This blog feature amusing and heartwarming stories about our late Leonberger dog Bronco, as well as other Leonbergers. It also has a lot of information about the Leonberger breed, the history, care, training, Leonberger organizations, etc. I also wrote a Leonberger book, which I am featuring in the sidebar.
In this Leonberger blog I sometimes post about books that are not about Leonbergers but that I want to promote, and this is a book that I would like to promote. I recently read In the Tree’s Shadow: A collection of stories that exist in your dreams… and nightmares the paperback version, by D. L. Finn. I found this book to be very imaginative, fun and great reading for Halloween, and therefore I would like to promote it. It comes in a paperback edition and a Kindle edition.
Paperback – April 14, 2023, ASIN : B0C1J5GSFZ, ISBN-13 : 979-8986158723, 214 pages, item weight : 10.2 ounces, dimensions : 6 x 0.49 x 9 inches, it is currently $ 11.24 on Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Kindle – April 17, 2023, ASIN B0BWL7LX9K, 225 pages. It is currently $2.99 on Amazon.com. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
This is a photo of the front cover of the book In the Tree’s Shadow. Click on the photo to go to the Amazon location for the paperback version of the book.
This book is a delightful collection of entertaining and suspenseful horror, paranormal, sci-fi, and fantasy stories. There are a few dark ones, but the stories are mostly imaginative, fun and captivating. Perfect for Halloween for those of you who want something a bit less disturbing than Hellbound Heart. At the end of the book there is also a 23-page teaser for another of her books “This Second Chance”.
This is Amazon’s description of the book.
Nestled inside these pages, you’ll meet a couple in their golden years who take a trip with an unexpected detour, a boy desperate to give his brother the Christmas gift he asked for, a girl with a small glass dragon who is at the mercy of her cruel uncles, and a young mother who has a recurring dream about murder. You’ll be introduced to worlds where people get second chances and monsters might be allowed their desires, while angels and dragons try to help. Happy endings occur, but perspective can blur the line between good and evil in these twenty-seven tales. Since the stories vary between 99 and 12,000 words, whether you have only five minutes or an entire evening to settle into reading, there is something that will suit your time and taste.
My Amazon Five Star Review of In the Tree’s Shadow
Nightmares and Beautiful Dreams
In the tree’s shadow is a collection of 27 captivating and unique short stories ranging from half a page to almost 30 pages. Some of the stories are paranormal horror stories, other stories are delightful fantasy and science fiction stories and yet other stories are personal journeys about finding your self-worth and inner strength to live the life you want. The stories feature nightmares, beautiful dreams, fantasy creatures, ghosts, space aliens, demon-like entities, castaways, karma, and civil war. You just don’t know what you are going to read next as you finish one story.
The book engages your imagination a lot, which I enjoy. It is also well written and easy to read. Some of the stories are dark and scary, like “A man on the pier”, but most of these stories are entertaining and intriguing, and even heartwarming. It is a perfect book for Halloween if you want to keep it a little bit on the lighter and happier side. For me the book was a page turner and I highly recommend it.
This is a photo of the back cover of the book In the Tree’s Shadow. Click on the photo to go to the Amazon location for the kindle version of the book.
About the Author
D.L. Finn is an independent California local who encourages everyone to embrace their inner child. She was born and raised in the foggy Bay Area, but in 1990 relocated with her husband, kids, dogs, and cats to the Sierra foothills in Nevada City, CA. She immersed herself in reading all types of books, but especially loved romance, horror, and fantasy. She always treasured creating her own reality on paper. Finally, being surrounded by towering pines, oaks, and cedars, her creativity was nurtured until it bloomed.
Her creations vary from children’s books, young adult fantasy, and adult paranormal romance to an autobiography with poetry. She continues on her adventures with an open invitation for her readers to join her.
This is a Leonberger blog but sometimes I post about books that are not about Leonbergers but that are books that I want to promote. This is a book I would like to promote. Last week I read The Bubble Reputation, Kindle Edition by Alex Craigie. I loved this book and therefore I would like to promote it. It comes in a paperback edition and a Kindle edition.
Paperback – October 12, 2022, publisher : Ashford Carbonell Publishing, ISBN-10 : 0995696640 ISBN-13 : 978-0995696648, 134 pages, Item Weight : 7.7 ounces, Dimensions : 6 x 0.31 x 9 inches, it is currently $4.38 on Amazon. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Kindle – October 11, 2022, Ashford Carbonell Publishing, ASIN B0BHZL8J9G, 147 pages. It is currently $2.99 on Amazon.com. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
False claims and rumors can destroy your good reputation in instant, like a bubble popping. Click on the image to go to the amazon page for the book.
Today, just 10 minutes before I started working on this post, I came across a great and allegedly true story on Facebook. It was touching, infuriating, and engaging, but having developed a nose for fake stories on social media I suspected it might not be true. I looked in the comment section. People were touched, excited and infuriated by the story, and no one questioned the story except one person who stated that it was a fake story. I checked out the story and indeed, it was just another fake story debunked by snopes.com and by Stanford University, and it also contradicted what Wikipedia had written about the same incident. What I would like to point out is that almost everyone fell for it instantly. Almost everyone forgot to ask the simple basic question, is it true?
The incident I am hinting at in my review below was when a friend of mine shared a story on Facebook that could be defamatory of Syrian refugees. The source claimed that mainstream media did not want to tell the story, which is why it was not well known. I have learned that such claims are a red flag, so I checked it out. Snopes.com debunked it stating that it was false. The only source carrying the story was a site that intentionally creates and disseminates fake news and stories, and there were no records of the people in the story even existing. So, I left a helpful comment explaining that sorry, but it turns out that this is a fake story and provided a link to Snopes.com. My friend deleted my comment. I was the only one questioning the story and I got no support from anyone. I asked why he did that. He was angry with me for posting the comment and he told me I could be al-Qaeda’s lawyer, which had nothing to do with the story. After I tried posting it a second time and explaining that this was “bearing false witness” intentionally using religious language I hoped would work with him, he blocked me. Later on, he sent me a friend request which I briefly accepted. However, I soon blocked him after seeing that he had not learned his lesson. We are no longer friends.
Social media is full of fake stories, ill-intentioned trolls, conspiracy theorists, Qanon BS, defamatory fake news about actors and other celebrities, and people eat it up way too easily. That is a big problem. I believe I have noticed that it is especially my demography, white men of the age 50+ that keeps falling the most for fake news and stories. I read a study that confirmed what I believe I am seeing; my demography is the worst in this regard. I think it has a lot to do with a lack of social media savviness and a tendency to believe what you want to believe. Your existing beliefs and your gut feelings are your worst enemy in this regard. I believe a science background can really help you with this. In Science you learn to focus on the evidence.
What I wanted to say with all this, is that we may always have had this problem, but it has been amplified through social media and internet and don’t think for a minute that the gullibility and crazy behavior of people in this novella is in any way unrealistic or exaggerated. I also want to highlight how big of a problem this is. False news and conspiracy theories has resulted in genocide. Why do we have to believe what we want to believe rather than what is most likely true? Why can’t we be more rational? This is an incredibly important topic. Anyway, enough of my rant, now to the book.
