For those of you that still have this thread active in CR-4 and get notices I figured you may have some interest in what I recently found.

Yesterday I received my copy of David J C MacKay's book "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" UIT Cambridge LTD, 2009, paperback from Amazon $32.97 with supersaver shipping free in the USA.

http://www.amazon.com/Sustainable-Energy-Without-Hot-Air/dp/0954452933

It's a very objective study of future energy alternatives with the UK as a study example. I started reading it today (GMT) without realizing that today is Earth Day. Interesting coincidence.

For any of you guys still interested in the subject this is a must read. This guy is really objective and focuses on the numbers. On the other hand you serious skeptics maybe want to look at what he says, especially his great charts and graphs so you can load your guns to support your position.

BTW, here's a link to MacKay's website. He has made the book available for free download as a PDF file from the website:

http://www.withouthotair.com/order.html

If you have the free Adobe PDF reader it will be slow going through the 366 pages. Printing it out will be expensive to do in color and you really need that because the graphs are in color and would be very hard to interpret in black and white.

BTW, in the Preface the author declares that all material in the book, save a few cartoons and photos that have attributions, is free to use and has been so declared under the UK Creative Commons laws. This seems to include all the great color charts that he included. This makes his work a wonderful source for use by others. I wish we would see more of this in the USA.

The author has a discussion of the issue of global warming in the first chapter and presents his positive position regarding CO2 and human influences. So our skeptics will know right from the gitgo where he's coming from. But in succeeding chapters he focuses on specifics of various energy technologies with a big emphasis on numbers. Regardless of whether you think energy policy in this century should be driven by considerations of man made global warming or not, you'll be interested in what Mr. Mackay presents and most especially the way he presents it. IMHO the presentation is as interesting as the subject itself.

Ed Weldon