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Recent reading
Aug. 14th, 2018 08:51 pmCode Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein (audiobook, 2012)
Reread. Or rather, I'd seen people praising the audiobook, so I wanted to listen to it. And yes, I agree--it's very good! There are two readers, one for Maddie and one for Julie. It was interesting to re-listen with ( spoilers ) Definitely very moving on the second round as well.
Klimatet och omställningen by Staffan Laestadius (2018, The Climate and the Transition, only in Swedish)
I skimmed some of the first bits, but I really appreciated the second part, which goes into the gritty details on suggested changes in technology and economics. The author is an engineer and a professor of industrial development, and it shows. I realized that I'm not that used to this particular angle--someone who really takes climate change seriously but is equally committed to industrial society. I guess I'm more used to either technology optimists who wave their hands and say that technology will fix everything if we just wait, or pessimists who fear (or hope, if they're primitivists) that industrial society will not survive a transition from fossil fuels. Or people who urgently say that we must do something but are not concrete on what. Here you can, for example, learn why the steel industry emits so much CO2: because iron ore contains carbon which is commonly reduced with oxygen leading to CO2 emissions, but that the technology to reduce it with hydrogen gas instead is not that far away. And hydrogen gas could be produced with electricity from windmills or whatever. Besides all the stuff about how the industrial base of society needs to change, there are also fairly detailed sketches of how the Swedish taxation system could be changed. I had some quibbles with what he said about the forest industry, but on the whole it was a very interesting book.
Reread. Or rather, I'd seen people praising the audiobook, so I wanted to listen to it. And yes, I agree--it's very good! There are two readers, one for Maddie and one for Julie. It was interesting to re-listen with ( spoilers ) Definitely very moving on the second round as well.
Klimatet och omställningen by Staffan Laestadius (2018, The Climate and the Transition, only in Swedish)
I skimmed some of the first bits, but I really appreciated the second part, which goes into the gritty details on suggested changes in technology and economics. The author is an engineer and a professor of industrial development, and it shows. I realized that I'm not that used to this particular angle--someone who really takes climate change seriously but is equally committed to industrial society. I guess I'm more used to either technology optimists who wave their hands and say that technology will fix everything if we just wait, or pessimists who fear (or hope, if they're primitivists) that industrial society will not survive a transition from fossil fuels. Or people who urgently say that we must do something but are not concrete on what. Here you can, for example, learn why the steel industry emits so much CO2: because iron ore contains carbon which is commonly reduced with oxygen leading to CO2 emissions, but that the technology to reduce it with hydrogen gas instead is not that far away. And hydrogen gas could be produced with electricity from windmills or whatever. Besides all the stuff about how the industrial base of society needs to change, there are also fairly detailed sketches of how the Swedish taxation system could be changed. I had some quibbles with what he said about the forest industry, but on the whole it was a very interesting book.