The Bubble Reputation from the Amazon Page
If you want to destroy someone’s reputation, social media provides the perfect tool.
Emmie Hobson, children’s author and TV presenter, is riding high on a wave of popularity when an unscrupulous newspaper editor, desperate for a scoop, brings Emmie’s world crashing down.
Social media picks up the baton and a terrifying backlash of hate and abuse is unleashed. Threats are made and there are those, inflamed by the rhetoric, prepared to take the law into their own hands.
My Amazon Review of The Bubble Reputation
Bearing False Witness
Emmie Hobson is a popular children’s books author and TV personality. She is happily married, has a great relationship with her parents, and a rocky relationship with her sister who is an addict. One day an editor for a gossip magazine decide to slander Emmie in an attempt to boost sales. She fabricates evidence to support her false accusations. Despite the evidence being questionable a lot of people are quick to believe it and social media is used to supercharge and spread the false accusations even further, while inventing new rumors. People eat it up and suddenly Emelie is a hated pariah and a target for emotional and physical abuse.
I think this book is an important wakeup call for all of us because it highlights a very dark side of humanity that has grown worse. Gossipers, rumor mongers, conspiracy theorists, and mean trolls are tremendously successful today, thanks to social media, internet and divisions in society. “Bearing false witness” is a special kind of black lie that can kill. Defamatory conspiracy theories enabled the holocaust, the Tutsi genocide and the recent genocide in Myanmar. This is a very serious topic.
I found the apparent extreme gullibility of the public in this story to be very believable, perhaps even an understatement, because of what I’ve seen on social media. For example, someone posted a false defamatory story on Facebook, and I responded with a comment debunking it. My comment included a link to snopes stating that the story was false, I pointed out that the only source for the story was a fake news creation website, and that the story had other plausibility issues. Despite all that, all other commentors on the story believed it and the person posting it launched a silly ad hominem attack against me instead of arguing the case. Social media is indeed wild.
I can add that I don’t think it is as much gullibility as a desire to believe ill about others that is rooted in envy, politics, worldviews, bias, plain meanness, or perhaps a desire to be judgmental or feel superior. Accepting unsubstantiated claims whilst being very skeptical of what you don’t want to believe, isn’t skepticism but the opposite of it. We need to do better, use common sense, and examine the evidence. The story about Emmie, despite being fiction, makes it very clear as to why.
This is one of the most intense thrillers I’ve ever read, and it is very timely. The author is describing a very believable scenario that grows more and more intense and darker and darker. Many of the characters in the book are infuriating and yet so average, so unethical and foolish, yet so sure of their righteousness, so incredible yet so realistic. The author also describes the love between Emmie and her parents, and her husband, and their unyielding support for each other throughout all this craziness. The book asks us to be careful about what we believe and to stand up against rumors and lies. It is a gripping page turner that will shake you to your core while asking you to think. It describes a slice of a drama that we are all part of everyday. I highly recommend this excellent thriller.
About the Author
Alex Craigie is the pen name of Trish Power.
Trish was ten when her first play was performed at school. It was in rhyming couplets and written in pencil in a book with imperial weights and measures printed on the back.
When her children were young, she wrote short stories for magazines before returning to the teaching job that she loved.
Trish has had three books published under the pen name of Alex Craigie. The first two books cross genre boundaries and feature elements of romance, thriller and suspense against a backdrop of social issues. Someone Close to Home highlights the problems affecting care homes while Acts of Convenience has issues concerning the health service at its heart. Her third book. Means to Deceive, is a psychological thriller.
Someone Close to Home has won a Chill with a Book award and a Chill with the Book of the Month award. In 2019 it was one of the top ten bestsellers in its category on Amazon.
This is a Leonberger blog but sometimes I post about books that are not about Leonbergers but that are books that I want to promote. This is another one of those. I just read Sam, A Shaggy Dog Story (Kindle Edition), by Sally Cronin. It was a book that I loved and therefore I want to promote.
Kindle – November 10, 2013, Publisher : Moyhill Publishing, ASIN B0CBTY2K5C, 108 pages. It is currently $3.50 on Amazon.com. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Sam, the adorable Collie. Click here or the picture to visit the Amazon.com page for the book.
This book is about a dog, a Collie named Sam who comes to live with David and Sally Cronin in Ireland. The story of Sam’s life is told through his voice by Sally. Due to the author’s skill and understanding of her dog this way of imaginary telling of a dog’s story works extremely well. It is plausible and beautiful. Click here to view my review on Amazon.
My Amazon Review of Sam, A Shaggy Dog Story
The Story of the Life of a Dog Told by the Dog
This is the story of the Collie Sam, told through the voice of Sam. His mistress Sally imagines what he must have been thinking as we follow him on all of his adventures, including his happy, sad and crazy moments, throughout his life. Sam has many dog and cat friends, and he understands cat language and so does his mistress. There was his friend Henry, the almost dead stray cat who found a home with Sam’s family. There was Danny the mischievous little dog who led Sam astray, the dangerous attack by the big vicious dog, the car rides, the beaches, and how Sam learned how to say a word in English, for real, and much more. It is the life of a dog, told by the dog himself, and it is a story well told.
Sam is also a very well-traveled dog and as you are reading the book you will learn something about traveling with dogs within the EU. You also learn something about the dog owner’s experience. I think the author is apt at figuring out how a dog must be feeling and what he might be thinking in different situations. She is well informed about dog behaviors and the reasons behind them. I’ve owned many wonderful dogs throughout my life, and I felt that the author was interpreting dog behavior and putting it into imagined dog feelings and thoughts in a very plausible manner.
I think this was a fun and interesting read. It was a real page turner, well it’s kindle, so location traverser, as you want to find out what is going to happen to Sam next. It is gripping and emotional in a good way. I think putting the story of Sam as if it is told by Sam is a clever and unique way of presenting the story of a dog’s life. I highly recommend this kindle book to all dog lovers.
About the Author
Sally Cronin is the author of sixteen books including her memoir Size Matters: Especially when you weigh 330lb first published in 2001. This has been followed by another fifteen books both fiction and non-fiction including multi-genre collections of short stories and poetry.
As an author she understands how important it is to have support in marketing books and offers a number of FREE promotional opportunities on her blog and across her social media. The Smorgasbord Bookshelf.
What is the greatest intellectual achievement of the human race? Is it Beethoven’s third symphony? The book War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy? General Relativity? Quantum Physics? multi layered neural networks? Or is it a theory of almost everything that comprises quantum physics, special relativity, Noether’s theorem and gauge theories, as its basic elements, and then Quantum Electrodynamics, Quantum Chromodynamics, and a framework for all elementary particles, and more. This is the so called “standard model of elementary particles”, or the “standard model” for short. It is a subjective question.
The standard model of elementary particles, the greatest intellectual achievement of humankind. Close up illustration of atomic particle for nuclear energy imagery. From iStock photos.
