Reviews (Books & DVD) – Page 277 – Public Intelligence Blog

2006/06/112009/12/04

Review: The Weather Makers –How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth (Hardcover)

5 Star, Environment (Problems), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design

Amazon Page

One of Two Best Out of Four Read on This Topic,

June 11, 2006

Tim Flannery

I realize some prefer this book to The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations which just edged this one out in my personal opinion–see my review of the other book for a sense of why.

This book is, however, easily of the same caliber, and more readable to boot. The author points out that climate change is different from “limits to growth” focused on resources. He is less focused on and consequently provides less detail than others on the intimate relations between climate, water scarcity, disease, poverty, and failed states. He does emphasize that absent more respect for climate change, human health, water, and food security are all at risk.

The author points out that the Earth's average temperature for the past 10,000 years has been 57 degrees Fahrenheit, and focuses his book on the need to transition to a carbon free economy.

Among the points he makes that jumped out at me: only four nations have refused to sign the Kyoto Treaty: the US, Australia, Morocco, and Liechtenstein.

His best chapter for me was focused on the cost BENEFITS of addressing climate change.

He attacks the oil and coal companies for disinformation, which has unfortunately had great effect. He likens them to dinosaurs with dinosaur brains that have been wounded, but stagger on.

As a former clandestine case officer, long fed up with the tens of billions of dollars we waste on satellites (most of whose data we cannot make sense of in a timely or coherent fashion) I was quite pleased to have the author recount a story about the conflict between satellites in space and lowly thermometers on the ground. The satellites were averaging the temperatures of the cooling stratosphere with the warming troposphere, and getting ground truth wrong. As I like to say over and over again, ground truth comes from the ground, not from satellites.

In his conclusion, the author notes that both the energy grid and the transport grid are candidates for decarbonization, but between the two he recommends the energy grid as the first priority. Readers may be interested to know that the same month that Vice President Cheney was meeting secretly with Enron and Exxon and others to plan the invasion of Central Asia and Iraq, WIRED Magazine published a thoughtful cover story on how to get from the wasteful (50%) one way energy grid to the much more productive two way and localized energy grid. This is not about brains; it is about ideology in the White House against practicality and the common interest across the Nation.

The author ends with a simple and credible 11 item list of ACTIONS that translate into IMPACTS.

2006/06/112009/12/04

Review: Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum–How Humans Took Control of Climate (Hardcover)

5 Star, Environment (Problems), Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design

Amazon Page

Very small print, good work, falls between big picture and farming,

June 11, 2006

William F. Ruddiman

This is a fine book that ties with When the Rivers Run Dry: Water–The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-first Century and falls slightly below The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth and The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations all of which I read in this week-end's series. Better books in the larger scheme of things include E. O. Wilson's The Future of Life and J. F. Rischard's High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them.

The books is blessed with many useful figures.

The author focuses on farming, which requires deforestation through burning, as preceding the impact of cities on climate.

He titillates with his discussion of 6 billion humans producing methane in huge quantities via rice irrigation, livestock tending, biomass burning, and human waste.

I especially appreciated the author's discussion of climate studies as being relatively new, and his itemization of the number of specializations that now bear on climate study, including geologists, geochemists, meteorologists, glaciologists, ecologists, biological oceanographers, climatologists, etc.

The book is somewhat mis-titled in that the humans are not in CONTROL of the climate as much as impacting upon it in ways not fully understood but largely understood to be negative (e.g. hurricanes twice as intense as 30 years ago, witness New Orleans and KATRINA).

It takes 50 years to raise a forest.

Plagues are a form of natural control. People die, farms are abandoned, forests grow back, and emissions are reduced.

For a taste of the future, the author shows us the past, when Africa and India and China had much greater moisture across their regions. The author ably argues that the water cycle is as important if not more important than the energy cycle in relation to the future of life.

Page 152, the author provides a superb discussion of climate response time, noting that the land mass is much more responsive, which the varied layers of the ocean run from months-years at the top to years-decades in the middle, and centuries in the deep ocean–with the average being decades.

On page 182 the author demonstrates a lack of understanding of politics when he says “Politicians generally vote for policies their constituents want.” Not so fast, bubba. Read Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders; Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It; and The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy) among many other works on corruption in Congress, where the bottom line is money from special interests, or privileges and committee assignments from the party that demands one vote the party line rather than as constituents' desire.

The author is the only of the four that I really felt made the point that BOTH extremes are bad: the extremists that deny climate change, and those that demand draconian corrective measures. He points out, in a very balanced way, that pollution is as old as the earth itself.

