Gulfstream

http://www.withouthotair.com/ Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air: very educational and informative (free) book by David MacKay (Cambridge professor of physics) on how we can reduce the amount of carbon web pump into the air. Serious, responsible, realistic, and not shrill. (Except occasionally, when irritated by particularly wrong-headed energy saving schemes, such as the advice to unplug your phone charger when not using it.) Towards the end he presents five sample energy plans that vary in their energy source mix (more/less nuclear, etc.). As he says, there’s something “unpalatable” about every one—but these are our choices. I’m impressed (and glad) that it’s currently #54 on Amazon UK’s best-seller list. A few misc things I was surprised by: (a) Wind farms take up an enormous amount of space (“if we covered the windiest 10% of the [UK] with windmills (delivering 2 W/m2), we would be able to generate 20 kWh/d per person” (p. 33); the UK average energy comsumption per day is 125 kWh/d (p. 104); (b) I knew air travel dumped a whole lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, but it turns out this is mostly because of the distances involved; travelling to Australia by car, for example, is about as efficient as flying there (p. 128). 10:40