Some people like to say, “Science does not know everything”. They are right. If it did, it would stop. However, the people who like to say that typically grossly underestimate what science knows, and not by a little but by a lot, like a million times, or a trillion times. There are things science knows and there are things it doesn’t know, and the difference is often not obvious unless you have near expert knowledge. However, we have figured out a lot. The book I am describing below is a breathtaking reminder of how much we know. It is the book about the theory of almost everything after all.
Science does not know everything, but it knows a lot. The standard model of elementary particles is the theory of almost everything. Collision of Particles in the Abstract Collider. From iStock photos.
I read The Theory of Almost Everything: The Standard Model, the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics Hardcover – July 22, 2005, by Robert Oerter, more than 15 years ago. I wrote a lengthy review, which is still the top review for this book. The hardback version is 336 pages. It currently costs $31.93. The dimensions of the hardback are 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches, and the weight is 1.2 pounds, ISBN 978-0132366786. The paperback version is 336 pages. It currently costs $17.00. The dimensions of the paperback are 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.4 inches, and the weight is 10.9 ounces, ISBN 978-0452287860. The kindle version costs $13.99 and is 348 pages ASIN : B002LLCHV6.
Front cover of “The Theory of Almost Everything” by Robert Oerter. Click on the image to go to the Amazon location for the book.
Someone reminded me that today, Wednesday August 9, is National Book Lovers Day. Even though I already published a post on a Leonberger book today I decided to post about one more book, one of the most mind-blowing books that I’ve ever read. I have a master’s in engineering physics from Uppsala University that was turned into a master’s in electrical engineering and applied physics by Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. That is why I am interested in this topic, which I understand is not everyone’s cup of tea, maybe no one’s. I took a few classes in Quantum Physics, Nuclear Physics, and Molecular Physics, and I had heard of the standard model, I just never realized what it was. Then I read this book many years later and as I said, I was blown away.
Quick note, if you have never heard of Noether’s theorem, don’t worry, almost no one has, yet it is an extremely important discovery in mathematics. Emily Noether discovered that associated with every symmetry was a conservation law and vice versa. It is one of the greatest discoveries of mankind, yet almost no one has heard of it. For example, if you assume (rather acknowledge) that the laws of physics don’t change over time, then energy is conserved. If you acknowledge that the laws of physics don’t change as you change position, then momentum is preserved. You use mathematics to derive one from the other. This is very useful because, if you find a symmetry you can find a conservation law. If you find a conservation law, you can find a symmetry. This has turbo charged modern physics.
The standard model does not get a lot of love. One reason is that unless you have a physics education it is difficult to grasp. It is also a gigantic theory. Well actually not really. You can summarize it in a few formulas that almost no one can understand, as the author of the book does. Another reason is that as soon as physicists were done with it, they were looking to replace it. That was because of the “Almost” in “the theory of almost everything”. There were a few things it could not explain, and it was not compatible with General Relativity even though it incorporated Special Relativity. Anyway, I cleaned up my review a bit and it is given below. If you want to see my original Amazon review, click here.
The Langrangian function that summarizes all of the propagators and interactions in the standard model.
Note; when I wrote the review below, we had not yet found the Higgs Boson. It was found at LHC in Switzerland in 2012.
An introduction to the greatest intellectual achievement of the human race
This review is a little bit long; however, it is more than an assessment of the book, it will also help you prepare for reading the book and explain confusing parts of the book.
Imagine if we had found a two-billion-year-old alien underground civilization under the desert in Arizona several years ago, and you still knew nothing about it, because journalists thought this information was pretty boring stuff and therefore didn’t bother telling anyone about it. Well, that is most likely not true, but what is true is that the general public has entirely missed the greatest scientific revolution in the history of the human race partially because mainstream media has largely ignored this information, even though the Nobel Prize committee has been raining Nobel Prizes over it.
In the 70’s a theory explained, at the deepest level, nearly all of the phenomena that rule our daily lives came into existence. The theory called “The Standard Model of Elementary Particles” is a set of “Relativistic Quantum Field Theories” that explains how elementary particles behave, which elementary particles there are, and why they have the properties they have, for example, isospin, spin, charge, color charge, flavor, even mass, or mass relations in many cases. The theory explains how all of the fundamental forces in nature work except gravity. The theory describes how the elementary particles interact; decay, how long they are expected to exist, and how they combine into other subatomic particles. The theory uses only 18 adjustable parameters to accomplish this.
In the extension the theory thus explains how nucleons and atoms are formed and what properties the atoms will have, and how molecules will form and what properties molecules will have, their chemical reactions, and what elasticity, electric conductivity, heat conductivity, color, hardness, texture, etc. any material will possess. In the extension it explains why mass and matter exist, how the sun and the stars work, and the theory is therefore the ultimate basis of all other science. It also provides a formula, or an equation of almost everything. Best of all it has been thoroughly verified experimentally, in fact the predictions the theory has made have been confirmed with such stunning accuracy and precision that it could be considered the most successful scientific theory ever. A theory that successfully unites all of physics and basically all of human knowledge of the Universe into one single theory has never before existed.
However, “The Standard Model” does not incorporate gravity and the general theory of relativity, and cannot explain dark energy, dark matter and why neutrinos have mass. Therefore as soon as the theory came into existence physicists started looking for the next theory that would finish what the “The Standard Model” did not finish. Example of such theories are GUT theories, SO(5), SO(10), string theories (abandoned), super string theories, and M-theories. Even though those new theories are extremely interesting they have not been verified or able to predict anything. In comparison with the “Standard Model”; superstring theories, grand unified theories, chaos theories, you name it, are essentially nothing, but are still better known.
This book explains to the layman what the “Standard Model” is and how it came into existence. The book is by no means a perfect book. I think there are several problems with the book. However, I decided not to take off any star because there are very few books written for science interested non-physicists that explain the “Standard Model of Elementary Particles”. Dr. Oerter deserves five stars just for his fairly decent attempt at doing so.
Even though the book is a Physics book, it is also a book on Philosophy. In fact Physics is often the best and the deepest Philosophy, the kind of Philosophy that can be falsified, verified and proven wrong or correct. To understand what I mean consider Noether’s theorem. Noether’s theorem states that whenever a theory is invariant under a continuous symmetry, there will be a conserved quantity. As an example of what a continuous symmetry is the following: any physical experiment that is performed at a certain time will have the same result if it is performed exactly the same way a certain time later. That seemingly self-evident observation means that Energy is conserved. Another example is, any physical experiment that is performed at a certain place will have the same result if it is performed exactly the same way somewhere else. That seemingly self-evident observation means that momentum is conserved.
Let me add that “exactly the same way” really means that! Gravity, other forces, differences in light, or anything else cannot be different in the second experiment. The only thing allowed to be different is the position “x” (if that is our symmetry variable). That is what continuous symmetry means, changing just one thing, and everything stays the same.
Noether’s theorem has been the guiding principle behind the standard model, and it is used to find conservation laws where symmetries are found, and it is used to find symmetries where conservation laws are found. It is a spontaneous symmetry brake that allows the Higgs Boson to give all other particles their mass (excepting mass less particles). This is why matter and everything in our Universe exist. The Higgs Boson is also called the God particle (guess why). So Noether’s theorem is both very useful in a practical sense and deeply philosophical at the same time.
