Understanding the Bigger Energy Picture
Understanding the Bigger Energy Picture

Author: Michael Düren

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-05-10

Total Pages: 121

ISBN-13: 3319579665

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This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book focuses on the global cycles of energy, water and carbon, which are not only the essentials of our main energy carriers, the fossil fuels, but are also the building blocks of life. The book offers an overview of the basic scientific facts and relationships that are needed to understand today’s energy generation and use, how they relate to global climate, the water cycle and other resources, and the complexities of energy policy. Building on the work of the Desertec project, it presents the main technological options that we will have in a world after the “Energiewende” and presents the possible future solutions for a sustainable world. The book is written in an engaging, descriptive style that can be understood by those without specific knowledge of science or economics and allows readers to form their own conclusions. Controversy rages over energy problems, climate change and their possible solutions. Expressions like “climate deniers”, “renaissance of nuclear energy”, “stop the war on coal”, and “Energiewende now” represent a diversity of opinions that divide our society and political leaders. This book shows the reader the whole energy picture and how it is part of the wider global problems of overpopulation and uncontrolled economies in a world of limited resources.

Energy and Civilization
Energy and Civilization

Author: Vaclav Smil

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-11-13

Total Pages: 564

ISBN-13: 0262536161

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A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.

Energy Island
Energy Island

Author: Allan Drummond

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2011-03

Total Pages: 44

ISBN-13: 0374321841

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Tells how the people of Danish island of Samso decided to use wind energy to power their lives and became the "Energy Island."

The Big Picture
The Big Picture

Author: Sean Carroll

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2016-05-10

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 0698409760

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The instant New York Times bestseller about humanity's place in the universe—and how we understand it. “Vivid...impressive....Splendidly informative.”—The New York Times “Succeeds spectacularly.”—Science “A tour de force.”—Salon Already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, Sean Carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on Higgs bosons and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions: Where are we? Who are we? Are our emotions, our beliefs, and our hopes and dreams ultimately meaningless out there in the void? Do human purpose and meaning fit into a scientific worldview? In short chapters filled with intriguing historical anecdotes, personal asides, and rigorous exposition, readers learn the difference between how the world works at the quantum level, the cosmic level, and the human level—and then how each connects to the other. Carroll's presentation of the principles that have guided the scientific revolution from Darwin and Einstein to the origins of life, consciousness, and the universe is dazzlingly unique. Carroll shows how an avalanche of discoveries in the past few hundred years has changed our world and what really matters to us. Our lives are dwarfed like never before by the immensity of space and time, but they are redeemed by our capacity to comprehend it and give it meaning. The Big Picture is an unprecedented scientific worldview, a tour de force that will sit on shelves alongside the works of Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Daniel Dennett, and E. O. Wilson for years to come.

Understanding the Bigger Energy Picture
Understanding the Bigger Energy Picture

Author: Michael Düren

Publisher:

Published: 2020-10-08

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 9781013268915

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This book focuses on the global cycles of energy, water and carbon, which are not only the essentials of our main energy carriers, the fossil fuels, but are also the building blocks of life. The book offers an overview of the basic scientific facts and relationships that are needed to understand today's energy generation and use, how they relate to global climate, the water cycle and other resources, and the complexities of energy policy. Building on the work of the Desertec project, it presents the main technological options that we will have in a world after the "Energiewende" and presents the possible future solutions for a sustainable world. The book is written in an engaging, descriptive style that can be understood by those without specific knowledge of science or economics and allows readers to form their own conclusions. Controversy rages over energy problems, climate change and their possible solutions. Expressions like "climate deniers", "renaissance of nuclear energy", "stop the war on coal", and "Energiewende now" represent a diversity of opinions that divide our society and political leaders. This book shows the reader the whole energy picture and how it is part of the wider global problems of overpopulation and uncontrolled economies in a world of limited resources. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Coal
Coal

Author: Mark C. Thurber

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2019-05-07

Total Pages: 117

ISBN-13: 150951404X

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By making available the almost unlimited energy stored in prehistoric plant matter, coal enabled the industrial age – and it still does. Coal today generates more electricity worldwide than any other energy source, helping to drive economic growth in major emerging markets. And yet, continued reliance on this ancient rock carries a high price in smog and greenhouse gases. We use coal because it is cheap: cheap to scrape from the ground, cheap to move, cheap to burn in power plants with inadequate environmental controls. In this book, Mark Thurber explains how coal producers, users, financiers, and technology exporters drive this supply chain, while fragmented environmental movements battle for full incorporation of environmental costs into the global calculus of coal. Delving into the politics of energy versus the environment at local, national, and international levels, Thurber paints a vivid picture of the multi-faceted challenges associated with continued coal production and use in the twenty-first century.

A Bigger Picture
A Bigger Picture

Author: Vanessa Nakate

Publisher: Mariner Books

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 0358654505

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Leading climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate brings her fierce and fearless spirit to the biggest issue of our time. Nakate's mere presence has revealed rampant inequalities within the climate justice movement. While attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Nakate's image was cropped out of a photo by the Associated Press. The photo featured the four other activists, who were all white. It highlighted the call Nakate has been making all along: for both environmental and social justice on behalf of those who have been omitted from the climate discussion and who are now demanding to be heard. Print run 40,000.

New Power
New Power

Author: Jeremy Heimans

Publisher: Random House Canada

Published: 2018-04-03

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0345816463

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From two influential and visionary thinkers comes a big idea that is changing the way movements catch fire and ideas spread in our highly connected world. For the vast majority of human history, power has been held by the few. "Old power" is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful spend it carefully, like currency. But the technological revolution of the past two decades has made possible a new form of power, one that operates differently, like a current. "New power" is made by many; it is open, participatory, often leaderless, and peer-driven. Like water or electricity, it is most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it, but to channel it. New power is behind the rise of participatory communities like Facebook and YouTube, sharing services like Uber and Airbnb, and rapid-fire social movements like Brexit and #BlackLivesMatter. It explains the unlikely success of Barack Obama's 2008 campaign and the unlikelier victory of Donald Trump in 2016. And it gives ISIS its power to propagate its brand and distribute its violence. Even old power institutions like the Papacy, NASA, and LEGO have tapped into the strength of the crowd to stage improbable reinventions. In New Power, the business leaders/social visionaries Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms provide the tools for using new power to successfully spread an idea or lead a movement in the twenty-first century. Drawing on examples from business, politics, and social justice, they explain the new world we live in--a world where connectivity has made change shocking and swift and a world in which everyone expects to participate.