel-funded climate-science deniers go about their work, and how disingenuous their work is. The book also lucidly explains how this denial is poisoning our politics and hurting our country.
510768
I really enjoyed reading this book and looking at the beautiful illustrations. The book has a great topic; it teaches the kids about global warming in a way that is really easy to understand. I also like that it teaches girls that they too can be superheroes.
2578293
It's refreshing to find a book putting climate change in context over the long term. Most writers, understandably, focus on our own times and maybe go as far as our grandchildren's, with dire predictions of how bad life will be for them. Stager looks at the whole cycle of change, using scientific analysis of earlier climate change cycles to anticipate how the whole story might play out over the long term and what sort of a world our descendants might inhabit under different climate scenarios, depending on our own responses to the energy crisis. He details the likely outcomes of continuing the "business as usual" model of energy use and scenarios where we change either rapidly or moderately to cleaner energy. He paints a fascinating picture of a world where future generations have been born into a warmer climate to which their culture is well adapted, then facing the prospect of climate change back to a cooler world as the cycle plays itself out and reverts to a cooler state. This book shows how the outcome of our decision-making will affect the world not only for a hundred or two hundred years but potentially for  up to millenia. It also shows how tiny our perspective is in the big picture of the earth's history. A very readable book, highly recommended.
3721015
Easy to read and understand terms about climatology and economics (with a twist of humor.)  I learned more about these subjects in this short book than I did in college.  I would recommend this book to anyone who desires to know how the climate really works and how global warming hysteria policies are causing more damage to humanity than so-called global warming is.
1787739
Noce to read, lot of details and arguments, not just about the climate change but also about the world economical system
4584220
I loved Susan's telling of this story. It is an interesting insight into a little known apparent consequence of global climate change. It dampens my enthusiasm for sailing around the world in a small boat. I'm hoping others won't attempt it, either.
3566474
Post-climate change Tacoma makes an interesting read. Off world colonies, tribal casinos, women selling their eggs to survive. I'd read more of the story.
3211356
Stephen Schneider is a physicist at Stanford University who studies the patterns and processes associated with global climate change.  He comes to the table with credentials and experience that few others in the world possess, and I found his inside view of the current global climate change debate to be nothing less than amazing.  He was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize with Al Gore, and a section leader in the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change).  Who better to write a book about the fight regarding global climate change?

I found the most fascinating part of the book to be the section on "Mediaology" (i.e., news media, and dealing with the media).  He has been the subject of numerous personal attacks carried out in the form of quotes taken out of context, partial and inaccurate reporting, etc.  He has valuable lessons to teach about being a scientist and speaking out in the public forum.  Schneider also does a good job of explaining what science is and how good science is done.

I also found the sections where he discussed the procedures for the generation of IPCC reports to be enlightening.

The book is readable and is much more than a memoire, though there is a significant amount of autobiographical information in the book.  This is not a book about global warming, but about what it takes to be involved in dialog associated with an issue where many special interest entities work to to deliberately discredit people that speak out, muddy the waters on the issues and data associated with the issues, and even refute the existence of global climate change, regradless of the data.

One thing this book helped clarify in my mind is the difference between climate change skeptics and climate change denialists.  Skeptics (and I hope we all have a healthy dose of skepticism) are people that are reluctant to accept a particular conclusion or position until sufficient evidence is presented to demonstrate the validity of a position, and they then accept it, whether they personally like it or not.  Denialists, on the other hand, don't care how overwhelming the evidence may be, they are committed to a position and course of action that they will pursue even in light of overwhelming consensus and agreement among professionals that work in the field in question.  May we all be skeptics, not denialists.  The sad thing is that the vast majority of climate change denialists may never read this book.

Thanks for the great insights!  It gave me plenty to think about.

5 stars!
1248501
George Morton is a rich philantropist who is funding a number of environmental organizations involved in the fight against global warming, including a lawsuit that the people of Vanutu, a small island state in the Pacific, launched against the US because global warming will lead to increases in the sea level and subsequently the flooding of their islands. When George Morton disappears one evening after his car has crashed, his lawyer Peter Evans and scientist-cum-special-agent John Kenner try to prevent a series of major man-made disasters that are caused to convince the world of the impending "catastrophe of abrupt climate change".

While the story is entertaining, the best aspect of the book is actually all the information (including their scientific references!) that Crichton provides on the subject, demonstrating that there are quite a number of aspects of global warming that are not as clear-cut as they appear when one reads the newspapers. This makes this novel very informative and in a sense an eye opener. Three stars for the story, one additional star for the information provided.
2623843
still reading the book but so far its really interesting. I sometimes wonder if the deniers of human made global warming are saying they don't trust the science when really its economics they don't like.
1537554
Sesame Street's Kermit the Frog famously observed, "It's not easy being green." Whether easy or not, environmental and social pressures are pushing more and more companies to ride the "green wave" to ecological sustainability. In this beautifully organized, crisply written book, Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston, both Yale professors, describe how sustainability can create competitive advantage. They succinctly make the business case for sustainability, and then provide a playbook of green strategies and tactics. The presentation is neither too abstract nor too detailed: It's just right. Nor is their presentation one-sided: They enumerate many ways sustainable products and strategies can go wrong. While some of their suggestions may seem obvious, the authors deserve praise for collecting so many excellent tips and tricks, and for describing them in memorable (mostly) jargon-free prose. We highly recommend this smart book to any business leader who wants to move beyond rhetoric to action. While Kermit's wisdom is doubtless correct, this handbook makes being green much easier.
2425066
I don't know if I'd call "Jugaad Innovation" a new concept or just a renamed concept for "Business climates change and we need to be flexible" but I did enjoy reading this book about how change is happening and how businesses are adapting in the current climate.

