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Atoms and ashes : a global history of nuclear disasters / by Plokhy, Serhii,1957-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A chilling account of seventy years of nuclear catastrophes, by the author of the "definitive" (Economist) Cold War history, Nuclear Folly. Nuclear energy was embraced across the globe at the height of the nuclear industry in the 1960s and 1970s; today, there are 440 nuclear reactors operating throughout the world, with nuclear power providing 10 percent of world electricity. Yet as the world seeks to reduce carbon emissions to combat climate change, the question arises: Just how safe is nuclear energy? Atoms and Ashes recounts the dramatic history of nuclear accidents that have dogged the industry in its military and civil incarnations since the 1950s. Through the stories of six terrifying major incidents--Bikini Atoll, Kyshtym, Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima--Cold War expert Serhii Plokhy explores the risks of nuclear power, both for military and peaceful purposes, while offering a vivid account of how individuals and governments make decisions under extraordinary circumstances. Atoms and Ashes provides a crucial perspective on the most dangerous nuclear disasters of the past, in order to safeguard our future"--
Subjects: Nuclear accidents; Nuclear engineering; Nuclear engineering; Nuclear weapons;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Car wars : the rise, the fall, and the resurgence of the electric car / by Fialka, John J.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Award-winning former Wall Sreet Journal reporter John Fialka brings to life this thrilling and important story about American's rejection and second obsession with the electric car. Starting with the early days of the electric car, Fialka documents the M.I.T./Caltech race between prototypes in the summer of 1968 and takes readers up to visionaries like Elon Musk and the upstart young Tesla Motors. Today, the electric has captured the imagination and pocketbooks of American consumers. Organizations like the U.S. Department of Energy and the state of California, along with companies from the old-guard of General Motors and Toyota have embraced the once-extinct technology. The electric car has steadily gained traction in the U.S. and around the world. We are watching the start of a trillion dollar, worldwide race to see who will dominate one of the biggest commercial upheavals of the 21st century. Drawing from the last decade of his 26-year career at the Wall Street Journal, where he covered energy and environmental matters, ClimateWire founder and industry insider John Fialka recounts the creation and eventual acceptance of the electric car in this thorough, historical look at a subculture, the captains of industry and the technology that made the whole thing possible"--
Subjects: Electric automobiles;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Climate trailblazers [videorecording] : reimagining our future / by Pestana, Mark,film director.; Collective Eye Films,presenter,publisher.;
Exciting technologies have emerged, setting the gears in motion for a new green industrial revolution. Climate Trailbazers: Reimagining Our Future examines the new technologies and practices that decouple social and economic growth from carbon emissions showcasing innovations across the world that provide new and greener ways of producing energy, materials and food. These new technologies, if adopted at scale, could move the needle on climate change. The new tech and business models featured also prove that sustainability can be profitable, while consumers and whole industries alike can play their part in slowing - and reversing - environmental damage and creating a more sustainable future for generations to come. Climate Trailblazers provides a message of hope for those who care about sustainability, and our planet, in what is often characterised as an unavoidable catastrophe.E.Closed-captioned for the hearing impaired.DVD.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Environmental films.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Environmentalism.; Green technology.; Sustainability.; Sustainable development.;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Power metal : the race for the resources that will shape the future / by Beiser, Vince,1965-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."How the metals we need to power technology and energy are spawning environmental havoc, political upheaval, and murder -- and how we can do better. An Australian multimillionaire's plan to mine the ocean floor. Garbage pickers in Nigeria risking their lives to salvage e-waste amid nightmarish pollution. A Bill Gates-backed entrepreneur harnessing artificial intelligence to find metals in the Arctic. Train-robbing copper thieves in Chile. These are some of the people in the intensifying global competition to locate and extract the minerals essential for two critical technologies that will shape humanity's future: the internet and renewable energy. It's a race that will create new industries, generate enormous wealth, and destabilize the global balance of power. It could propel us to a more sustainable future -- or plunge us into an environmental nightmare. In Power Metal, journalist