Turning the Corner: Energy Solutions for the 21st Century
by Dohn Riley, Mark McLaughlin

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Book Reviews of Turning the Corner: Energy Solutions for the 21st Century

Book Review: Nice doorstop
Summary: 2 Stars

On page 27 they state: "In Germany, acid rain is destroying the forests" without a reference (not even to the otherwise heavily quoted bastion of scientific information the Sacramento Bee). Acid rain as the cause of large-scale forest destruction was shown to be erroneous fairly shortly after it was announced with doomsday headlines in the 1980s. But it is a good example of how at least $500 million was spent by the US alone to solve a problem before it was really demonstrated to be a problem.

Footnote 11 on page 41 relating to the book "Climate of fear" tells us "the book offers a one-sided optimistic outlook on the prospects of global warming" and that it "should be read cautiously". Sounds like daddy is telling me that I am not allowed to agree with any of it if I read it. It is also symptomatic of a real problem that the word "optimistic" is used as a negative! Wow, I must immediately learn to become more pessimistic.

Later they launch into lengthy chapters on supposed future energy sources. Among the information and gibberish we find things like this sidebar quote on page 218:"As a self-organization system with energy and matter exchanging externally, excess energy can be generated due to torsion coherent with zero-point energy in the vortex state on the tips of electrodes". I have a Ph.D. in Physics and I have absolutely no clue what this means. I doubt that any reader will have any clue what it means. As a matter of fact I doubt that the authors themselves have any clue what this means, because it is not the sort of thing anybody writes to clarify a topic. It is meant to intimidate readers into believing that lots of fancy words strung together will show how stupid they are and hence how smart the authors must be.

Environmental issues are important. There is enough misinformation out there. If you want a read by people clearly on the "left" side of the debate, here it is. Just don't believe for a second that the information is somehow balanced.

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