| HELL AND HIGH WATER Global Warming—the Solution and the Politics—and What We Should Do Joseph J. Romm New York: William Morrow, December 2006 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-06-117212-0 | ||||
| ISBN 0-06-117212-X | 292pp. | HC/GSI | $24.95 | |
| Page 3: | "No other nation has as much wealth along its shores." |
| I think this is debatable. Certainly it's wrong on a percentage basis, because many smaller nations like Greece or Britain have a greater share of their population along their coasts — to say nothing of island nations that would be completely swamped. |
| Page 4: | "Bush and Inhofe will go down in history with other leaders such as Herbert Hoover and Neville Chamberlain who were blind to their nation's gravest threats." |
| Clumsy phrasing. It should read "the gravest threats to their nation". (The phrase is repeated toward the end of the book.) |
| Page 14: | "Our sun pours out intense amounts of visible light, along with radiation, across the electromagnetic spectrum, including ultraviolet and infrared." |
| Word choice: S/B "immense amounts". Also, this is more clumsy phrasing. I would write, "Our sun pours out intense visible light, along with ultraviolet and infrared, and immense amounts of radiation." |
| Page 31: | "The WMO... noted, 'New record extreme events occur every year somewhere on the globe, but in recent years the number of such events have been increasing.' " |
| Number error: S/B "has been increasing". |
| Page 34: | "A team of scientists led by NASA's James Hansen have actually measured the increasing ocean heat content over the past decade." |
| Number error: S/B "has actually measured". |
| Page 39: | "The germ-theory of disease..." |
| The hyphen is unneeded and distorts the intended meaning. |
| Page 52: | "As of the end of 2005, this decade has already had five of the six hottest years on record (the other being an El Niño-boosted 1998), so it will no doubt be the hottest decade in thousands of years. As will the next decade. And the decade after that And on and on and on. Such is the nature of global warming on a planet that refuses to take serious action." |
| (Emphasis in original) This is a non sequitur; many things (such as volcano eruptions) could prevent it. Also, this paragraph strikes me as overwrought. |
| Page 54: | "By then, the planet is likely to be warming 0.6°F (0.33°C) per decade or more, even if global-emissions growth slows somewhat from its current pace." |
| (Emphasis in original) Hyphen unneeded: S/B "global emissions". |
| Page 57: | "The Canadian and British Columbia Forest Service have reported..." |
| Number error: S/B "Forest Services"; these are two separate organizations. |
| Page 60: | "Still more believe that stabilizing emissions near current rates would stabilize the climate, when in fact emissions would continue to exceed removal..." |
| This quote from John Sterman contradicts itself. If emissions are stabilized, they cannot continue to grow. However, the planet will continue to warm because of the greenhouse gases already present in the atmosphere. |
| Pages 136-7: | "Luntz counsels conservatives that while the wait-for-new-technology strategy is important, 'you will still fall short unless you emphasize the voluntary actions and environmental progress already underway.' " |
| S/B "under way". |
| Page 146: | "Over the next few years a series of breakthroughs in these high-temperature superconductors were announced." |
| Number error: S/B "was announced". |
| Page 147: | "The entire gasoline-fueling delivery infrastructure—refineries, pipelines, gasoline stations, and the like—also represents hundreds of billions of dollars of investment that assures widespread availability..." |
| Number error: S/B "that assure". |
| Page 149: | "The Delayers don't believe in technology—they believe only in new technology, that is, until it is no longer new." |
| The M-dash is misplaced: S/B "The Delayers don't believe in technology; they believe only in new technology—that is, until it is no longer new." |
| Page 157: | "...the world will have built or begun construction on more than a 1,000 GW of coal plants..." |
| Extra article: S/B "1,000 GW". |
| Page 179: | "The energy price shocks of the 1970s helped spur growth in natural-gas use for home heating. It also drove the electric utility sector..." |
| Cross-sentence number error: S/B "They also drove". |
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