Up To Speed: 12 books

One day the humans will go extinct but the question is whether it happens sooner or later. It is possible that the human race might survive a billion years on Earth. Will humans destroy the planet and go extinct by mid-century? To find out, get up to Speed on Human Extinction today. The Up...

Liquid fuels are widely used in cars, trucks, ships and planes. They are mainly made from petroleum oil and this is causing planet-wide environmental, social and geopolitical problems. Fortunately, a new technology is underdevelopment, liquid fuels made from algae. Is this a sustainable replacement...

Hungry? Try some 'creepy crawly cuisine'. Around the world, billions of people happily rely on insects for a nutritious - and sustainable - source of food. And with growing concerns about global food security, we may all have to include a little bit of locust in our lunch. Will insects becomes the...

About 30 billion tons of CO2 gas are released into the atmosphere every year by the humans. Much of this CO2 gas dissolves in the ocean and where it forms carbonic acid. In this way, the ocean is becoming more acidic, and that's bad news for sea life. Will the oceans die? To find out get Up to Speed...

The planet is dying and no one is talking about it. Instead, they are talking about Kim Kardashian's butt. Imagine if she decided to become an ambassador for climate restoration and wildlife conservation. Could Kim Kardashain help to avert human extinction this century? In just 10 minutes this short...

In 2013 sustainability analyst Guy Lane set out to understand the mechanism that underpinned the Bitcoin mining network's phenomenal energy consumption. What he found was shocking: the new crypto-currency technology threatened to overwhelm the world's efforts to reign-in climate change. Will Bitcoin...

According to freelance scientist James Lovelock the sum of earth's living systems behave like a controlling 'super-organism' that tweaks the chemistry of the ocean and the atmosphere to keep conditions just the way it likes. Is the planet a self-regulating super-organism that is soon to give the humans...

There are five main classes of rocket propellant, from the cryogenic liquid-hydrogen and liquid-oxygen to the mutagenic mono-methyl-hydrazine. But what is the environmental cost of this smoke and flame blasting up through the air. Are rockets sustainable? To find out get Up to Speed on Rocket Propellants...

According to the United Nations, climate change was supposed to be a slow gradual process that we'd have plenty of time to adapt to. Well, nature has different ideas and climate change is impacting our world a lot faster and harder than had been planned for. We are not ready for Abrupt Climate Change...

Plastics are everywhere: around our food, in our clothes and increasingly in the ocean and on the beach. Every year millions of tons of plastic waste finds its way into the sea. Here, it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces many of which get ingested by fish and other marine life. Is this the...

Billions of dollars of your tax-payer money are being wasted on sending humans to Mars. Why spend money trying to get to a dead planet when our living home-planet is dying. Let's fix Earth and then go to Mars later. That's at least a hundred years from now, by the way. Get Up to Speed on Why Humans...

When oil company BP started drilling the Macondo Prospect well, they expected barrels of petroleum would fill their coffers. Instead, they filled the Gulf of Mexico with oil from a cracked drill stem,1500 metres deep. For 87 days, crude oil poured into the Gulf at 100 litres per second. And instead...