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I'll get back to you as soon as I can, work permitting!
My name is Michael Ashcroft, I'm a postgraduate student at Imperial College London studying Environmental Technology, specialising in energy policy. I have an undergraduate degree in Physics, also from Imperial College.
I discovered my interest in energy during the second year of my Physics degree, in a module called "Environmental Physics". It was a very general course and covered topics which would be completely inappropriate here (dry adiabatic lapse rate, anyone?) but it was enough to make me want to learn more about the other aspects of energy and the environment, away from pure Physics.
This site, my postgraduate studies, and hopefully a career are due to that interest.
I welcome your comments, questions and criticisms (constructive, please!). You can contact me on the contact page.
If there is demand for it, I would like to send a monthly newsletter with site updates, news from the world of energy and the environment and such. I promise not to send anything even resembling spam!
Please register your interest using the form on this page. If there is enough interest, I will endeavour to make it the best newsletter I can!
Amazon UK
Amazon US
If there is one book I would recommend to clarify the energy issues we face, it would be "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" by David MacKay. A physics professor at the University of Cambridge (UK), MacKay deals with the topic entirely from an analytical point of view.
This book is almost constantly open on my desk for reference; no other book I've read has come close to the clarity of this one. There is no politics, no social consideration or economics, just the plain numbers behind how much we use and how much each source of energy can give us.
Numbers don't lie. Don't worry about being told to change your lifestyle - another book will do that, no doubt. This one will give you the tools you need to come to informed conclusions about energy, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you buy a single book on the topic, make it this one.
You can see the book's website at withouthotair.com.
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