and author Vince Beiser explores the Achilles' heel of green power and digital technology: that the manufacturing of our computers, cell phones, electric cars, solar panels, and wind turbines requires enormous amounts of increasingly rare materials -- lithium, cobalt, copper, and others -- the demand for which is skyrocketing. Around the world, businesses and governments are scrambling for new places and new ways to get those metals, at enormous cost to people and the planet. Beiser crisscrossed the world to witness this race, reporting on the damage it is already inflicting, the ways it could get worse, and the ways in which we can minimize that damage. The result is a book that is both a gripping read and a sobering account of the battle between what civilization demands and what the planet can withstand. Power Metal is a compelling and important glimpse into this new, disturbing, and exciting world"--
Subjects: Mineral industries; Mines and mineral resources; Rare earth metals; Strategic materials; Sustainable development;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Atomic hope [videorecording] : inside the pro-nuclear movement / by Fenton, Frankie,film director,film producer.; Fenton, Kathryn Kennedy,film producer.; Green Planet Films,publisher.;
Edited by John Murphy.Could nuclear energy be the solution to the climate crisis? ATOMIC HOPE Inside the Pro-Nuclear Movement is an observational documentary that follows a tiny group of highly unpopular 'pro-nuclear' activists who controversially believe we now need to urgently re-address our feelings on nuclear power if we are to have any hope of decarbonizing our energy systems before the effects of catastrophic climate change wreak havoc.E.Subtitled for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH).DVD.
Subjects: Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Documentary films.; Environmental films.; Nonfiction films.; Climatic changes.; Nuclear industry.;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Northern grease [videorecording] / by Campos, Tamo,on-screen participant,film director.; Muirhead, John,film director.; Rosen, Jasper Snow,on-screen participant.; Blue Water Content,film distributor.;
John Muirhead, Tamo Campos, Jasper Snow Rosen.An award winning film following a crew of snowboarders traveling throughout British Columbia in a grease powered bus. A captivating adventure that shines light on resource extraction projects, energy solutions and indigenous resistance.E.DVD-R.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Environmental films.; Nonfiction films.; Road films.; Environmental degradation.; Hydraulic fracturing.; Nature; Industrial development projects;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The last politician : inside Joe Biden's White House and the struggle for America's future / by Foer, Franklin,author.;
Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-397) and index."On January 20, 2021, standing where only two weeks earlier police officers had battled with right-wing paramilitaries, Joe Biden took his oath of office. The American people were still sick with COVID-19, his economists were already warning him of an imminent financial crisis, and his party, the Democrats, had the barest of majorities in the Senate. Yet, faced with an unprecedented set of crises, Joe Biden decided he would not play defense. Instead, he set out to transform the nation. He proposed the most ambitious domestic spending bills since the 1960s and vowed to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan, ending the nation's longest war and reorienting it toward a looming competition with China. With unparalleled access to the tight inner circle of advisers who have surrounded Biden for decades, Franklin Foer dramatizes in forensic detail the first two years of the Biden presidency, concluding with the historic midterm elections. The result is a gripping and high-definition portrait of a major president at a time when democracy itself seems imperiled. With his back to the wall, Biden resorted to old-fashioned politics: deal-making and compromise. It was a gamble that seemed at first disastrously anachronistic, as he struggled to rally even the support of his own party. Yet, as the midterms drew near, via a series of bills with banal names, Biden somehow found a way to invest trillions of dollars in clean energy, the domestic semiconductor industry, and new infrastructure. Had he done the impossible-breaking decisively with the old Washington consensus to achieve progressive goals? The Last Politician is a landmark work of political reporting-which includes thrilling, blow-by-blow insider reports of the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan and the White House's swift response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine-that is destined to shape history's view of a president in the eye of the storm."