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deadly_nightshade_ 's review for:
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells
This book is way negative. Okay, there will be massive floods and devastating droughts, but what about the beautiful sunsets?
The book is a thriller for which I think I'm the intended audience.
I hate politics so much, and with all the emotional uproar I completely forgot about global warming. I needed a reminder. Wallace-Wells pointed out that we basically can't continue our current emission habits and expect the world to remain the same. Even if we stop all pollution right now, conditions would probably still worsen. That makes sense, he's most likely correct about that.
What I have a problem with is his fine New York Magazine journalism.
Fun fact, I was enrolled in a journalism class for one week and in that time I already managed to slip a couple of half truths into my news story. It might be a Stanford prison experiment-type phenomenon. People posing as prison guards take on the role and become mean, and people posing as journalists lie.
So I only fact checked one particular interesting claim that Wallace-Wells made so far, but that one claim turned out to be false. This is the quote: "Five years ago, hardly anyone outside the darkest corners of the internet had even heard of Bitcoin; today mining it consumes more electricity than is generated by all the world’s solar panels combined , which means that in just a few years we’ve assembled, out of distrust of one another and the nations behind “fiat currencies,” a program to wipe out the gains of several long, hard generations of green energy innovation."
The claim is totally off. Bitcoin mining uses only 10% of all solar energy produced. That's still a lot of energy, but I don't even know if I should keep reading reporting that can be so inaccurate. He also contradicts himself when he talks about the accuracy of climate models. No good.
Since people pointed out the Bitcoin issue to Wallace-Wells, he has told interviewers that the claim will be corrected in future editions of his book, so maybe I'll have to read those instead.
I hate criticizing authors, especially authors who write about this important issue, but this is so bad. He uses secondary sources. He doesn't go to the actual studies or talk to the researchers to help clarify some details, he just looks at the pop science site that summarizes the study. HOW ARE THESE PEOPLE GETTING BOOK DEALS? HOW? Don't you know that if people are already skeptical, you're just going to make it worse if you do poor reporting???
Global Warming should be feared, and actions must be taken by everyone to slow it down. However, I'd prefer it if my fears were at least based on primary sources.
The book is a thriller for which I think I'm the intended audience.
I hate politics so much, and with all the emotional uproar I completely forgot about global warming. I needed a reminder. Wallace-Wells pointed out that we basically can't continue our current emission habits and expect the world to remain the same. Even if we stop all pollution right now, conditions would probably still worsen. That makes sense, he's most likely correct about that.
What I have a problem with is his fine New York Magazine journalism.
Fun fact, I was enrolled in a journalism class for one week and in that time I already managed to slip a couple of half truths into my news story. It might be a Stanford prison experiment-type phenomenon. People posing as prison guards take on the role and become mean, and people posing as journalists lie.
So I only fact checked one particular interesting claim that Wallace-Wells made so far, but that one claim turned out to be false. This is the quote: "Five years ago, hardly anyone outside the darkest corners of the internet had even heard of Bitcoin; today mining it consumes more electricity than is generated by all the world’s solar panels combined , which means that in just a few years we’ve assembled, out of distrust of one another and the nations behind “fiat currencies,” a program to wipe out the gains of several long, hard generations of green energy innovation."
The claim is totally off. Bitcoin mining uses only 10% of all solar energy produced. That's still a lot of energy, but I don't even know if I should keep reading reporting that can be so inaccurate. He also contradicts himself when he talks about the accuracy of climate models. No good.
Since people pointed out the Bitcoin issue to Wallace-Wells, he has told interviewers that the claim will be corrected in future editions of his book, so maybe I'll have to read those instead.
I hate criticizing authors, especially authors who write about this important issue, but this is so bad. He uses secondary sources. He doesn't go to the actual studies or talk to the researchers to help clarify some details, he just looks at the pop science site that summarizes the study. HOW ARE THESE PEOPLE GETTING BOOK DEALS? HOW? Don't you know that if people are already skeptical, you're just going to make it worse if you do poor reporting???
Global Warming should be feared, and actions must be taken by everyone to slow it down. However, I'd prefer it if my fears were at least based on primary sources.