Chris Goodall

I have given a few copies to friends and colleagues of David Wallace-Wells excellent, if terrifying, The Uninhabitable Earth which I reviewed here 3 years ago on October 5th and was one of my books of the year in 2019. Having scared myself stupid, I was in the market for some possible solutions and had Chris Goodall’s What We Need To Do Now (Profile), published in 2020, recommended to me by my youngest son who is a net zero geologist. The book clearly and simply goes through the most likely to be successful options we have to become carbon neutral by 2050. It’s focused on the UK and needs just about all of them, and possibly more, to be undertaken and soon. Building a huge over-capacity of wind and solar energy to generate electricity and storing the excess as hydrogen which can fuel our heavy industry and transport and act as the backup fuel when renewables cannot. So in tune with our government’s current policies (written on Wednesday 12th October so update as necessary on a daily basis). Farming, woodlands, fashion and carbon capture also feature. Still scary but it does demonstrate that paralysis is not an option and we should be getting on with it – a 2° temperature rise is not a win/lose barrier and every subsequent 0.1° increase is critical. I shall give this book to a few more people too.… (more)

THIS is the book that I needed! This is a tome to which I can point any sceptic about the dangers, AND the solutions , of/to climate change. Chris Goodall writes well: he doesn't come across as knowing ALL the answers, he doesn't profess this to be the one true path to environmental enlightenment; he simply sets out a cogent view.

It is interesting to see the manner in which climate sceptics have evaporated over a short period of time. No longer do news programmes include stories of climate change as the lightweight ending item. Climate change is accepted as real. This book explains, not just what our governments need to do, but what we, as individuals should be doing too. It is not prescriptive: fail in one area and we're all doomed. It encourages good practice, at all levels.

A MUST read.… (more)

This is an absolutely excellent overview of green/clean technology and solutions to global warming.

I thought I already knew a lot about clean technology through blogs, science news and other books - and Goodall is current with the latest news up to early 2008 - but there was hardly a page in this book I did not learn something new, or had my perspectives changed. This is not starry-eyed techno optimism, nor a pessimists dark vision. Goodall takes a sober non-ideological even-handed engineering perspective with lightly placed pronouncements on the viability of technologies, both good and bad, often convincingly overturning perceived wisdom and myth. The book would also make an excellent primer for anyone looking to invest in clean technology, it cuts through the hype and quickly gets to the bottom line of energy units and costs, and the risks. My copy is dogeared with some of the best specific products and companies to look into as investment potentials.

The chapter titles say a lot:

1. Capturing the wind
2. Solar energy
3. Electricity from the oceans
4. Combined heat and power
5. Super-efficient homes
6. Electric cars
7. Motor fuels from cellulose
8. Capturing carbon
9. Biochar
10. Soil and forests

Each chapter stands on its own and if your only interested in some the others can be skipped, but they are all fascinating. The author is British and it is written for an English audience, usually using British pounds and examples, but the US is mentioned many times and it is easy to extrapolate (many US companies are mentioned). It is very well written and easy to read.

Some examples of things in the book: because water is 1000 times heavier than air, underwater turbines harnessing tidal energy in places like Scotland and Canada have extremely "dense" energy potentials. And the technology, which is very simple, is already in place coming online at commercial scales soon. As well, wave power is a mature technology with big potential. Fuel cells for cars will probably never take off for reasons explained, but as electric generators in homes, it has a lot of potential. Carbon capture and storage, which I thought was pie in the sky, is actually a very viable technology up and working today in places in Europe. The book explains exactly how its done, and how it is stored underground.

Books like this, which are so specific, burn bright but quickly. Indeed it was written before the crash in oil prices in the second half of 2008, so it sometimes reads as if from another era. However, it is still valuable, and energy prices will inevitably rise again. It is a sort of testament to the need for government help in keeping new technologies afloat during the occasional oil price crashes.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd… (more)