Rating: 
Summary: Book Report Due Monday
Review: I'm continually amazed by the criticisms I find of books here at Amazon from people who have clearly not read them. This feature is of absolutely no use to me. Amazon would do better to post links to articles with critiques (good and bad) by people in the media of whom we can at least have a reasonable expectation of having actually taken the time to read the book upon which they are commenting.
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Summary: This is your brain on sensationalism
Review: If this was parody, it would be worth five stars...for it truly is comedic. If this was a marketing test to prove that a sensationalistic title on a hot topic of the day will sell lots of copies, again it would garner a five. What gives it a two, at best, is the realization that the people responsible for it meant it as serious discourse. Now, if you want to start a cult, this puts you on the right track. Again, that would warrant a five. But, alas, the ultimate disgrace of this work in the eyes of science, politics and the environment of our planet brings it only as high as the supposed number of extant, working brain cells of its creator, which on a good day would have to be a strong TWO!
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Summary: another attempt to cover up
Review: It is obvious that the earth maintains a certain balance in atmospheric composition through intricate feed back mechanisms. CO2 is an important gas in the atmosphere. Since the industrial revolutions humans have pumped virtually unlimited amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere. If life on earth is made possible because of a certain amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and we keep on pumping more CO2 in the atmosphere, a high school kid can understand that this must lead to changes in global climate and life on earth. Any attempt to cover up this obvious truth must be regarded as utter unwillingness to change our destructive life style and shows the extreme selfishness of western civilisation. Regarding CO2 as the lifeblood of the planet is deceptive nonsense: if concentrations of CO2 rise too much, it is only going to be harmful. I wonder how the authors would feel if I would put them in a room with an elevated level of oxygen, so they can experience for themselves what an enlarged concentration of a life giving gas would do to them. Just like high levels of oxygen are deadly for humans, so are high levels of CO2 deadly for plants.
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Summary: At Last -- Reason Over Fear
Review: It's refreshing to see gifted and thoughtful folks calmly responding to the blather of postmodern eco-nonsense. The earth is incredibly resilient and it will be here (healthy and vibrant) long after the scare-mongers depart the scene in their earth-friendly hybrid vehicle deathtraps.
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Summary: Five stars for Nuvere from USA
Review: Nuvere from USA is so hilariously typical of the entire radical enviro movement. Don't like the facts? Ignore them and make up your own! Oxygen is deadly to humans? CO2 is deadly to plants? Brilliant! You must have learned that from the high school kid you referred to. Better go back and get your G.E.D. Nuvere. I haven't read this yet but soon will.
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Summary: actual cited scientific data shows this book is unbased
Review: scientific peer reviewed journals show that the data preasented in this book is entirly un scientifically based. convection currents that power ocean circulation are slowing because the warming of the top two meaters of the oceans is causing a thermocline that does not allow mixing of cool dense lower water with warm upper strata. this is why it is climate change and not warming the oceans cannot continue to transfer heat to the upper latitudes causing cooling and warming at lower latitudes. despite this, without ocean circulation the phytoplanktin in the ocean cannot survive because oxygen would not cycle in and therefore they could not fix C02 from the atmosphere. this leads to a positive feedback cycle further increasing C02 in the atmosphere. other readings that I would recomend include any articles in truly peer reviewed journals where science is respected.
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Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: The author has no reasonable facts to back up his claims. Nearly all information in this book is either an outright lie, misinformation, or half-truth. Don't waste your time or money. This book isn't worth the paper it is printed on. Perhaps the author has his own agenda....BIG BUSINESS?
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Summary: Hopelessly biased
Review: The Competitive Enterprise Institute exists to serve the interests of business. Their mission is to make money, and the more the merrier, and to hell with the consequences for the future. Scientists exist to serve the cause of objective truth. Yes, there are bad scientists, but the vast majority of scientists are now unanimous in saying that global warming is caused by human activities and will have dire results. I believe the scientists. And I can perceive global warming happening with my own senses.