As with other authors who value the truth in this arena, this author makes it a point to lament the unethical and unreasoned “alternative universe” of industry-funded contrarians and the actively malicious mis-representation and disinformation they purvey. I was quite pleased to read his suggestion that citizens need to get organized and “follow the money” in order to out the connections from industry to “front organizations” to specific liars and agents of influence seeking to deceive the public.

He discusses the concept of ecosystem services and the costs to replace, something E. O. Wilson does in a more thorough and readable manner in The Future of Life but the coverage here is useful if you do not wish to buy many books.

Finally, the author concludes that global warming is not the most vital issue–that energy and then water scarcity are more important, followed by the issue of topsoil replenishment (no longer from clean natural ice melts, now from petroleum-based fertilizers).

There are no notes in this book, with disconcerted me a bit.

2006/06/112009/12/04

Review: When the Rivers Run Dry–Water–The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century (Hardcover)

5 Star, Environment (Problems)

Amazon Page

First-Person Account, No Notes,

June 11, 2006

Fred Pearce

This is a good book if you like first-person accounts with no notes that fail to mention other stellar works. I confess to being spoiled by Marc de Villers “WATER: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource,” and by David Helvarg's “Blue Frontier: Dispatches from America's Ocean Wilderness” as well as William Langewiesche's “The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime.”

It also falls second to “The Winds of Change” and to “The Weather Makers” (I tend to read books in sets to tease out varying perspectives), and ties with “Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum.”

The author's most exciting idea, absolutely worthy of global implementation, is to call for the marking of all products with their “water content.” He is stunningly education, truly original within my reading as reviewed at Amazon when he itemizes the amount of water needed to create a pound of rice or any of a number of other products. I would advise any future leader to demand that products be labeled as to their water content, their oil content, and their chlorine content (see my review of Joe Thorton's “Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy.”

The author notes that the US is exporting ONE THIRD of its water in the form of products that consumed that amount of water.

Other highlights from this book, for me personally:

Six water winners are Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Indonesia, and Russia, with Mongolia as a water wild card.

Treaties about water are out of date. Technologies, including cement as an answer for re-directing water, are mis-directed.

97% of the world is sea water–this suggests that we need a MASSIVE global desalination program to protect aquifers from further salination and deterioration (from my own experience: $100M will buy a desalination plant capable of desalinating 100M cubic meters of water a year, or Navy ship or an Army brigade with tanks and artillery, or 1000 diplomats, or 10000 Peace Corps missions, or a day of war over water. It's about trade-offs, and we and not making them wisely.

Kashmir is about Pakistan's Achilles heel, water.

India is on a path to destruction. “Water mines” are selling water for $4.00 (four dollars) a TRUCK TANKER LOAD, and basically mining India dry. When the author comments about a “spate of suicides” among Indian farmers, he fails to mention that this number runs toward 2,000 a year dead by their own hand. He predicts aquifer busts in India and China within 20 years, at which point, as other authors discuss more ably, disease, migrations, crime, and poverty will be as plagues unto those two nations.

Dams produce methane from rotting vegetation, with 8X the greenhouse effect of a coal powered plan of the same capacity. This should in the author's view change the Kyoto calculations. The author is very strong on this point, and suggests that breaking down dams and not building more (e.g. China) should be right up there with global warming as issues for action.

He notes that the 6 day war in the Middle East was about water, but neglects to mention that Israeli agriculture is using up 50% of the water stolen from the Arabs through underground pipes, yet produces less than 5% of Israel's GDP.

I was most taken with the author's discussion of “barefoot science” which emerging during his discussion of toxic or poisoned water such as found in Bangladesh. He cites with great admiration one individual who went from village to village testing wells, with very crude tools, providing reliable estimates of toxicity for 10 cents per well.

A fine book, some excellent insights, but it did leave me a bit cranky. Marq de Villier's book is still the best in class.

2006/06/042015/01/05

Review: Stand for Something–The Battle for America’s Soul (Hardcover)

5 Star, Consciousness & Social IQ, Democracy, Education (General), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics

Quick Read, Somewhat Bland, Best of Intentions,

June 4, 2006

John Kasich

I certainly do not regret buying and taking the time to read this book. It is a relatively quick read (lots of white space between and around the lines). For me the best and most important chapter dealt with the corruption of politics, and I include some memorable quotes from there below.The books reads rather blandly and inoffensively (typical of Presidential Hopefuls writing “please get to know me” books but I have to say that after putting down this book, I felt that the author had indeed made his point: he is a decent man who stands for core values, and believes in a balanced budget to boot.Memorable points from the political chapter, alone worthy of buying and reading the book:

Reagan Republican who echoes President Carter's “malaise” concerns by saying “there's a feeling of hopelessness out there.”

p 21. “Good politics shouldn't be about us or them”

On page 75, after starting off by saying that politics should be about saving the world, he says “We haven't seen middle ground for so long I am no longer certain it exists.”

