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Gently Fixing Global Warming: ... how we got here to where we must go
a book by Walter Albers
(our site's book review)
The Amazon blurb says that We must address global warming by travelling a different pathway than the one we are on. If we commit ourselves, we can beat it. You will find the procedure in this book.
At present, we focus on excess carbon dioxide emissions. These come from everywhere including transportation, industry, agriculture, and above all coal-based electric power production. This view is limited and one-sided with no resolutions. Our continual bickering about funding or responsibilities causes inaction and global warming conditions continue to escalate. This tempts us to put hopes on untried technology. With no clear plan in sight, it weakens our will to remedy the damage.
Our continual bickering about funding or responsibilities causes inaction and global warming conditions continue to escalate
We launch 40 gigatons of extra carbon dioxide into atmosphere each year. China, India, coal-based power plants, and oil companies will send an additional 17 gigatons per year. (A gigaton is one billion tons corresponding to five 100 car unit coal trains per minute.) The less developed countries strive for a development level approaching the advanced economies.
A gigaton is one billion tons corresponding to five 100 car unit coal trains per minute
Before the industrial revolution atmospheric carbon dioxide balanced at 280 parts per million for 800,000 years. [In 2017 atmospheric carbon dioxide was at 405 parts per million.] Sinks used to sequester the extra carbon dioxide generated. Sinks include trees, ground covers, oceans, some rocks, among others. We have created a massive imbalance. Carbon dioxide emissions increased while the sinks diminished. We cut down half our forests and allowed almost all farmland to be nude of ground cover.
We must restore balances to restore the Earth. We must fix the sinks we destroyed, including rivers, lakes, and oceans
We must restore balances to restore the Earth. We must fix the sinks we destroyed. The repair will involve significant land areas for forest restoration, returning agriculture to take on aspects of organic farming, and allowing pastures to contain trees and bushes. We must reduce deforestation. We must manage gasses generated by 1.5 billion cows. We shall use the efficiency improvements outlined by the United Nations relative to transportation, appliances, buildings, or solar energy. As the sinks perform year after year we are not continually starting over as we would with high technical solutions. Project costs are a fraction of proposed high technology programs.
We must manage gasses generated by 1.5 billion cows
The implementation difficulty is us. We view ourselves as the dominate species on Earth. This produces almost absolute privilege. Humans can be aggressive towards most everything and come out the winner. Other species became extinct 100 times faster than they would without humans. Populations of wild animals halved since 1970. Being powerful, we need not reflect on consequences as we can subdue them too.
Humans are now passing through their trial. We exploited the Earth. The Earth is striking back. It will win and we need to acknowledge this.
There is a choice. We could restore Earth to what it was. It is a gentle solution. This means engaging with earth not in dominance but in partnership. We have no training in this partnership thing. We may delay doing much of anything until it is too late. But maybe, just maybe starting down the path of partnership will cause us to reflect upon what we have and how much we wish to preserve it.
Walter Albers says that when he was 19 in 1956 he had a near death experience including an out-of-body experience in a hospital
Walter Albers says that when he was 19 in 1956 he had a near death experience (NDE) ". . . including an out-of-body experience. . . . Over time the hospital stay was put behind. There remained an exceptional condition of awareness accompanied with intense hyperclarity. There evolved a changed understanding of what life was about. . . . the NDE experience underlies many of the great religions of the world. . . . Some researchers believe NDE give us snapshots of another world, or glimpses into the inner workings of a dimension that surrounds or underpins our physical reality. Through it all was awareness that we have been here before."
He later talks Bible verses and such. No source reviewed his book, since they were put off by three things: Bible quotes, out-of-body experiences, and writing that showed a less than complete command of spelling, grammar, and context. Albers has been issued over 40 patents in the United States and internationally during a 60 year career. These relate to alternate uses of energy. Albers is right about the urgency of global warming and climate change, but there are plenty of better books written by people with much better credentials one could read. It seems the purpose of his book is more about personal catharsis than book sales or financial gain. Fine by us.
Albers is right about the urgency of global warming and climate change
There is not much to say about his take on climate change. He is right, but then so are the other hundred books about this area.
- The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
- Only Love Remains: Dancing at the Edge of Extinction
- The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption
- Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
- The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy
- This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate
- Wicked & Wise: How to solve the world's toughest problems
- Climate Change Reality Check: Basic Facts that Quickly Prove the Climate Change Crusade is Wrong and Dangerous
- The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change (The Politically Incorrect Guides)
- The War on Science: Who's Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It
- Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What's Happening, What's Right, and What's Possible
- Not a Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle Science