Renewables At Home » Reviews

“The Story of Cap and Trade” released today

thomas — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:24:37 +0000

Have you heard about cap and trade, but don’t really know/understand what it is?

Then the new video from the team behind the excellent Story of Stuff should be perfect for you.

Released today, The Story of Cap and Trade features a fast-paced 10 minute summary of the hows and whys of carbon trading, and actually manages to be both interesting and entertaining(!).

Annie Leonard’s narrative and humorous animations illustrate the salient points and problems with the cap and trade scheme currently considered as the main solution to global warming.

A definite must-see :-)

Book review: It’s not easy being green

thomas — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:08:41 +0000

Contrary to the title of this book, author Dick Strawbridge doesn’t really seem to be very daunted by the prospects of ”being green”.

Through roughly 200 pages, we get to follow along as he and his family attempts to green their lifestyle while moving to a new house.

If you think you recognize that glorious moustache in the cover picture, you’re probably right. Strawbridge has participated in several series of TV shows, including “Planet Mechanics”, “Scrapheap challenge”/”Junkyard Wars” and the series this book is based on: “It’s not easy being green”.

If you’ve seen him in any of these shows, you’ll recognize the jolly and flamboyant manner in which he guides us through the various projects in this book.

The Strawbridges and their various helpers do their best while building a waterwheel, doing green house renovation, starting permaculture gardening, raising pigs and hens and making their own biodiesel for their cars. And a bunch of other interesting projects.

The style is open and honest throughout – any problems or failings they met upon is presented unabashedly. Luckily, there are mostly successes, making the book an inspiring read.

What this book is – and what it isn’t

“It’s not easy being green” is by no means a technical manual or a definitive guide to green living. You’ll find very little in the way of how-tos and detailed instructions here. So it’s a good thing the book obviously isn’t trying to provide these things :-D

What it is trying to provide is a light-hearted, entertaining and funny read about the experiences of the Strawbridge family in their greening efforts. Which it succeeds in – quite well.

Worth the price?

The paperback edition of this book is well worth the (quite low) price, considering the inspiration it provides. I recommend it.

If you decide to buy it, you’ll earn lots of good karma and support this blog if you buy it through one of these links ;-)

Book review: Solar energy projects for the evil genius

thomas — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:02:00 +0000

This is a book filled to the brim with recipes for burning away large cities, causing seven-year droughts and stuff like that, all with the help of the Sun.

You know, standard evil genius stuff.

(Whistles and looks around amiably)

Huh? Oh, okay. I’m kidding.

Despite the name, there really isn’t a lot of evil stuff going on in this book. “Evil genius” is a whole series of science books, and I guess the name is an attempt to make science a little cooler.

I’m not going to make any absolute claims as to how successful the publishers are in that particular respect, but I am going to tell you…

What this book is really about

A dry, no-bells-and-whistles explanation of what this book is about would go something like this:

“Solar energy projects for the evil genius” guides you through solar energy and related technology, through 50 illustrated projects of varying complexity and difficulty.

Supplementary text is lightly sprinkled throughout, to explain the concepts in the next few experiments.

I like a few bells and whistles, though, so here’s a selection of the projects I found most interesting:

Solar heat your swimming pool
Solar-powered ice-maker (no, that’s not a typo)
Build a solar cooker
Build your own “Solar Death Ray”
Build your own solar battery charger

What this book is not about

This book will not teach you how to convert your home to run entirely on solar energy. Nor will it guide you through any other big solar energy installations.

The main focus is on fun stuff you can do in a relatively short time span. Item 1 in the above list is about as big as it gets.

The book is also not a comprehensive source of detailed, step-by-step instructions. In some cases, you’ll have to use common sense to get things right.

Who this book is for and who it’s not for

This book would be useful for:

Inquisitive children that are already in school (guided by grown-ups)
Science-minded kids (early to mid teens)
Science teachers looking for inspiration for class projects
Anyone that wants an introduction to solar energy by building a few small, useful things
Anyone with no, or just a little, prior knowledge of solar energy and technologies that wants to get a decent overview of the subject

This book would not be very useful for:

People looking for recipes for medium or large scale solar projects
People looking for detailed descriptions of exactly how to do the projects
Anyone already familiar with the main principles of solar energy and technologies

So, is it worth buying?

The illustrations and instructions are generally decent, although a few of them wouldn’t have suffered from a bit more detail. In most cases, though, you’ll be able to figure it out with a bit of common practical sense.

Some of the projects (about a fifth) assume some knowledge of basic electronic circuits.

The language and tone of the book is light and easy to read, with good quality information provided.

Provided you are reasonably practically minded and fit into one of the groups in the would-be-useful-for list above – or know someone who does – this book is decent-to-good value for money.

If you know a kid that is having trouble coming up with a science fair project, it would be particularly good for inspiration in that respect.

If you decide to buy it, please consider ordering it from amazon.com through this link (it’s also available electronically as a Kindle book, if that’s more to your liking).

That way, I earn a few cents and you help me keep writing stuff for this blog :-)