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Summary: Useful account of environmentalist myths
Review: The issue of global warming is scaremongering, a massive red herring to make workers take their eyes off the tasks facing us - stopping deindustrialisation, unemployment, the destruction of our services, the European Union's destruction of our nation Britain. Scare stories about global warming, melting ice caps and glaciers, intensifying storms and droughts, a `Day After Tomorrow'-style ice age, overpopulation, mass extinctions, imminent famines, nuclear proliferation and energy shortages are grounded not in reason but in false science and a fear of progress. They are kin to medieval fears of apocalypse. We need to denounce the doom-mongers who portray us as helpless victims, at the mercy of events beyond our control as a nation.
The facts are that Antarctica has been cooling and its glaciers thickening for the past 30 years. Global fertility rates are falling dramatically, and with advanced technology, farmers are producing more food using fewer resources than ever before. Environmental pollution accounts for at most 2% of all cancer cases versus 30% caused by tobacco use. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world's forests covered 40.24 million square kilometres in 1950, and 43.04 million in 1994. 80% of the world's original rainforest is still intact. Sea levels in the region of the Pacific around the island nation of Tuvalu have been falling.
Amicus and the NUM recently warned that a growing crisis in our electricity industry will lead to blackouts and further electricity price rises. They warned against relying on oil and gas from unstable regions like southern Russia, the Middle East and North and West Africa. Powergen confirmed how right the unions are when it recently told us, "From 29 November 2004 your electricity prices will rise by around 44p a week. Why the price increase? There are many reasons, for example: producing energy is now more expensive, so the wholesale price of energy has risen for all suppliers. The UK's gas supply is also declining so we must now spend more importing gas from around the world."
The unions warned that EU directives would add to our energy problems, particularly the carbon emissions trading directive which would curtail the lifetime of existing power stations. The unions believe it is vital that the nation invests in clean coal fired power stations and in power engineering and manufacturing industries to develop expertise in designing and building new power stations.
In 2003 nuclear power stations provided 23% of Britain's electricity. By 2010, a third of these will have reached the end of their operating lives and will be closed, and nuclear power will account for just 16% of our electricity supply. Only two new stations are under construction. The closures will reduce Britain's ability to generate our own dependable energy supply. We need to plan and build more new nuclear power stations. France's nuclear plants produce three quarters of the country's power, one of the cheapest energy supplies in Europe.
We need to reduce energy waste, estimated to cost £5 billion a year, and rationally use our resources. We need to develop new technologies to economise on energy use. The government has failed to invest in Combined Heat and Power. We need more R&D into carbon free and carbon sequestration technologies. Biomass crops could be grown especially for use as environmentally-friendly fuel. This would boost farm diversity and create rural jobs. It could be competitive against conventional hydrocarbon-based energy generation, and could meet 10% of our energy needs.
Friends of the Earth say, "Renewable energy has the potential to provide all our needs." Not so - hydroelectricity, wind and tidal sources provide just 3% of our present energy, and wind and solar energy are intermittent: their annual power output is only 25% of the potential output if operating always at full power; by contrast, nuclear power's output is 90%. Blackouts three quarters of the time, anyone?
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Summary: Just because you shout loud doesn't make you right....
Review: The Looney Left, which grows in numbers by the day, is notorious for its loud voice. Unfortunately, they have confused passionate speech with reasonable speech. "Hey, if I scream loud enough, NOBODY will question me!" And this is usually the case. It has long been a tactic of the environmental lobby (and to the moron that claimed that envronmentalists have nothing to gain from protecting the earth... go soak your head) to use outdated and/or irrelevant data from uncomfirmed reports by shady organizations with proven agendas.
Everyone has a political bent, no matter what they say. A hippie idiot and a rational-thinking individual can witness the exact same event and both will report different facts. The difference is this: nine times out of ten, the hippie is so consumed by their political beliefs that their ability to be objective is completely incapacitated.
Ever notice how lefties define themselves through their political beliefs more so than conservatives? Their sense of identity is so extensively intertwined with their misinformed value system that to question their political stance is to question their worth as a human being. Defend the political view at all costs. If they were to concede victory, they would see it as compromising themselves. Hence the passionate speech.
Luckily, reason still prevails in most places. This enrages the poseur Bush-haters and deluded enviromites, who have made it their life's work to kick and scream about whatever the New York Times or CNN or The Daily Show tell them to kick and scream about. They don't really care if they're right or wrong, as long as they're screaming loud enough.
Thank God nobody takes these people seriously.
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