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Project Sunshine: How Science Can Use the Sun to Fuel and Feed the World
It’s an astonishing fact that capturing all the energy in just one hour’s worth of sunlight would enable us to meet the planet’s food and energy needs for an entire year.
Project Sunshine tells the story of how scientists are working to reconnect us to the ‘solar economy’, harnessing the power of the sun to provide sustainable food and energy for a global population of 9 billion people: an achievement that would end our dependence on ‘fossilised sunshine’ in the form of coal, oil and gas and remake our connection with the soil that grows our food.
Steve McKevitt and Tony Ryan describe the human race’s complex relationship with the sun and take us back through history to see how our world became the place it is today – chemically, geologically, ecologically, climatically and economically – before moving on to the cutting-edge science and technology that will enable us to live happily in a sustainable future.
Like no other book, Project Sunshine gives a true picture of how we are going to live – and going to have to live – in the surprisingly near future.
'This is stirring stuff, and well told' New Scientist
'This is an important, much needed book. It shows that things can’t go on as they have done: population growth, fossil-fuel burning, greenhouse-gas pollution. But it also explains that they don’t need to. Technologies exist, or are on the threshold of existing, that can keep the lights on and keep food on the shelves. Without being Panglossian or diminishing the challenge, Project Sunshine offers rays of hope.' Philip Ball, author of Critical Mass and H2O: A Biography of Water
‘Tony Ryan and Steve McKevitt argue forcefully that if we are to tackle the biggest challenges facing the world today, we need to put our local star at the centre of human affairs. They marshal a wide range of scientific research to show that we could all benefit from becoming a society of sun worshippers.’ Roger Highfield
Project Sunshine tells the story of how scientists are working to reconnect us to the ‘solar economy’, harnessing the power of the sun to provide sustainable food and energy for a global population of 9 billion people: an achievement that would end our dependence on ‘fossilised sunshine’ in the form of coal, oil and gas and remake our connection with the soil that grows our food.
Steve McKevitt and Tony Ryan describe the human race’s complex relationship with the sun and take us back through history to see how our world became the place it is today – chemically, geologically, ecologically, climatically and economically – before moving on to the cutting-edge science and technology that will enable us to live happily in a sustainable future.
Like no other book, Project Sunshine gives a true picture of how we are going to live – and going to have to live – in the surprisingly near future.
'This is stirring stuff, and well told' New Scientist
'This is an important, much needed book. It shows that things can’t go on as they have done: population growth, fossil-fuel burning, greenhouse-gas pollution. But it also explains that they don’t need to. Technologies exist, or are on the threshold of existing, that can keep the lights on and keep food on the shelves. Without being Panglossian or diminishing the challenge, Project Sunshine offers rays of hope.' Philip Ball, author of Critical Mass and H2O: A Biography of Water
‘Tony Ryan and Steve McKevitt argue forcefully that if we are to tackle the biggest challenges facing the world today, we need to put our local star at the centre of human affairs. They marshal a wide range of scientific research to show that we could all benefit from becoming a society of sun worshippers.’ Roger Highfield
- GenresScience
288 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2013
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32 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 20, 2020
This book is useful in many ways, and not in the way most might imagine. Firstly it takes a cautious optimistic position to climate change inpact all the while being very direct about the problems that compose it. Secondly since the book is now more than 6 years old one can look to follow-up the technology based proposals that are in here to discover that many have since failed, but some have made it.
By reading this book I feel I finally have a more direct familiar sense of the problem and its scale and how humanity will need to work to address it. This is a mixed crisis between energy and food production in the context of a changing climate.
I would love to see a new edition release of this book.
By reading this book I feel I finally have a more direct familiar sense of the problem and its scale and how humanity will need to work to address it. This is a mixed crisis between energy and food production in the context of a changing climate.
I would love to see a new edition release of this book.
March 23, 2018
Surprisingly interesting scientific book that firstly takes the reader on the trip to the very beginning of our solar system, then presents human journey from hunter-gatherers societies to the industrial revolution and explains how we got to the brink of overpopulation and energetic crisis.
