HOW TO COOL THE PLANET

Reviewed 4/17/2010

How To Cool the Planet, by Jeff Goodell

HOW TO COOL THE PLANET
Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate
Jeff Goodell
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010

Rating:

4.5

High

ISBN-13 978-0-618-99061-9?
ISBN-10 0-618-99061-5 272p. HC/BWI $26.00

Errata

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.
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: S/B "the Idler".
1 He rode in the cab, with the company's permission.
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