Category Archives: Books

Our Choice, By Al Gore

Books, Climate, Life, World, ,

We are on the cusp of addressing climate change, and it is about time with the droughts, wildfires, heat waves, enormous snow and rain storms (including hurricanes) and record floods.  So recently I reviewed a book from my shelf by Al Gore.

DSC08455  If we open out the flap on the front  cover, we see the earth as it was in 2009,    with green earth and a lot of polar ice.

DSC08467 This is the title page.

DSC08468 Here is the table of contents.  This book has main sections on:

  • The Crisis
  • Our Sources of Energy
  • Living Systems
  • How We Use Energy
  • The Obstacles We Need to Overcome
  • Going Far Quickly

It is an attractive book with many illustrative color pictures.

DSC08450

DSC08463  This graph shows that California moderated its per capita energy consumption starting as early as 1976.  California got an early start on the rest of us in addressing climate change, and California demonstrates that public policy is effective in reducing energy consumption, and thus in helping to address climate change.

DSC08456 If we open up the flap and turn the page, we see a desertified North America, no polar ice over the water, and diminished polar ice over the land, and more tropical storms.  We cannot see the temperature change.  This book is a treasure trove of information and help at our fingertips.

Brain Rules For Baby by John Medina

Books, Brain

1443129026794-430918787  This is a wonderful book for anybody at all, but especially for people of child-bearing age, and those with children.  It explains that the first thing that parents and others should know is that the brain of babies is interested first of all in survival, and if it has any energy left, that can go on learning in the more traditional sense.  Therefore, one always does better in relating to babies, in trying to understand the baby’s point-of-view.

He emphsizes the power of example.  Once a child has seen something,  even once, they know it in some way.  So it is very important to not demonstrate to them anything you do not want them to do.

This highly readable book is chock full of these themes, stories, and how to achieve the results we all would like to grow happy, smart babies that grow into happy, smart children.

The Sixth Extinction, An Unnatural History, Review Of the Book

Books, Climate, Evolution

The 6th Extinction image d August 21, 2015, 513qCLaP5sL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_ The Sixth Extinction : An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert, 2014, (Henry Holt and Company), has been on the New York Times Best Seller List, and has won a Pulitzer prize, among other honors.  It describes the very recent signs of distress to forms of life in several regions of earth and disturbing events due to mankind induced changes of our earth.  These things are happening  right now,  for example, the total dying off of many amphibians, due to a new virus to which they are susceptible, unleashed by the changing climate, and the distress of corals because of the oceans dissolving more CO2 from the air, which tilts the oceanic pH toward the acid side.

She then describes five major times of extinction over the last 500 million years, including the extinction wave in which the dinosaurs were killed off, due to a meteorite which hit the earth, altering its climate.

Kolbert tells us how we are the agent of a huge climate change, and suggests that we could stop our actions which are causing this, but she has no certainty at all that we willl, or will not, in fact change our ways.