Both these comments tie in very well with the newly launched Unity08 movement to use the Internet to field a split party presidential team for 2008, and the new non-rival Citizens-Party (wing for each existing party to have “dual membership”) which will be launched shortly to field not just a mixed party presidential team, but a coalition cabinet committed to electoral issue as the non-rival issue for all, and a balanced transparent budget with public intelligence and dialog driving public policy in the future, instead of party line politics or special interest money (the author addresses both).

On page 77 he directly slams the Bush II administration is noting rather pointedly that we need leaders who represent our core values and are not simply committed to winning and holding power at any cost.

On page 94 he specifically identifies one of the times when Dick Cheney broke his word, and one gets the feeling that the author is intimately familiar with the propensity of the sitting Vice President to lie and break his word to one and all.

The books by Tom Coburn on Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders and by Joe Klein on Politics Lost: From RFK to W: How Politicians Have Become Less Courageous and More Interested in Keeping Power than in Doing What's Right for America as well as Norman Cousins on The Pathology of Power – A Challenge to Human Freedom and Safety are much more detailed and sophisticated than this book, but in his own way the author has told a simple elegant personal story about politics lost to party corruption and special interest money, and I respect him all the more for this chapter.

In comparison with the chapter on politics the chapters on sports, business lack of ethics, loss of religion to Paris Hilton and sex on TV, loss of discipline in education, and the loss of culture as celebrities fail to walk the wholesome road, are straight-forward.

The book ends with a general but rather bland “call to arms” asking each of us to believe in the greater good and act accordingly.

Bottom line: good guy, leader, “must have” on any coaltion ticket to save America from the Republican and Democratic extremists that are killing the Republic.

2006/06/042009/12/04

Review: Tiger Force–A True Story of Men and War (Hardcover)

5 Star, Asymmetric, Cyber, Hacking, Odd War, Atrocities & Genocide, War & Face of Battle

Amazon Page

In Context, a Shameful Story with Two Sides,

June 4, 2006

Michael Sallah

EDITED 16 Jun 06 to add heat stress hypothesis below.

I ordered this book when I first heard that the Marines had gone bezerk and killed several families in cold blood in Iraq, an action that caused me as a former Marine to weep silently for a time.

I certainly recommend that the reviews titled War Crimes and WAR CRIMES, and Hatchet Job, be read, for they have at least two good points that must be remembered and respected:

1) Indiscriminate air strikes are vastly more of a war crime than isolated incidents of ground forces going bezerk.

EDIT of 16 Jun 06. I met a really fascinating individual in Louiseville, Kentucky, H.C. (Bud) Meyer, ex NASA, now Advanced Systems Integrators, who in a very active retirement is doing everything he can to help fire fighters not die at an average age of forty. It turns out that heat stress on their hearts over the course of twenty years is killing them. He developed a new suit that uses the backback (lessned in weight) to both feed them oxygen and to cool their suits, and the preliminary results are nothing short of sensational. I'be been a Marine and seen combat but never had to “do” combat with a full load and all the body armor, in the desert. I am absolutely convinced that a “heat stress defense” would be plausible. As much as I believe that Marines should be punished for indiscriminate murder of civilians, I also believe that Bud had brought forward an objective factor that is both relevant to to ground troop war crimes evaluation, and relevant to national-level leaders looking for ways to increase discipline by lessening the stress of combat in heat with a full load.

2) The failure of Pentagon, theater, and service leadership to investigate and prosecute may be understandable from a total force morale perspective, but is unconscionable in the larger global hearts and minds or “Information Operations” perspective. We have lost the moral high ground in the Middle East for many reasons, but Abu Grahib and the indiscriminate Marine executions of several families shame America and make it more likely that more America soldiers will die than otherwise.

A few things jumped out at me:

1) Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, then serving as President Ford's Secretary of Defense, refused to investigate and prosecute this matter. We should not expect him to be morally aggressive with respect to atrocities committed by Americans in Iraq and elsewhere.

2) There are clear signs when troops are beginning to “lose it” and are more likely to go bezerk, including body mutilation, and bodies without weapons (and very little bodies, such as the beheaded baby featured in this book). It should be possible for our generals to keep a pulse on the troops by having medical forensics and simply “paying attention.” Just as genocide has eight stages and can be predicted, I believe that ground force war crimes can be anticipated and personnel rotated and calmed.

3) Finally, I share the author's concluding view, that writing this book and bringing these atrocities to light, is valuable as a vaccination for the future. I believe in retrospective indictment and retospective impeachment, not necessarily in the serving of sentences past the statute of limitations (although war crimes have no such limitation). There are in my view three levels of war crime: strategic (elective wars, lying to the public); operational (indiscriminate air campaigns, focusing on nuclear proliferation instead of the control of small arms); and tactical–indiscriminate murder without honor, especially of women and children.

