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Devil,

I have a layman's understanding of energy technologies and peak oil / global warming... (not part of the 42% in your survey)

To reduce redundant posts and "magic bullet solution" posts, could you suggest some books / articles that someone without technical background can digest and understand ? I think your website is a good start, but I'd be interested in other sources as well...

Perhaps this thread could be sticky for future reference..

I have a real problem with answering your question. I've come into this debate from the environmental, rather than the pure energy, side. As far as possible, I try to obtain my info from published official data from many countries, rather than books, although I have a large shelf with books on the environment.

My difficulty with books discussing any aspect of the environment or energy is that the authors are usually unable to give a balanced picture, often because of vested interests. The same applies to media articles and debates and, dare I say it?, these forums.

If you wish to see a catalogue of environmentally oriented books at all levels and of all flavours, I think www.earthscan.co.uk is possibly one of the best. However, I have two "bibles" (and several sub-bibles) which I use to obtain data. The two are Atmosphere, Weather and Climate by Barry and Chorley (Routledge ISBN 0-415-16020-0), a scientific text book and the other is the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (mine is only the 65th Edition, dating back 20 years, so I won't give the ISBN no.). The other data source is my memory (the Good Lord has endowed me with an almost photographic memory of terabyte capacity). I'm not saying this to blow my own trumpet but simply to explain that I absorb enormous lots of data from reading and most of my writings are entirely from memory, no doubt also filtered by my own views and experience. I also have many of my college and postgrad textbooks on physics, chemistry, electronics, heat engineering, surface technology, metallurgy etc. which I occasionally refer to, when the need arises.

Sorry not to be more specific.

This book isn't really oil related but for the layman wanting to understand physics, Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe Is a keeper. It does take some involved reading to comprehend fully and I still don't quite get string theory.

I couldn't help myself, I learned so much from the book that I have to give it accolades any time I get a chance.