The God particle has not yet been found, but scientists will be looking for it using the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that will come on line this fall (fall of 2008). LHC will start operating in August and the first collisions are planned for October. It is the largest machine ever built and it has a circumference of 17 miles. However, a lawsuit has been filed in an attempt to stop the LHC from operating. Some people believe that the LHC will create small black holes that could suck up all of the earth. In essence, they believe that our attempt to find the God particle will be the end of the world.
In addition to Noether’s theorem the standard model is built upon the special theory of relativity and a modern formulation of quantum mechanics (Quantum field theory), QED, QCD, as well as some discoveries regarding elementary particles. I can add that Noether’s theorem was formulated by a Jewish woman, Emmily Noether, who could not get a job in academia because she was a woman. This theorem is one of those very important but mostly unknown discoveries, like the invention of paper by the Chinese Tsai Lun.
Oerter does not attempt to explain the special theory of relativity; however, he tries to give the reader an idea of what it is. The problem with his approach is that he gives the reader just enough information to enable the observant reader to come up with the apparent paradoxes within the special theory of relativity, but not enough information to help the reader to easily resolve them.
He also confuses the reader by not distinguishing between rest mass and relativistic mass. The observant reader will think that he is contradicting himself. The term relativistic mass is the total mass and the total quantity of energy in a body. The rest mass is the mass of a body when it is not moving. The formula E = mc² is always true, when it refers to relativistic mass, which is why we talk about an energy/mass equivalence. The other more complex formula Oerter presents refers to rest mass. There is no such thing as an energy/rest mass equivalence (except at speed 0) but that is what the reader who is not already familiar with the subject will end up believing.
Another mistake Oerter makes is in regard to the fact that the speed of clocks will be measured differently in different reference frames. On page 35 last paragraph Oerter writes “Here, we have an apparent paradox: If each reference frame sees the other as slowed down, whose clock will be ahead when the passengers leave the train?” Then he implies that the paradox has to be solved by incorporating the General theory of relativity. Even though that may be how it was first solved, you can solve this form of the so called “Twin Paradox” and other similar paradoxes from within the framework of the special theory of relativity itself.
Oerter explains Quantum Physics in a very typical manner, but he mostly avoids making it look much weirder than it actually is which he should be commended for. However, there is one thing that all Physicists seem to do when they explain Quantum Physics to the layman which annoys me greatly. The matter waves (or quantum fields) in Quantum Physics are quite strange entities. The reason they are so strange is because they do not exist in a real sense, they are more correctly stated mathematical abstractions. Oerter states this clearly, which is good. However, he then goes on to mention De Witts’ idea about multiple Universes without acknowledging that these “bizarre solutions” to Quantum Wave conundrums are completely unnecessary and worthless. There is no more reason to believe in multiple Universes based on matter waves than there is to believe in multiple Universes because we all have different reference frames.
In fact when I took my first class in Quantum Physics (as an engineering physics student) I successfully proved, using a combination of the Schrödinger equation and plain Galileo transformations, that the matter waves are not only “not real” they don’t even represent information in an objective sense, in fact every reference frame had its own matter wave for the same particle. Our own single Universe is thus already all the Universes you need all at once. My associate professor was just scratching his head but the leading Swedish authority on Quantum Physics at the time, Staffan Yngwe, immediately agreed with me. So, in summary there is no need to make Quantum waves weirder than they are or draw unwarranted conclusions from apparent conundrums. Just take them for what they are; one possible mathematical model (among many) of a particle as seen from your frame of reference only.
After giving a background to the special theory of relativity and Quantum Physics Oerter continues explaining relativistic Quantum Physics including the fantastic prediction you get when you combine the special theory of relativity with Quantum Physics; that for every particle there is a twin particle with exactly the same mass, and spin, but opposite charge and isospin. These particles were called anti-particles and until they were actually found physicists tried to get rid of them from the theory. However, the combination of the special theory of relativity and Quantum Physics would lead not only to much better explanation for such things as the radiation and light spectrum and the properties of atoms, it would also lead to new discoveries.
Richard Feyman came up with a new representation of relativistic quantum physics for electrons that did not use waves called Quantum Electro Dynamics, and this was one of the first steps towards the standard model. Physicists started discovering a lot of unexpected particles which remained unexplained for decades (until the standard model came about), QCD was invented, the Higgs Boson (the God particle), symmetry breaks, etc. The story is simply breath taking and Oerter does a good job telling this story, except I think he should have used more and better pictures. However, as I said I cannot honestly take any stars off for these minor flaws. Finally Oerter discusses possible modifications to the standard model, GUT’s, string theory (abandoned), super string theories, and M-theories.
I also would like to add an interesting fact that I think everyone should be aware of. There are elementary particles with whole number spin and they are called Boson’s, and there are elementary particles with half number spin called Fermions. The Pauli Exclusion Principle (that no two particles can occupy the same state) applies to Fermions but not Bosons and therefore the two different types of particles behave very differently and follow different kinds of statistical rules (Bose-Einstein statistics versus Fermi-Dirac statistics). All force carriers are Boson’s while some Fermions are used to build “nomral matter”. Examples of Bosons are the photon, gluons, W and Z Boson, mesons, the Higgs Boson (the God particle). The Fermions come in three families each with four particles and their anti particle.
Electron / positron
Neutrino / anti-neutrino
Up quark / anti up quark
Down quark / anti down quark
muon / anti-muon
Mu Neutrino / anti-mu-neutrino
Charm quark / anti charm quark
Strange quark / anti strange quark
tau / anti-tau
Tau Neutrino / anti-tau-neutrino
Top quark / anti top quark
Bottom quark / anti bottom quark
The quarks can be used to build other particles. For example, a quark and anti-quark pair is called a meson (there are many kinds of mesons). A triplet of quarks is called a Baryon. An example of a baryon is the proton which consists of two up quarks and one down quark. Another example is the neutron which consists of one up quark and two down quarks.
I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand something about our world and the Universe. However, don’t expect to understand everything, it is not written so that you can. I wish Physicists would become a little better at explaining these things to the layman using nice descriptive pictures and a little bit of math too (don’t assume math is always bad). I once read a 30 page long Swedish book on the special theory of relativity that successfully explained the kinematics, dynamics, and magnetism in relativity, to your average high school kid. The Lorenz transforms, formulas for acceleration, E = mc², and magnetism were derived using simple algebra and a tiny bit of calculus at one point. That is the way these kinds of books should be written, but I have seen this only once in my life. Excluding this single example (Swedish book), Oerter’s book is one of the best books on Physics for the layman that I have ever read.
Finally, I would like to ask a question for discussion. Will you and our planet survive this coming fall considering that the LHC is coming online?
Back cover of “The Theory of Almost Everything” by Robert Oerter.
Normally the focus of my blog is on Leonbergers, especially our late Leonberger Bronco, but sometimes I present a good book which I want to promote. Today I would like to present and review The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World, Hardcover – October 22, 2013 and paperback– February 24, 2015 by William D. Nordhaus. The hardcover version has the dimensions 6.13 x 1.06 x 9.25 inches and the weight 1.54 pounds and currently cost $13.41 on Amazon.
