Definitively not a book to be judged by its cover![1]
I just started reading one of the most refreshingly clear book I’ve ever read about the energy and environmental crisis. What’s so different from David JC MacKay’s take on the problem is that he makes himself very clear from the get go that his aim is not to debate an ethical point of view.
“Debates about energy policy are often confusing and emotional because people mix together factual assertions and ethical assertions.”[1, p.17]
Instead, he “simply” aims at explaining the numbers as clearly as possible so that we can then have informed ethical discussions:
“[if] we need to know how the one “huge” compares with another “huge,” namely our huge energy consumption, [...] we need numbers, not adjectives.”[1, p.3]
But this book is not just about listing the right numbers, it’s about understanding them. You’d think that such required reading should be a little dry, but surprisingly, his writing style is … kind of entertaining!
At the end of the second chapter, just before diving into the real meat of the book, he summarizes his goal:
“Throughout the book, my aim is not only to work out numbers indicating our current energy consumption and conceivable sustainable production, but also to make clear what these numbers depend on. Understanding what the numbers depend on is essential if we are to choose sensible policies to change any of the numbers. [...] I will need to use equations like
\text{kinetic energy} = \frac{1}{2}mv^2
However, I recognize that to many readers, such formulae are a foreign language. So, here’s my promise: I’ll keep all this foreign-language stuff in technical chapters at the end of the book. Any reader with a high-school/secondary school qualification in maths, physics, or chemistry should enjoy these technical chapters. The main thread of the book (from page 2 to page 250) is intended to be accessible to everyone who can add, multiply, and divide. It is especially aimed at our dear elected and unelected representatives, the Members of Parliament.
One last point, before we get rolling: I don’t know everything about energy. I don’t have all the answers, and the numbers I offer are open to revision and correction. [...] The one thing I am sure of is that the answers to our sustainable energy questions will involve numbers; any sane discussion of sustainable energy requires numbers. This book’s got ’em, and it shows how to handle them. I hope you enjoy it!” [1, p.28]
If that wasn’t good enough he licensed the ebook Creative Commons by-nc-sa [2]:
This is a free book
I didn’t write this book to make money. I wrote it because sustainable energy is important. If you would like to have the book for free for your own use, please help yourself: it’s on the internet at www.withouthotair.com.
This is a free book in a second sense: you are free to use all the material in this book, except for the cartoons and the photos with a named photographer, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. (The cartoons and photos are excepted because the authors have generally given me permission only to include their work, not to share it under a Creative Commons license.) You are especially welcome to use my materials for educational purposes. My website includes separate high-quality files for each of the figures in the book. [1, p.viii]
Links
- David J.C. MacKay. Sustainable Energy – without the hot air. UIT Cambridge, 2008. ISBN 978-0-9544529-3-3. Available free online from <www.withouthotair.com>
- Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk>
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