Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

The IPCC is the world's independent research organisation looking at climate change. Everyone uses the IPCC's findings as their baseline assumptions. For example, when you see the prediction that the temperature of the earth will rise by between 1.6 and 5.8 degrees by 2100, this comes from the IPCC Third Assessment Report of 2001 - the standard research into global warming.

The Revenge of Gaia, James Lovelock

Way back when, James Lovelock was a rather unorthodox, independently minded scientist who published a book suggesting that the earth was a giant eco-system. At the time, it seemed rather nutty and nobody much took him seriously. As time went on his ideas and predictions became more mainstream until he became one of the greatest scientists of his generation, and an inspiration for the environmentalist movement.

The Revenge of Gaia discusses how mankind is destroying this beautiful planet. It describes what will happen if we don't mend our ways (and it's not pretty). And it tells us how to get out of this mess. How? Stop burning carbon and switch to nuclear energy as quickly as we possibly can.

(For what it's worth, I'd formed my argument before I read this book. I was only dimly aware of James Lovelock and hadn't expected him to think the same way. That he does gives me the confidence to challenge the assumptions and claims of the environmentalist movement.)

Collapse - Jared Diamond

Jared Diamond describes the history and reasons for the collapse of a number of human societies and warns against the potential collapse of our own. One section of this book particularly stood out to me. Diamond talks about the environmental impact (our resource needs and the pollution we create) we make on the earth. He claims that we in the rich western world have an environmental impact 32 times that of those in poor countries; that is, we use 32 times as many resources and cause 32 times as much pollution. He notes that if everyone in the world increased their standard of living to first world standards, our total environmental impact would increase twelve fold. This is clearly unsustainable - the world neither has the resources to support this nor the capability to deal with the pollution. So what's going to give - our western standard of living, the aspirations of the developing world, or the planet? Read this book and worry.

World Nuclear Association

Not the most inspiring of titles, but a very good website giving hard information about nuclear energy, and rebutting a lot of the nonsense put out by its detractors.

www.world-nuclear.org

Greenpeace et al

Greenpeace and other environmental organisations have done a wonderful job bringing environmental concerns to public attention. But while they excel at highlighting problems they are not as good at choosing solutions. They have a instinctive mistrust of new technology and get stuck in protest mode. Hence their opposition to nuclear energy and GM technology is not based on rational scientific research and argument, but on a gut instinct Frankenstein complex reaction of "if we can imagine it going horribly wrong, it will go horribly wrong".

However, it is possible to share Greenpeace's ideal - to have a healthy planet - and to agree with much of what they say without agreeing with all that they say. I believe their dogmatic rejection of nuclear energy and their position of influence in western thinking is helping delay the adoption of the one technology which can halt global warming. Ironically, by opposing nuclear energy they are playing into the hands of the oil industry, who they hate nearly as much.

Read what they say and have the courage to disagree with them.

The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomberg

Bjorn Lomberg was a traditional left-wing environmentalist. Then he started investigating the claims made by environmental organisations and found many of them to be exaggerations and falsehoods. This is not to say we don't have urgent and compelling enviromental problems - we do - but it's a powerful argument for thinking critically and checking things out, rather than believing any and every claim made by special interest groups.