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This is the type of comment that keeps me coming back to hacker news! Where did you get this information? Books? Care to share recommendations?

• jdietrich 8y ago
  If you only read one book on the subject, read Dr David MacKay's Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air. It clearly explains how we use energy, how we produce it and how we can sustainably match supply and demand. It gave me an intuitive understanding of energy, using quick order-of-magnitude calculations to figure out the really important issues. It's written from a British perspective, but the principles are universally applicable. Best of all, it's completely free to read online. https://www.withouthotair.com/ https://www.withouthotair.com/ I'd also highly recommend Factfulness by Hans Rosling. It reveals that most Westerners have a grossly distorted and irrationally pessimistic image of the world. It's not really about energy or environmentalism, but it fills a vital gap in our common understanding of the future - the immense, unstoppable rise of the global middle-class. Once you internalise the idea that there is no great divide between the "first world" and the "third world", everything else looks very different. A majority of the world's population are neither very poor nor very rich, which presents a completely different set of challenges with respect to sustainable energy and climate change. https://www.gapminder.org/factfulness-book/ https://www.gapminder.org/factfulness-book/ My other recommendation would be to make good use of Google Scholar and SciHub. A large proportion "debates" I see aren't really debates at all, because the key points being argued are incorrect or irrelevant. Scientific research doesn't necessarily give us answers, but it can stop us from arguing over stupid questions.