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Biden, Joseph R., Jr.; Political culture; Presidents;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Innovation in real places : strategies for prosperity in an unforgiving world / by Breznitz, Dan,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Across the world, cities and regions have wasted trillions of dollars on blindly copying the Silicon Valley model of growth creation. We have lived with this system for decades, and the result is clear: a small number of regions and cities at the top of the high-tech industry but many more fighting a losing battle to retain economic dynamism. But, as this books details, there are other models for innovation-based growth that don't rely on a flourishing high-tech industry. It argues that the purveyors of the dominant ideas on innovation have a feeble understanding of the big picture on global production and innovation. They conflate innovation with invention and suffer from techno-fetishism. In their devotion to start-ups, they refuse to admit that the real obstacle to growth for most cities is the overwhelming power of the real hubs, which siphon up vast amounts of talent and money. Communities waste time, money, and energy pursuing this road to nowhere. Instead Breznitz proposes that communities focus on where they fit within the four stages in the global production process. Success lies in understanding the changed structure of the global system of production and then using those insights to enable communities to recognize their own advantages, which in turn allows to them to foster surprising forms of specialized innovation. All localities have certain advantages relative to at least one stage of the global production process, and the trick is in recognizing it"--
Subjects: Community development.; Economic development.; Globalization.; Industrial capacity; Industrial policy.; Technological innovations; Technological innovations;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Patch : the people, pipelines, and politics of the oil sands / by Turner, Chris,1973-author.;
"In its heyday, the oil sands represented an industrial triumph and the culmination of a century of innovation, experiment, engineering, policy, and finance. Fort McMurray was a boomtown, the centre of a new gold rush, and the oil sands were reshaping the global energy, political, and financial landscapes. The future seemed limitless for the city and those who drew their wealth from the bitumen-rich wilderness. But in 2008, a new narrative for the oils ands emerged. As financial markets collapsed and the scientific reality of the Patch's effect on the environment became clear, the region turned into a boogeyman and a lightning rod for the global movement combatting climate change. Suddenly, the streets of Fort McMurray were the front line of a high-stakes collision between two conflicting worldviews--one of industrial triumph and another of environmental stewardship--each backed by major players on the world stage. The Patch is the seminal account of this ongoing conflict, showing just how far the oils ands reaches into all of our lives. From Fort Mac to the Bakken shale country of North Dakota, from Houston to London, from Saudi Arabia to the shores of Brazil, the whole world is connected in this enterprise. And it requires us to ask the question: In order to both fuel the world and to save it, what do we do about the Patch?"--
Subjects: Environmentalism; Oil sands industry; Oil sands industry;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Quantum supremacy : how the quantum computer revolution will change everything / by Kaku, Michio,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."An exhilarating tour of humanity's next great technological achievement--quantum computing--which may eventually unravel the deepest mysteries of science and solve some of humanity's biggest problems, like global warming, world hunger, and incurable disease, by the bestselling author of The God Equation. The runaway success of the microchip processor may be reaching its end. Running up against the physical constraints of smaller and smaller sizes, traditional silicon chips are not likely to prove useful in solving humanity's greatest challenges, from climate change, to global starvation, to incurable diseases. But the quantum computer, which harnesses the power and complexity of the atomic realm, already promises to be every bit as revolutionary as the transistor and microchip once were. Its unprecedented gains in computing power herald advancements that could change every aspect of our daily lives. Automotive companies, medical researchers, and consulting firms are betting on quantum computing, hoping to exploit its power to design more efficient vehicles, create life-saving new drugs, and streamline industries to revolutionize the economy. But this is only the beginning. Quantum computers could allow us to finally create nuclear fusion reactors that create clean, renewable energy without radioactive waste or threats of meltdown. They could help us crack the biological processes that generate natural, cheap fertilizer and enable us to feed the world's growing populations. And they could unravel the fiendishly difficult protein folding that lies at the heart of previously incurable diseases like Alzheimer's, ALS, and Parkinson's, helping us to live longer, healthier lives. There is not a single problem humanity faces that couldn't be addressed by quantum computing. Told with Kaku's signature clarity and enthusiasm, Quantum Supremacy is the story of this exciting frontier and the race to claim humanity's future"--
Subjects: Quantum computers.; Quantum computing.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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