books

Harry Potter is way greener than your average book

I wrote last week about Harry Potter going green in the seventh and final installation of the series. Turns out, it’s even greener than we thought. It might just be the greenest book of all time [PDF] (except for all those books that have never been published, I guess). Production of the book spurred the […]

New book on hurricanes and global warming

On his site, science writer Chris Mooney recently posted a fascinating pair of graphs, courtesy of collaborator Matt Nisbet, which chart public interest in global warming.

As the years march by, the charts show what happens when scientific reports are released, when politics intervene -- and when hurricanes strike, as measured by coverage at the Washington Post and the New York Times.

What the graphs show is that in these thoughtful newspapers, political and scientific developments can spur stories, but when hurricanes strike, global warming coverage -- and, presumably public interest -- soars.

This is why Mooney's new book, Storm World, matters -- even though the writer takes every possible opportunity to remind readers that we cannot definitively link global warming to any hurricane.

The book matters because our fears as a nation do link global warming and hurricanes, and when it comes to modern-day hurricanes the size of Texas, as we saw in 2005, our eyes open wide.

Harry Potter goes green, but what about the rest of the industry?

Ahhh, books. They’re like websites on paper, from what I gather. We wrote a while back about Harry Potter going green for the last installment of the series, with two-thirds of the 16,700 tons of paper coming from timber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Scholastic, the publisher, is also using 30 percent recycled fiber […]

Skip it

You can skip George Monbiot's book Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning.

Slightly longer book review:

Because there are far too many climate books to read, I confess I apply a litmus test. I look up "hydrogen" in the index. If the writer thinks it's a climate solution, the book can be skipped.

I thought I would like this book, since I like many of the columns by the British author, including an early excerpt on the connection of the global warming deniers to big tobacco. But on page 162, he writes, "hydrogen fuel cells are beginning to look like a feasible technology for motor transport, if not on the time scale the producers predict."

No. Not even close. They are looking less feasible these days. They are a post-2050 climate solution at best. And Monbiot is a man in a hurry -- he believes the only hope for mankind is "for rich nations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 90 per cent by 2030."

Heck, it would require three major breakthroughs -- in fuel cells, storage, and renewable hydrogen -- just for hydrogen cars to be 1% of the cars on the road by 2030 -- and they would still be a lousy way to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Tim Lambert …

… dismantles NYT columnist John Tierney’s latest attack on Rachel Carson.

A conservative kids’ book publisher takes on climate change

The L.A. Times visits a conservative publisher of children’s books. Here’s what they find: First up is a story about a boy named Jake who watches a dire film about global warming in school. Jake walks home cursing every SUV — until his best friend, Ben, sets him straight with a didactic lecture disguised as […]

Pick-me-up books needed

I was at a wedding last week, on the beach. Waves! Friends! Tecates! I was finally starting to unwind.

And then I did something very bad.

I picked up Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Holy moly.

His new book, about stupid media, is treated stupidly by the media

Al Gore has a new book coming out called The Assault on Reason. It’s about the sickness of our democratic dialogue, the systemic features of our culture and media that lead us to ignore evidence, focus on trivialities, and accept deception after deception. Gore’s going to be out promoting the book, and there’s a certain […]

Savor your flavors with the slow-food movement

This is the fourth in a series of articles about connecting with people over food. Read others on setting up a dining co-op, celebrating Passover, and hosting an Earth Dinner. When I told a friend that I was writing an article about slow food, she said, “What’s that? The opposite of fast food?” In a […]