Power from the Sun: Achieving Energy Independence
By Dan Chiras, with Robert Aram and Kurt Nelson
257 pp. New Society Publishers – Aug. 2009. $26.95.

Reviewed by Frank Kaminski

For the average home- or small business-owner looking to purchase a solar PV array, there is much homework to be done—and truly good textbooks, amid the cacophony of voices on the subject, are a real find. Thankfully, Power from the Sun, the latest offering from green building guru Dan Chiras, is just such a book.

In eminently readable, informative, accessible prose, Power from the Sun describes the components and workings of a solar electric system, how to go about having one installed and some basic things to know in order to be an informed consumer and avoid common pitfalls. Solar PV buyers will still have a bit of legwork to do after reading the book, including finding local solar contractors and obtaining quotes. But once these steps are done, their learning curve will no doubt be greatly reduced.
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Phinney Neighborhood Center

6532 Phinney Avenue North (map)

A list of buses that serve the area is available here.

All,

This Thursday, October 1st, will be our last “regularly scheduled” meeting at the Phinney Center. We’re sad to close up shop, but the interest in peak oil has waned with last year’s supposed end to the commodity “bubble”, and few people have been coming to our meetings.

On top of that, few viable, useful projects have come out of our work here, so there is little need for a large room and a constant schedule. Despite our efforts to become something else, somehow we’re still mostly an esoteric study group — for now.

So, onward we’ll go: toward free-form meetings at local coffee shops and other smaller spaces, until we see the sort of groundswell of interest and real projects that demand a larger meeting location again.

As before, people who are contributing members of this blog can make a meeting post and fill out the “events” section to set it up as an “upcoming event” on the upper right side of the screen. So, if y’all are interested in organizing your own meetings, you may do so. I hope to see that happening.

Meanwhile, this site will be maintained indefinitely. I’d imagine that the products of an esoteric study group could be shared here online much more frequently than we’ve chosen to share in the past. If anyone would like to increase their contributions to the blog, please let me know and I’ll get you started. So long as what you want to write fits our context and most basic outlook, we’d be happy to host your material here.

I’ll see your Thursday and we’ll have a few beers after.

Cheers,
-Robert

Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis
By Richard Heinberg
201 pp. New Society Publishers – May 2009. $18.95.

Reviewed by Frank Kaminski

Richard Heinberg’s new book Blackout tries to demolish current assumptions about the world’s remaining coal endowment: namely, that it is immense beyond belief, barely tapped and will last for centuries to come. Heinberg argues that these assumptions are off-base, misleading and not at all supported by recent studies that suggest global coal production could peak in less than two decades. He warns that an impending shortage of minable coal threatens to plunge our civilization into one final, irreversible Blackout unless we act wisely.

Heinberg makes his case well. One of the things that I’ve always admired about his writing is the way he tries to avoid any potential for bias by considering all possible viewpoints and contributing factors with regard to a given issue, even those that might weaken his argument. Nowhere is this even-handed approach more evident than in Blackout, where he discusses not only the pessimistic reports on remaining coal reserves, but also those that he considers to be overly optimistic. In short, Heinberg can always be counted on to give us fact without inflammation.

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Prairie Fire: A Novel
By Dan Armstrong
483 pp. iUniverse, Inc. – Apr. 2007. $25.95.

Taming the Dragon: A Novel
By Dan Armstrong
163 pp. iUniverse, Inc. – Feb. 2007. $13.95.

The Carhullan Army
By Sarah Hall
209 pp. Faber and Faber – Aug. 2007. £14.99.
U.S. release – Apr. 2008, under the title Daughters of the North (240 pp., $13.95).

Reviewed by Frank Kaminski

The year 2007 is when novels depicting a world after peak oil can truly be said to have arrived. Just as prices were surging at the pumps, so bookstore shelves were teeming with fiction that dared to imagine what life might resemble once there was no gas left at all.

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I’ve been watching Nogger’s Blog for awhile now to keep an eye on the agriculture sector. Here are some recent disturbing highlights:

Wheat: Living On The Edge
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