Although the book contains a massive amount of facts and numbers it doesn't feel dry. Based on those facts and impressive list of research papers the authors discuss the problems we're facing in the 21st century and, what's more important, outline how to solve them. Overall a great and thought-provoking book.
Although the book contains a massive amount of facts and numbers it doesn't feel dry. Based on those facts and impressive list of research papers the authors discuss the problems we're facing in the 21st century and, what's more important, outline how to solve them. Overall a great and thought-provoking book.
March 29, 2013
The authors of this important book recognize that energy is the fundamental limiter for human existence and coupled with getting food production right, producing enough clean energy is the most essential step required to keep the world as we know it going.
It’s a slightly meandering book, taking in population growth, cosmology, world history, fossil fuels, renewables and more. The conclusions are powerful and inevitable. Forget the hydrogen infrastructure beloved of Arnie and Top Gear – it’s expensive and impractical. Yes to wind and all those other good things, but for at least 30 years we need a major increase in nuclear (with particular investment in fusion) combined with a rapidly increasing dependence on solar. This needs to be assembled alongside with effective ways of storing energy, which are more likely to be chemical (e.g. producing methanol from air-based carbon, then burning it) than as batteries.
So a great, really important message, but I found quite a lot of the book irritatingly slow, with far too much history that didn’t really contribute a lot to the argument. There was also a touch of the ‘Gore syndrome ‘ – Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth was largely good, but it was let down badly by a couple of factual errors.
All pop science books have a few errors, but when you lay down the law in a polemic fashion you need to be perfect with you core arguments. This book twice makes the plonking statement that ‘all our energy comes from the Sun’. This is blatantly not true, as the book makes plain in describing nuclear, geothermal and tidal energy – none if them dependent on sunlight.
There is also a real mess in the pages dealing with cosmology with some highly dubious numbers on inflation, and a total mix up between dark matter and energy – not crucial but irritating, making me wonder if the authors should have stuck to the science they knew. Overall, though, a very powerful and important title that all politicians should have on their shelves.
Review first published on www.popularscience.co.uk and reproduced with permission
It’s a slightly meandering book, taking in population growth, cosmology, world history, fossil fuels, renewables and more. The conclusions are powerful and inevitable. Forget the hydrogen infrastructure beloved of Arnie and Top Gear – it’s expensive and impractical. Yes to wind and all those other good things, but for at least 30 years we need a major increase in nuclear (with particular investment in fusion) combined with a rapidly increasing dependence on solar. This needs to be assembled alongside with effective ways of storing energy, which are more likely to be chemical (e.g. producing methanol from air-based carbon, then burning it) than as batteries.
So a great, really important message, but I found quite a lot of the book irritatingly slow, with far too much history that didn’t really contribute a lot to the argument. There was also a touch of the ‘Gore syndrome ‘ – Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth was largely good, but it was let down badly by a couple of factual errors.
All pop science books have a few errors, but when you lay down the law in a polemic fashion you need to be perfect with you core arguments. This book twice makes the plonking statement that ‘all our energy comes from the Sun’. This is blatantly not true, as the book makes plain in describing nuclear, geothermal and tidal energy – none if them dependent on sunlight.
There is also a real mess in the pages dealing with cosmology with some highly dubious numbers on inflation, and a total mix up between dark matter and energy – not crucial but irritating, making me wonder if the authors should have stuck to the science they knew. Overall, though, a very powerful and important title that all politicians should have on their shelves.
Review first published on www.popularscience.co.uk and reproduced with permission
December 27, 2013
The majority of the book is just a history of agriculture and energy, while only the last few chapters are dealing with the subtitle of the book. For something published in 2013, there seems to be a exorbitant amount of concern about peak oil. The tight oil revolution was probably worth considering. A very considered and detailed look at dealing with the future energy and food issues though, although I felt like it was mainly just repeating the prevailing consensus on solutions without much new to offer, other than some updates on emerging technologies.
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November 14, 2014Netgalley requested - would HS like to review for www.GoodReadingGuide.com?
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews