Irreversible: What Can We Do?

About This Audiobook

Irreversible: What Can We Do? provides a clear, evidence-based examination of climate change, global warming, and the challenges they present. Drawing on extensive experience in engineering and energy systems, the authors explain the science behind rising global temperatures, sea level change, and other environmental impacts using current data and scientific analysis. The book also explores the technical, economic, and policy challenges that complicate efforts to address global warming while identifying practical approaches and potential solutions. Intended for readers seeking a factual, data-driven understanding of climate change, Irreversible offers a balanced and accessible look at one of the most significant global issues of our time.

Details

Author: Craig B. Smith, William D. Fletcher
Narrator: Joel Richards
Runtime: 04:45:08
ISBN: 9781971980201

About the Author

Craig B. Smith: Craig B. Smith is a retired president and chairman of DMJM H+N, an international architecture, engineering, and construction management firm. He has extensive experience in energy and power systems and has worked on nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, waste-to-energy, and solar generation facilities. He is the author of more than 100 technical papers and multiple books on engineering and energy, including Reaching Net Zero: What It Takes to Solve the Global Climate Crisis and Energy Management Principles. He holds degrees in electrical and nuclear engineering from Stanford University and UCLA, including a Ph.D. in Engineering. William D. Fletcher: William D. Fletcher is a retired senior vice president of Rockwell International Corporation, where he was responsible for corporate research and development and business planning. His career spans engineering, international operations, and management consulting, including leadership roles with Combustion Engineering, Bechtel Corporation, and McKinsey & Company. His experience includes work on nuclear-powered ships and commercial nuclear power plants. In recent years, he has conducted research on global warming and climate-related challenges.

Reviews

Irreversible: What Can We Do provides an up-to-date, authoritative, data-rich, conversationally written doorway to understanding, communicating, and attacking the challenges of global warming, climate change, the associated negative impacts on human life, and how to create pathways forward. Every student, writer, speaker, engineer, politician, policy maker, business leader, and voter concerned about the temperature of the planet, its consequences, and what realistically can and cannot be done, should read this book and have it in their library of substantive information resources. In its 200-page compact paperback format, Irreversible offers over 30 easy to understand exhibits and tables that illustrate the metrics, causes, and effects of global warming, a robust index of over 140 terms that shape and inform the global warming dialog, over 50 key metrics (and their definitions) for energy, carbon, and global warming, and 72 supplemental subject-related online references and information sources. While the authors set out a comprehensive list of factors that have been identified as contributors to global warming, they start their reporting with the physics of the world's energy source, the sun, our relationship to it, how that accounts for historical periods of hot and cold, and how the temperature of the planet affects climate change. They then zero in on the main bad actor in global warming – the amount of carbon in the earth's atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide. They set out the numbers for how much carbon there already is in our atmosphere, how it got there, what it does, why the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is increasing, and why that is a looming national and worldwide problem. Their analysis and reporting leads to the frank assessment that the rising temperature of the planet, soundly documented over the past 175 years, is irreversible. (Hence the title of the book.) The question that this book addresses is to what practical extent can humans stop the rise of the temperature of the earth and limit its negative consequences on human wellbeing, and what that means in terms of realistic actions and policies. Spoiler alert: Among the paths forward to limit the warming of the planet outlined in this book is a bold action plan that calls to mind the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956 that led to a massive new U.S. national highway construction initiative that created a national transportation grid that physically tied the country together from sea to sea and border to border, provided the platform for a new era of economic growth, and raised the national level of economic resilience, safety, and security. At the end of Irreversible, you will see a similarly bold, three-point pathway forward set out by the authors. 1) Expand the size of the national power grid by a factor of three. 2) Go big on wind and solar (and add in nuclear). 3) Electrify everything you can including ground transportation. To me that clearly has the ring of a National Energy and Defense Electrification Act. Five stars and two thumbs up!

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