Nordhaus received the Nobel prize in economics 2018 “for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis” (Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences). Nordhaus is one of the most prominent economists in the world and without doubt a genius. He is worth listening to.
Before I present my Amazon review, I would like to point out that this book is very important for a few reasons.
Nordhaus has been referenced, for example, in articles in the Wall Street Journal as someone who claims that climate change / global warming is costlier to mitigate than to allow to happen and that it might even be beneficial. He vehemently denies that he ever said something along these lines, and it is important to understand how this misunderstanding came to be.
Nordhaus believes that climate change / global warming is happening, that it is dangerous, costly and that we humans are the cause of it.
When calculating the potential cost of climate change Nordhaus does not take into account things like the extinction of species, not because it doesn’t matter, but because it is so difficult to put an economic value on it. Therefore, his calculations should be viewed as a baseline, a minimum to consider. If death is free of charge, it is not included, which he makes clear.
Nordhaus takes into account the fact that technological progress and economic progress is making us more resilient. For example, despite the fact that natural disasters are getting worse, much fewer people are dying from them because we have become much better at preventing casualties. For example, WHO calculated that if global warming continues unabated 80 million additional people will die from malaria by 2050 due to the extended geographical spread of mosquitoes carrying malaria. Nordhaus takes into account the fact that future medical technology will be much better so that this may not be a big problem.
Nordhaus also takes into account discounting. The fact that money is more valuable today than it is tomorrow. Twenty thousand dollars may be worth one hundred thousand dollars fifty years from now if you let it earn interest. Therefore, we should not spend too much money today to fix future problems (despite that fact we should still spend money today). The annual discount rate he is using is 4%. Some say that is too high.
All that is mentioned above causes many environmentalists to jump to the conclusion that he is downplaying the cost of climate change / global warming. It also makes fossil fuel industry apologists falsely conclude that he is on their side. Thereof the confusion in Wall Street Journal articles.
What he is doing is making his economic arguments for action today unassailable. No matter how you downplay the risks they should be addressed today based on purely economic rationale.
He stresses the concept of economic externalities, something a lot of people don’t understand, especially people who learned economics from talk show hosts and politicians instead of taking classes in economics. An externality is an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party’s activity. It makes the free market fail and allows regulation to improve economic efficiency. It’s a big deal.
It should be noted that he is the world’s topmost expert on the economics of climate change / global warming. To see my original review, click here.
Front cover of the book The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World by Nobel Prize Winner in economics William Nordhaus. Click on the picture to go to the Amazon location for the hardcover of the book.
My Amazon Review
About The Thorniest of Externalities
In this book Nobel Prize Laurate in Economics (2018) William Nordhaus analyses the economic consequences of global warming. Nordhaus takes seriously the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change, but he avoids all exaggeration and tries to be as realistic and conservative in his estimates as possible. He stresses that global warming is a major threat to humans and the natural world. That past climates were driven by natural sources, but that current climate change is increasingly caused by human activities. He gives us a brief introduction to climate science and the conclusions presented by the IPCC. He states that potential damage will be concentrated to low-income and tropical regions and explains that there are dangerous tipping points.
He explains that his economic analysis leaves out some potentially important consequences of climate change because they are difficult to quantity or because economic concerns are not the primary concern in those cases. He states that the most damaging impacts of climate change – in unmanaged and unmanageable human and natural systems – lie well outside the conventional marketplace. An example is species extinctions. There is no price tag on the value of a species. He explains that there have been five mass extinctions over the last 500 million years and now a sixth one is developing. That is a serious scenario he could not include in his economic analysis.
In his economic analysis he takes into account that many northern developed nations will be economically advantaged by global warming, as long as the temperatures do not rise too much. He takes into account that future generations will be wealthier, have better medicine, and will possess technologies that will help them adapt better to climate change. For example, the area in which malaria is endemic is likely to grow because of global warming thus potentially killing tens or hundreds of millions of people assuming today’s medical technology, but in the future medical technology will be better so that is not likely to happen. In fact, many of the health impacts of climate change are likely to be manageable in a future wealthier world. This is one reason why trying to slow economic growth to stop global warming is a bad idea that is counterproductive. There are much better ways.
Another important feature of his analysis is discounting. Money is more valuable today than tomorrow. Twenty thousand dollars may be worth one hundred thousand dollars fifty years from now if you let it earn interest. Therefore, it may not be worth paying a thousand dollars today to save future generations five thousand dollars. He uses a significant discount rate that has been criticized, but the important thing to remember is that this way he is not exaggerating. As it turns out, climate change is still expensive to future generations depending on how far we allow it to go. It is definitely worth investing today in slowing climate change. His graphs demonstrate that economic losses quickly become gigantic if you go too far beyond the temperature optimum (which depends on the assumptions behind the graph). One graph was 2 ¼ Celsius, another 3 ½ Celsius. Note, that is without considering unquantifiable consequences.
All his talk about discounting, certain economically positive consequences of climate change, that we will get better at adapting, etc., has led to misunderstandings by those with imperfect reading comprehension. Some environmentalists have concluded that he is underestimating climate change, and some climate skeptics have incorrectly concluded he is on their side. An article in the Wall Street Journal incorrectly claimed that William Nordhaus predicted that climate change would be economically beneficial.
Perhaps the most central concept in his analysis of how to approach the problem is externalities. An externality is an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party’s activity. For example, those who produce emissions/pollution do not pay for that privilege, and those who are harmed are not compensated. Global warming is a particularly thorny externality because it is global. Inventions correspond to positive externalities. Innovators are frequently paid only a small fraction of the benefits their innovations bring, while benefiting all of society. This is why subsidizing technology and innovation can be beneficial to the economy.
He states that economics teaches us that unregulated markets will not put the correct price on externalities like CO2. To make the market more fair, efficient, and grow the economy faster you try to correct for the externality and the best way to do that is a Pigouvian tax. Market fundamentalists who’ve learned economics from talk show hosts but never taken an economics class may balk at this, but it is a basic concept in economics, like supply and demand. Towards the end he strongly argues for some sort of a carbon price, which I saw as the conclusion of the book. I thought his book was very informative, excellent analysis, and very well written.
Back cover of the book The Climate Casino: Risk, Uncertainty, and Economics for a Warming World.
The most gripping and well written survival story I have ever read, The Winding Road by Miriam Hurdle is free on Amazon today. That is to commemorate the release of the book and the day she discovered she had a very dangerous form of cancer. This is your opportunity to get the Kindle version for free. Click here for the free book on Amazon. Check her post in the reblog below for additonal places.
This is a Leonberger blog but sometimes I post about books that I want to promote. This post is a review and a promotion of a very good children’s book called Belle and Chloe Reflections in the Mirror by Isabela Sardas. I should mention that she is my sister-in-law. The book comes in three formats.
Paperback – July 10, 2023, ISBN 978-1665741545, 58 pages, weight 5.6 ounces, dimensions 8.5 x 0.14 x 8.5 inches. It is currently $18.99 on Amazon.com. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
Hardback – July 10, 2023, ISBN 978-1665743792, 58 pages, weight 13.2 ounces, dimensions 8.5 x 0.31 x 8.5 inches. It is currently $30.99 on Amazon.com. Click here to order it from Amazon.com.