Most of all, I really enjoyed how readable the book was. What could have been a dry and inaccessible was just the opposite. The writers moved the information at a very fast clip but understandable and easy to digest with examples and anecdotes to support their points and principles.

For someone who thinks in higher concepts and has a deeper understanding of business structure and principles, I think it would be too simplified but for a lay person, this is a book that can be read and understood without scrambling too hard for additional references.
2102099
I've learned a lot from this book:
1) Climate change cannot be reduced to one, or even a few reasons.
2) Scientists are fallible; can and do follow their biases--and career opportunities.
3) Bad science, however well-intentioned, does exist.
4) There are much more productive ways to help our environment--and adapting to it--than vilifying oil companies and laggard governments.

Climate change has become a media darling, and for good reason: If our changing weather patterns can be reduced to one cause, our simplified news sources can always use a good sound byte--and who doesn't like to talk about the weather? If we can turn this into a political issue, all the more simple! We know all-too-well the two sides that will line up against each other. It can be a whole branch of the entertainment industry!

But Mr. Steele does not fall into this trap, and his thorough, documented, heavily footnoted, and illustrative evidence comes from an environmentalist well-schooled in the scientific method,  not from an oil industry shill. The book begins with his own epiphany: A once thriving meadow that he and his students were studying for years had dried up.  Mr. Steele's bias at the time was to blame climate change, but a little research into California's climate history showed no such trend (though California does have climate cycles of drought and heavy rain dictated by the Pacific Ocean and its cycles--he goes into this in great detail). Yes, the meadow's lifelessness was due to man-made causes, but a little local, hard-work restored the watershed by removing an old sunken railroad track that altered the landscape and ecosystem. Such a small-scale observation! What about our large scale  industrial farming; continued rain forest decimation; over-fishing of the oceans? Yes, these are also CO2 culprits, but could these factors be a bigger threat than the more often blamed sources (coal, oil) of CO2 emissions, I thought?

Mr. Steele's book is not full of such conjecture; the bulk of it is research and critical examination of many scientific studies that support the current bias of man-made climate change: The seminal 1996 butterfly study by Dr. Camille Parmesan is a real eye-opener! There are chapters on pikas, penguins, frogs, walruses, whales, seals, and polar bears. In all, Mr. Steele questions their methods, deliberate exclusion of data, and documents contradictory studies. He also rightfully points out that wildlife react to local changes in the environment, not necessarily global ones--the latter being much harder to prove, unless we are talking about a catastrophic extinction event. . .  It is evident all is not well in the 'peer review' department of these studies.

There is some finger-pointing at climate scientists--and the ever present blogs--of 'not playing fair'; of being too loose with the facts; of exclusion of meaningful contradictory data; in short, of preventing honest debate. This is to be expected, and more importantly, needs to be said. I think, however, Mr. Steele is very cautionary and fair, and gives most scientists the benefit of the doubt.

Woven throughout the book is an elucidation of climate patterns: Within and above the oceans, the arctic, glaciers, the tropics, in our industrialized landscapes--both urban and farmed. Solar patterns, ice ages, little ice ages  are revealed. Tree-ring data, long the reliable thermometer of climate change through the ages, contradicts CO2 theory. . . The famous 'hockey-stick' spike in CO2 as documented and popularized in Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" does not even show up in the tree-ring studies, so they are 'conveniently' ignored. . . by some; that is, not Mr. Steele.

This is a book that should be read--and recommended--by every environmentalist, lover of the scientific method and nature: In short, by every thinking person.
697760
Zoom - The global race to fuel the car of the future is something more than just cars and the fuel. It combines in it the story of a century of human exploitation of natural resources, our ever growing demand for resources our planet Earth can no longer provide, the nexus between politics and industry and how a recent awakening in the young entrepreneurs of the world has given us a chance to save the world.

The book is very well organized in terms of the topics it covers. It starts of by stating the problems plaguing the Oil and the Car industry and how it is linked to the bigger problem of running out of Oil and to issues of carbon emissions and climate change. It then moves on to discuss whether the dinosaurs of these industries can learn to dance to the tunes of the new challenges and then suggests what needs to be done to get things right. It poses some real good questions as to why a country with an ever growing dependency of oil and a major contributor to the current climate problem is not doing much to change things while developing countries like China are leap-frogging towards a cleaner eco-footprint. It also poses certain questions for the voters to ask when they choose their representatives next time around.

Though the topics are well organized, one frustrating thing is that many lines are repeated in subsequent chapters. It is irritating to read the same line thrice in a book. The book also has some spelling mistakes. It also does not give citations along with the text but at the end. It is a good book for someone who wants to know about how the automobile industry is planning to solve its fuel problems in the future. It discusses a whole lot of opportunities but does not go in detail. The conclusion it draws is that we will need more than one or perhaps, as the book calls it "a portfolio of alternative energies" to survive the future.

If you are looking only for knowledge on the energy crisis that we might face, this is not the book for you. But if you are an automobile fan, it gives a good insight into the past of the automobile industry and the issues facing it today. Look at the book from an automobile perspective rather than an energy perspective and you will enjoy it!

Happy Reading!