It merits comment that this book could not have been written without the emergence of a new file following the death of a key person. I believe that we will see a great deal of historical information come out in the next ten years that will, with the power of distributed processing, allow the people to judge their elected and appointed officials, in detail. I sense a new passion for justice and accountability being made possible by books such as this, and the Internet, and it is my hope that this will overtime reduce the “culture of cheating” as well as the likeliness of “going bezerk.”

The war crimes in this book were isolated, and are vastly surpassed in evil by things we are doing now and are planning to do, but I cannot shake the feeling that the men in this book are “us.” This is not a war story for wanna-be warriors (some of the reviews really cause me sadness, as if this book were entertainment)–it is an ethics lesson for future and present leaders of all ranks, because there but for God's grace go I, or you.

2006/06/022009/12/04

Review: NOW Who Do We Blame?–Political Cartoons by Tom Toles (Paperback)

5 Star, Intelligence (Public), Politics

Amazon Page

Sheer Genius, the People's Poet Cartoonist Laureate,

June 2, 2006

Tom Toles

I start every day with the Tom Toles cartoon in the Washington Post, and consider him to be the Nation's poet cartoonist laureate. I've taken to buying his books as well, for cheer, for reflection, as gifts, and as a collector's item.

The publisher has done this book a real dis-service by not using Amazon's “about the book” information upload capabilities. The table of contents, for example, not provided by the publisher, is provided here to demonstrate that this is a “serious” cartoon book that is both hysterically funny, and poignantly pointed at REALITY. The contents, as organized by the author:

Politics and the Election
Gays and Religion
Law and Regulations
Press and Media
Health and Education
Science and the Environment
Social Security
The Economy and Budget
Security
WMD and Beyond

This is, quite simply, a sensational book. I will end by noting, somewhat pointedly, that Tom Toles' human wisdom as displayed across all these topics, makes a great deal more sense to me than the idiot “banana words” of most Republican and Democratic candidates for any elective office. Tom Toles for President! (I smile–he's too good a man for the job, unless we change the way we elect Presidents).

Consider also Googling for his web site and sharing his daily cartoons with others–Tom Toles is as close as we get in America to the Solidarity movement and samizdat freedom thinkers that broke the back of communism–now we need to break the back of ideological extremism and predatory capitalism, and that can start with the sharing of Tom Tole's great work.

2006/06/012009/12/04

Review: An Inconvenient Truth–The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It (Paperback)

3 Star, Environment (Problems)

Watch the DVD First. Up to Four Stars if You Do That…..,

June 1, 2006

Al Gore

Note: Although the DVD is mostly Al Gore and Powerpoint slides, interspersed with views of the adoring audience, it is a VERY effective briefing, and after seeing the DVD, my appreciation for the book went up. It is still over the top on fonts and graphics–the next edition should be toned down–but if viewed together with the DVD, the book goes up to four stars.

I actually read The Global 2000 Report to the President: Entering the Twenty-First Century as published in 1982 and still in my library, and I follow the excellent work of Lester Brown, whose “State of the World” publications are extremely pointed, pertinent, and professional.

In that context, this book is a real disappointment. It is a superb “coffee table” book, with glorious photographs, some really excellent time phrase photos (showing melting ice and increased drought at the same place over three period. The writing is thoughtful, but the composition of the book makes it very inefficent at communicating the ideas in structured form. This is an artist's rendition, with what for me at least was an annoying jumble of mixed big font sizes, constantly changing lay-outs, and no tables or substantive “here are the ten threats, here are the ten solutions.”

I am waiting for the video, and I suspect that the movie will be ten times more valuable as both an educational and mobilization tool, much as the Wal-Mart video is superior to the Wal-Mart book.

I admire the author very much, and believe that his commitment to the environment and to doing the right thing is genuine.

The best part of the book is the end, which lists a number of things that one can do personally to help with the environment, and also puts a number of “myths” into boxes (e.g. melting of cold ice at the Poles is good), but sadly, the choice of fonts, colors, layouts, and so on make this book a 50% success, at best. “art” or COSMETICS triumphed over substance and seriousness, and the Vice President has lost, yet again, a chance to make a larger difference. I will pray that the movie makes this review, and this book, irrelevant.

This is certainly a book that is worth buying to support the Vice President, to appreciate the photos and content, but this book missed a great opportunity to provide America and the world with a more digestible serious document that could have led to action. In its current form, it is nothing more than a “what nice pictures, quite right, something must be done” and then it goes back on the coffee table and achieves nothing. Sorry, but that is my hard-nosed evaluation.