This is the front cover of the book Belle and Chloe Reflections in the Mirror by Isabela Sardas.
This book is about two young twin sisters, Belle and Chloe, who love each other and do everything together. Then one day a bad accident happens in the kitchen. A pot of boiling soup falls over Belle and she is badly burned. What follows are months in the hospital, surgery, scars that will remain as well as challenges to relationships but above all the story demonstrate the endurance of love and the importance of support.
Back cover of the book Belle and Chloe Reflections in the Mirror by Isabela Sardas.
My Review of Belle and Chloe Reflections in the Mirror
Accidents happen sometimes, there’s hurt, physical and emotional, shadows descend over dreams, life becomes more difficult. A lot of children have these traumatizing experiences. How can they be helped?
This is a very touching story, beautifully told, and it also contains important messages, especially for children who are suffering similar circumstances. The story is based on the author’s own experiences from when she was burned by a boiling soup that fell over her. In other words, this story was lived, it’s real. You get a glimpse into how you go on after an accident like this. Isabela is also a psychologist focusing on treating children with trauma. She knows exactly what she is talking about.
I can add that I think this book is not only for children suffering from traumatic experiences but also for other children and adults. The book offers comfort and much needed knowledge to those who need it, and for the rest of us it is an eye-opening page turner. The book also features 25 full page illustrations that are detailed and colorful. See the included example below. I highly recommend this children’s book.
Illustration from page 23.
About the Author
Dr. Isabela Sardas is a licensed clinical psychologist with more than twenty five years of experience in the treatment of childhood and adolescent psychiatric disorders using cognitive-behavioral and psychodynamic perspective. She obtained her training in psychology from the Cambridge Hospital-Harvard Medical School, UNT, and the University of Pennsylvania.
The focus of my blog is Leonbergers, especially our late Leonberger Bronco, but sometimes I present a good book which I want to promote. Today I would like to present and review Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World–and Why Things Are Better Than You Think Paperback – April 7, 2020 by Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, and Ola Rosling, ISBN: 978-1250123824, 352 pages, item weight 14.4 ounces, dimensions 5.3 x 1 x 8.2 inches.
Are you wrong about your world? Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Misconceptions Are Everywhere
Yesterday as we were on our way back from our son’s wedding, I accidentally overheard a conversation among fellow Texans that went something like this “…the wind turbines effect how the wind blows and therefore they have a very bad effect on the environment”. I turned around to see if it was a shrunken head speaking, but the speaker looked like a normal human being. It was a man my age. His friend then stated, “also the wind turbines kill a lot of birds.” That’s also a misconception but perhaps not one as silly. Wind turbines do kill birds, and it is a real problem, but the birds killed by wind turbines correspond to a very tiny fraction compared to the number of birds killed by fossil fuels, cats and even windows. Then I remembered that I once harbored some pretty silly misconceptions myself, so maybe I shouldn’t be so judgmental. We all have misconceptions, but naturally we don’t know what they are. Misconceptions is what other people have.
It won’t give you cancer or cause extreme wind patterns. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
The world is full of misconceptions and not just about wind turbines, but nuclear power, all energy sources, animals, dogs, leonbergers, history, science, cosmology, space, evolution, particle physics, trees, Sweden, and all other countries, the state of the world, how the economy works, governments, vaccines, microbes, time, space, mathematics, quantum physics, plastic pollution, climate change, chaos, crime, etc. I have a bit of an interest in the topic, and I’ve made a list of more than 100 very important basic facts that we know to be true with certainty, or with a very high degree of certainty, and yet a large segment of people who are not experts in the relevant fields denies those facts or grossly misunderstand them. Having a belief that is contrary to the relevant expertise and/or widely accepted data is a red flag, yet so common. In addition, biases, a weak understanding of science, arrogance, and strong religious and political beliefs make it difficult to correct misconceptions. We are drowning in misconceptions, they are everywhere.
Misconceptions are everywhere. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
Overview of Factfulness by Hans Rosling
Factfulness by Hans Rosling, focuses on misconceptions about global trends and the state of the world. It therefore has narrower scope than my general concern about misconceptions, but it adds a lot to my special hobby. It focuses on the good news, of which there is plenty. It is clear that things like our health, wealth, peace and human rights have made a lot of improvements over the last 100 years. But somehow our biases tend to make us think that things are getting worse.
The world is getting wealthier and extreme poverty is vanishing. Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com
The world is getting wealthier and extreme poverty is vanishing. The poorest countries in the world today are better off than the richest countries in 1900.
Children dying before the age of 5 has gone from 44% in 1800 to 4% in 2016.
The pollution of ozone depleting substances has gone from 1,663 kiloton in 1970 to 22 kiloton in 2016 (thank you Montreal protocol).
In the 20th century 300 million people died from smallpox. Today it is 0. (Thank you vaccines)
In the 20th century 300 million people died from smallpox. Today it is 0. (Thank you vaccines). Photo by Renato Danyi on Pexels.com
The share of undernourished people went from 28% in 1970 to 11% in 2015.
The average price of solar panels has gone from $66 in 1976 to $0.6 in 2016.
War casualties have gone down significantly and so have violence in general.
Deaths from natural disasters are down, not because there are fewer natural disasters, but because we are wealthier and better at preventing casualties.
HIV infections, child labor, traffic deaths, violence, hunger, child labor, are all down.
Cereal yield (thousands kg per hectare) went from 1.4 in 1961 to 4 in 2014.
Cereal yield (thousands kg per hectare) went from 1.4 in 1961 to 4 in 2014. Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Child cancer survival went from 58% in 1975 to 80% in 2010.
Immunization of one-year olds has increased from 22% in 1980 to 88% in 2016.
Crime has gone down. In the US violent crime is much lower today than it was in the 1990’s.
Literacy, the ability to read has gone from 10% in the 1800’s to almost 90% today.
The number of scholarly articles published per year has increased exponentially.
The share of land surface that is protected has vastly increased worldwide.
The right of women to vote has gone from 0 to 193 countries.
The share of land surface that is protected has vastly increased worldwide. Photo by u00dcnsal Demirbau015f on Pexels.com
Hans Rosling, the author, was a Swedish physician, academic and public speaker, professor of international health, and he was the co-founder and chairman of the Gapminder Foundation, which developed the Trendalyzer software system. He passed away in 2017. To visit Gapminder and explore world statistics and facts click here.
Front cover of the book Factfulness by Hans Rosling
My Amazon Review
Understand the World Better
In the book’s introduction there’s a test you can take to see how well you understand the world. According to the author, most people do worse than monkeys randomly selecting answers. Even well-educated people do worse than monkeys. That’s because we have biases or instincts that distort our view of the world. I should say I did well on the test, not because I am a monkey, but because I had knowledge of most of the statistics in the book before I read it.
Rosling discusses ten instincts: the gap instinct, the negativity instinct, the straight-line instinct, the fear instinct, the size instinct, the generalization instinct, the destiny instinct, the single perspective instinct, the blame instinct, and the urgency instinct. Once we have been made aware of these instincts and how they mislead us we are much better equipped to understand the world. The gap instinct makes us divide the world into developed and developing countries whilst in reality nations are on a sliding scale from poor to rich and in general moving towards rich. Also differences within countries are typically more important. The negativity instinct, our tendency to notice the bad more than the good, causes us to ignore the silent miracle of human progress, etc.
Rosling said something that resonated with me “the world cannot be understood without numbers. And it cannot be understood with numbers alone”. The book contains a lot of interesting statistics that may seem counterintuitive to many people. Surveys show most people believe things have gotten worse for us humans. However, people are better off. In the chapter on the negativity instinct there are 36 graphs showing how things have gotten better (32 graphs on just four pages). Violence is decreasing, poverty is decreasing, infectious disease is decreasing, people are living longer. Here are a few things that a few of the graphs show:
* The average length of life in the world has gone from 31 years in 1800 to 72 years in 2017 * Children dying before their fifth birthday has gone from 44% in 1800 to 4% in 2016 * The rate of undernourished people in the world has gone from 28% in 1970 to 11% in 2015, despite the world population doubling * Cereal yield per acre in the world has gone from 1.4 ton per acre in 1961 to 4 ton in 2014 * Literacy has gone from 10% in 1800 to 86% in 2016
Despite all the good news in this book he says we should still worry. The five things that concern the author the most are the risk of global pandemic, financial collapse, world war, climate change and extreme poverty. He dedicates the next five sections to discussing those five concerns. However, another issue that he does not discuss is that as the human condition has gotten better that of animals has largely gotten worse. Not only are there fewer wild animals and less habitat for wild animals but with factory farming and other modern practices the quality of life for domesticated animals has gotten much worse. I know that may be outside of the scope of this book, but it was something that occurred to me.
One statement in the book that may seem confusing but certainly is interesting is this: “There has been progress in human rights, animal protection, women’s education, climate awareness, catastrophe relief, and many other areas where activists raise awareness by saying that things are getting worse. That progress is often largely thanks to these activists. Maybe they could achieve more though, if they didn’t have such a singular perspective.”
Overall, I loved this book because it is filled with clever analysis and interesting statistics. It is a book that will help you understand the world better. Unless you already know the facts and statistics presented in this book, this book will revolutionize how you view the world. It is also well written and well organized. I highly recommend this book.
Back cover of the book Factfulness by Hans Rosling
This is a Leonberger blog but sometimes I post about books that I want to promote. This post is a review and a promotion of a very good wildlife and poetry book called Lion Scream: Syllabic Poetry About Southern African Wildlife Paperback – February 8, 2023 by Robbie Cheadle.
Front cover of the Lion Scream by Robbie Cheadle. Click on the image to go to the Amazon page for the paperback.
The paperback version of the Lion Scream, which is what I bought, is 163 pages, ISBN 979-8376647318, item weight 10.7 ounces, dimensions 6 x 0.39 x 9 inches. You can buy Lion Scream from Amazon, as a paperback or e-Book. The paperback version is currently $20.50 on Amazon. The Kindle version is $4.59 or free if you are part of Kindle Unlimited.
Wildlife, Poetry, Truth, and Art all Wrapped into a Powerful and Beautiful Book
The book opens up to colorful cake art depicting nature’s response to the sixth mass extinction and global warming. The cake art was created by the author. FYI the previous five mass extinctions happened 440 million years ago, 365 million years ago, 250 million years ago, 210 million years ago and 65 million years ago. This book is a celebration of wildlife and a plea to save it. It contains 99 color photos of wildlife from south Africa, rhinos, elephants, lions, zebras, buffaloes, leopards, cheetahs, warthogs, wildebeests, hippos, crocodiles, hyenas, jackals, marabou storks, gemsbok, antelopes, insects, birds and monkeys of various kinds and many other animals. It also features 31 YouTube videos featuring wildlife. I bought the paperback, so I had to type in the links. That wasn’t bad but the kindle version has the advantage of clickable links.
However, the main feature of the book is the double ennead syllabic poetry about wildlife and the beauty of the natural world. This poetry is passionate and beautiful as well as fun and engaging. There is also information about wildlife and the threats posed to wildlife as well as a poignant story about a girl, Irene, who internalizes the mass extinction, global warming crisis, and the catastrophe this is to wildlife and her generation. Her angst and pleads for action and her anger towards her parents is heart-rending, and originally being Swedish my thoughts went to Greta.
I felt that this book has so much to offer in terms of beauty and wisdom, the poetry, the photos, the videos, the information, that reading it was a real pleasure. It is a book that will stay with me. I highly recommend this book.
Back cover of Lion Scream.
If you would like to watch some of the other wildlife videos click on the links below
Award-winning, bestselling author, Robbie Cheadle, has published thirteen children’s book and two poetry books. Her work has also appeared in poetry and short story anthologies.
Robbie also has two novels published under the name of Roberta Eaton Cheadle and has horror, paranormal, and fantasy short stories featured in several anthologies under this name.
The ten Sir Chocolate children’s picture books, co-authored by Robbie and Michael Cheadle, are written in sweet, short rhymes which are easy for young children to follow and are illustrated with pictures of delicious cakes and cake decorations. Each book also includes simple recipes or biscuit art directions which children can make under adult supervision.
Robbie’s blog includes recipes, fondant and cake artwork, poetry, and book reviews.
This is the story of the ban of my five-star review for the book “The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet” and the warning I received from Amazon. I certainly ruffled some feathers just by paraphrasing some content from the book. I highly recommend the book by the way.
At the end of March, I received this email from Amazon:
Hello,
One or more of your posts were found to be outside our guidelines. In order to help our customers make informed choices, we encourage them to review the product and contribute information about it. However, Community content that violate our guidelines or Conditions of Use will be removed.
Please consider this a first warning.
Before submitting your next post, please refer to our Customer Guidelines:
At first, I had no clue what post they were talking about. Then I realized that they had removed one of my reviews, for the book “The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet”, after they had initially approved it and let it be displayed for a month. There are many ways to violate guidelines, and I did not understand what they were referring to. I got a warning, so this was fairly serious. So, I asked community help which guidelines were violated but I received no reply. After three attempts to no avail, I asked Amazon customer service the same question, explaining that I understood it is not their area of concern, but I wanted them to help me with getting an answer. They knew I was a very good long-time customer. They promised me that community help would return an answer within 24-48 hours as they are supposed to, but they didn’t.
After engaging Amazon customer service three more times community help finally got back to me telling me that I had violated community guidelines, which I already knew. After engaging Amazon customer service one more time and receiving an assurance of a reply they finally admitted/told me what the problem was. They considered my review to be very offensive and also warned me about posting something like it again. I did not understand why it was so offensive but at least I had received an answer, so I replied with a thank you and I gave them a good rating on the survey.
Me and my friends whom I shared the review with, could not see why the review was so offensive so it is still a bit of mystery. I am certainly not going to try to repost the review on Amazon, that’s like asking to be banned. However, no one can stop me from posting it here, or on Barnes & Noble.
I liked the book in question, that was not the problem. I think that the problem was that the book discussed the campaigns launched against Dr. Michael Mann and other scientists perpetrated by certain rightwing thinktanks and populist politicians, and I paraphrased some of this information in my review. These campaigns were multi-billion-dollar sized aggressive campaigns that aimed to misinform the public about the climate science, defame, lie about and harass climate scientists, and even make people hate them and threaten them and to prevent research from being done on the topic. You can’t mention the basic facts about these climate wars, as Dr. Michael Mann calls them, without upsetting some people, and I included some of that in my review of the book. I often include some of the content from non-fiction books in my reviews of them to help me remember the content. I did not think much about it. However, I guess, if the book is inflammatory in some people’s eyes, then a review paraphrasing the book will be too.
Before I present my review, I should mention that why some “climate-denier” forces attacked Dr. Michael Mann was because of his hockey-stick curve created in the mid 1990’s. It was already known that the recent sharp global warming not only was real but was caused mostly by greenhouse gases emitted by us. We knew that from the way the warming happened, how it was distributed, how it affected the atmosphere, etc. However, that’s a complicated thing to explain to the public. Dr. Michael Mann was the first scientist to create the hockey stick curve using proxy temperature data from the pre-industrial times (not direct temperature measurements), and this curve made it obvious even to the uninformed layman that the current warming was not natural. You could see that just by looking at the curve. This is why he was so intensely targeted. For your information I have included two examples of hockey stick curves below, and for more information, click here.
Hockey stick curve last 1,000 years, blue-Michael Mann’s original curve (proxy measurements such as tree rings), green-dots 30-year average, red temperature measurements.Global temperature going back twenty thousand years, a hockey stick graph. Notice the stable temperature during the last 10,000 years, coinciding with the development of human civilization, and then a sudden sharp increase at the end.
Some basic information about “The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet ” – May 10, 2022 by Dr. Michael Mann. The paperback dimensions are 5.5 x 1.4 x 8.25 inches, and the weight is 11.2 ounces, ISBN 978-1541758216, 400 pages, and it currently costs $15.99 on Amazon in the US. The kindle version is $12.99 and the hardcover $14.29.
Front cover of the book “The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet” by Dr. Michael Mann. Click on the image to go the Amazon page for the book.
Below is my banned review, exactly as posted:
The Climate Deniers Lost but the same People Are Back with New Tricks
First off, this is not a book about climate science despite the fact that the author is a climate scientist. This is a book about the new form that the climate wars have taken. It is yet another topic on which the author is an expert because of his grueling personal experiences.
For decades climate scientists were attacked, defamed, misrepresented, lied about, and threatened. There was climate science denial, misdirection, distortions, lies, and mockery. It was a well-funded war launched by political groups such as the Heartland Institute, right wing politicians, corrupt industry funded scientists, extremist rightwing media and fossil fuel industry front groups such as the competitive enterprise institute, and the Koch brothers, and many other rightwing billionaires, etc. It was a war against scientists who were trying to find the truth, and a war against those telling us what was already known about the science, and a war against those who dared to speak up for the environment and future generations. Dishonest denialist bloggers, such as Anthony Watts, rose to fame as a result of the war. It was ugly and Dr. Michael Mann was in the middle of it. In the first chapter of this book, he describes what happened in the past and he describes his experiences. He was called a fraud and he was viciously attacked for his research that led to the Hockey Stick curve, a curve which is now established fact.
About a decade ago I believed myself that Dr. Michael Mann was a fraud and that his Hockey Stick curve was bogus. I had my doubts about the climate science. That’s because at the time I read and listened mostly to rightwing media. Then I took the time to understand as much as I could about the science, and I came to realize that I had been hoodwinked. Dr. Michael Mann and the other climate scientists were undoubtedly right. Well, that climate war is mostly over. Climate change deniers, or global warming deniers, whatever you call them (they were never skeptics), aren’t taken seriously anymore. However, the dark forces who launched the climate wars against the science didn’t disappear, they changed tactics. Instead of outright denial, the new tactic is downplaying, deflection, dividing, delaying and lastr but not least doomism. He refers to these bad actors as inactivists. Remarkably, many climate activists and environmentalists are naively doing the bidding of the inactivists and in this book Dr. Mann explains how.
Placing the responsibility of climate change on consumers and climate activists is an example of deflection. We need systemic change. Individual behavior needs to change as well but without systemic change, adjusting individual behavior is not only difficult but not very impactful and also associated with unnecessary guilt, which is exactly what the deflectors want. In addition, a solitary focus on voluntary action may undermine support for governmental policies to hold carbon polluters accountable.
The division tactics seek to polarize and divide the environmental movement and those who care about climate by using misinformation. One example is the misleading Cowspiracy so-called documentary. The dividers made sure Donald Trump won the 2016 election with the help of armies of Russian bots and Trolls poisoning on-line discussions. Among the division tactics he mentions making progressive/leftist climate advocates reject the most effective climate solutions such as a carbon price. Dividers have also succeeded in convincing the leftwing of the climate movement that deconstructing capitalism is necessary to solve the climate crisis, which is false and will scare away the moderates and conservatives needed onboard for achieving climate solutions.
Inactivists have many other cards under their sleeve, such as trying to discredit renewables, presenting non solutions as the best solutions, presenting insufficient solutions as all we need (planting trees, adaptation), misinforming the public in all sorts of ways, etc. However, the one very effective tool to prevent climate action is doomism, presenting the entire cause as hopeless, thus making action on climate seem pointless. People across the political spectrum, perhaps especially the left, have fallen victim to doomism. Dr. Mann is stressing that the situation is bad but that there is nothing hopeless about it. We will not fall off a cliff, but the size of the future damage depends on our actions. Doomism is not coming from the climate scientists and it is not coming from the IPCC. Doomism is a false belief that has spread like a wildfire with the help of bots and trolls. It also creates an opportunity for inactivists to attack climate scientists by falsely claiming that they are the ones spreading the despair and fear.
Dr. Mann brings speaks very warmly about carbon fee and dividend, my favorite climate policy and he mentions Citizens Climate Lobby three times and speaks favorably about them, which also warms my heart since I am a CCL volunteer. I think he was a bit harsh on Bill Gates and Ken Caldeira and I think he underestimated nuclear power a bit. I’ve read some of Ken Caldeira’s papers and we were Facebook friends for a while. His geoengineering research is done so that we would know something about the topic if we are forced to use it. It is absolutely not as a substitute for climate action, something Bill Gates makes very clear in his book.
Above all, this is a very important book that everyone interested in the climate crisis should read. We have powerful enemies who are trying to confuse us, disengage us and divide us and turn people against us. It is important to understand how climate action is being prevented and discouraged now a day. The war has changed, and the lies are now different and less obvious. It is also an important book for those who do not care about the climate crisis. Why don’t you care? Could it be that you have been misled/bamboozled? Why don’t you find out? I can add that it is a very well written and well-organized book that is very engaging no matter what you believe.
Back cover of the book “The New Climate War” by Dr. Michael Mann.
Leonberger Life 