Book reviews

The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction: Nate Silver on the climate numbers

by JasonK January 19, 2013

Nate Silver is a math pundit who founded the fivethirtyeight blog now over at the NY Times. That blog was all about the presidential election and over there he used a series of polls to predict (very successfully) the results of both the 2008 and 2012 US elections. An integral part of Nate’s approach is to use [...]

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Rising Sea Levels

by Bryan Walker October 29, 2012

Of all the consequences of human-caused global warming, sea level rise has always held special alarm for me in its inexorability, its extension into the future, and the enormous disruption it threatens to centres of high population and essential infrastructure. Scientist Scott Mandia (blog) and writer Hunt Janin have teamed to produce for the general [...]

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Greenwash: Big Brands and Carbon Scams

by Bryan Walker October 18, 2012

Greenwash: Big Brands and Carbon Scams by Guy Pearse was an eye-opener for a reader like me who pays practically no attention to brand advertising. I didn’t realise how many major brands are striving to present green credentials to their consumers. The book covers a multitude of them across many sectors of the economy, from [...]

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A Short Introduction to Climate Change

by Bryan Walker September 30, 2012

Tony Eggleton’s A Short Introduction to Climate Change is an excellent account of climate science for the general reader. The author is a retired geology professor from the Australian National University. Two widely read climate change deniers, Ian Plimer and Bob Carter, are also retired Australian geology professors, but Eggleton is not of their ilk. [...]

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Ice, Mice and Men

by Bryan Walker August 21, 2012

Geoff Simmons and Gareth Morgan, with help from John McCrystal, have produced a book which one hopes will be read by many New Zealanders.  Ice, Mice and Men: The Issues Facing our Far South not only carries illuminating scientific information about the islands and seas to our south and the Antarctic continent beyond them, but [...]

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Deep Water

by Bryan Walker August 18, 2012

We know that sea level rise is an inevitable consequence of the global warming that our continued burning of fossil fuels is causing. What we don’t know is how much to expect and how soon to expect it. Journalist Daniel Grossman in his Kindle Single Deep Water: As Polar Ice Melts, Scientists Debate How High [...]

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Cold Cash, Cool Climate

by Bryan Walker August 9, 2012

I’m no entrepreneur, but I enjoyed reading energy scientist Jonathan Koomey’s book Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-Based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs. It’s comforting to be reminded that not everything in the mitigation of climate change depends on governments, that there is a lively creativity abroad in the entrepreneurial world which can take up the challenge [...]

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Waking the Giant

by Bryan Walker July 18, 2012

It’s only if we fail to grasp the enormity of the threatened impacts of climate change on the global environment that we can scoff at the notion that even volcanic eruptions and earthquakes may be triggered as a consequence of our continuing to burn fossil fuels. Not that it’s an easy consequence to appreciate, but [...]

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Consumptionomics

by Bryan Walker May 1, 2012

Business pages don’t often carry articles about the need to forsake the growth model. I was somewhat startled to come across one prominent in the NZ Herald business supplement last week. Journalist Chris Barton wrote about the ideas of Chandran Nair, author of Consumptionomics and a speaker at this year’s Auckland Writers & Readers Festival [...]

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Reinventing Fire

by Bryan Walker February 29, 2012

Is there movement already under way in the world of industry which will outstrip the painfully slow progress of the political world in facing up to the challenge of climate change?  Amory Lovins certainly thinks so and his recent book, Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era, explains why. Lovins is the [...]

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