Customer Reviews

At Issue Series - What Energy Sources Should Be Pursued?

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you want two different views on several energy topics (oil, nuclear energy, solar power, wind power, and hydrogen technology) but are not concerned about if the views are well-based, this is the book for you.

The problem is that there are a lot of big claims from both sides in this book and only one of the claims can be right, but this book offers no (good) way to differentiate which claims are true and which are false. For example, we have two chapter titles, "The World's Oil Supply is Plentiful" and "The World is Running Out of Oil," each that have completely contradicting conclusions, yet we are left to figure out which is true and which is false.

On a couple of the articles you can figure out which is credible and which is not. For example, the wind energy articles ("The Use of Wind Energy Should be Increased" and, not joking, "The Use of Wind Energy Should Not be Increased"), we can figure out which seems to be knowledgable by reading them carefully. For the record, many of the claims of the "Not" article such as the extensive extrapolations lack credability; the writer tried to compare Denmark to the United States when the physical size of the U.S. would help alleviate the problems at issue. Also, the "Not" article rants on and on about how we should increase energy efficiency, which we should, but that isn't what the issue is about (the author goes completely off topic multiple times as if to try to show he has some important knowlege instead of showing he has knowledge about the topic).

Anyways, it is an interesting read, but I would recommend checking out a copy from the library (just skip it altogether), unless this is just for research about the two different sides of the issue with no reflection on what is fact and what isn't. I'm going to look elsewhere for another book.

Three stars is since, under scrutiny, you can figure out that a lot of the anti-renewable energy papers are a lot of fluff with a couple legitimite complaints that are being resolved.