| HOW TO COOL THE PLANET Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate Jeff Goodell Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, April 2010 |
Rating: 4.5 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-618-99061-0 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-618-99061-5 | 272p. | HC/BWI | $26.00 | |
| Page 1: | "I grew up in California, where human ingenuity is a force of nature. Computers, the Internet, Hollywood, blue jeans, the Beach Boys—they are all inventions of my home state." |
| S/B "Personal computers". The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was developed at Iowa State, 1939-1942; ENIAC was the brainchild of J. Presper Eckert at the University of Pennsylvania 1946 See When was the first computer invented? |
| Page 9: | "Even if we cut CO2 pollution to zero tomorrow, the amount of CO2 we have already pumped into the atmosphere will ensure that the climate will remain warm for centuries." |
| S/B "CO2 emissions". By definition, "CO2 pollution" is the unwanted CO2 within the atmosphere. If it could be "cut to zero," excess warming would disappear. |
| Page 10: | "...(methane is a short-lived but potent greenhouse gas, seventy times more powerful than CO2)..." |
| I question this. More commonly, estimates make it 20 to 25 times more powerful. |
| Page 26: | "I wondered, If we can't even build a decent university campus..." |
| The capitalization of "If" is not needed. |
| Page 32: | "But let's say we find a Higgs Boson—does it give us any useful information about how the world works?" |
| Is population inversion useful? Ask the inventor of the laser. |
| Page 38: | "There is something of the boy with the Erector set in how he thinks about energy, looking at it from a hyperrational and systematic approach, as well the more exuberant 'Look what I can build!' " |
| Missing word: S/B "as well as the more exuberant". |
| Page 136: | "Although they make up less than 1 percent of the photosynthetic life on earth..." |
| Probably S/B "photosynthesizing species". Removes the ambiguity which would allow interpretation as mass. |
| Page 164: | "The society ... was started by Gavin Pretor-Pinney, editor of the Idler, a magazine that celebrates do-nothingness in all its forms." |
| Italics do not include full title, and the first word is lower-case: S/B "The Idler". (See Gavin Pretor-Pinney.) |
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