The Nobel-prize-winning former vice president has redefined the digital book. He and Push Pop Press have put out what is easily the best interactive e-book on climate solutions — an iPhone and iPad app of his best-seller Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.
I was able to interview Gore yesterday and will report on what he said over the course of three posts — one on this App, one on solutions, and one on his current thinking about climate action and messaging. Climate hawks will be happy to know that he is as committed to delivering the science and solution message as ever.
When I reviewed Our Choice in November 2009, I called it “The must-read solutions book,” and said: Besides being informative, Our Choice is a truly beautiful book page after page, and I highly recommend it, particularly for those who want a broad overview of the key strategies for preserving a livable climate.
In interactive App form, Our Choice is as superior to the original book as an iPhone was to the previous generation of cell phones. I would say this App is reason enough to get an iPad, since the tiny iPhone screen simply doesn’t do justice to the spectacular graphics, interactive charts, and stunning videos.
If you want to become knowledgeable on the full range of climate solutions from efficiency to biochar — or you know someone who does — then this is the digital book for you. This would be a terrific educational tool for a student of almost any age.
The best interactive overview of this App is on Push Pop’s website. Here is a video overview:
Al Gore’s Our Choice Guided Tour from Push Pop Press on Vimeo.
I asked Gore why he did this App. He replied:
I think the medium is so immersive and engaging and allows people to explore the interactive infographics, the animations, also the text and pictures, to find out where they are on the map.
One really nice feature of this book, especially for younger readers, is that there are 250 full-screen images that have globe icon you can touch to instantly reveal where on the globe this image is from.
I just think it’s a powerful way to communicate. I learned in publishing An Inconvenient Truth, both as a book and a movie, that a multiplatform approach creates a synergy that supports both platforms. In this case, the book and the App support one another.
Needless to say, Gore is a tech geek. He is on the Board of Directors of Apple.
It must always be pointed out before the disinformers rush in that all of his profits on this App will be donated to the Alliance for Climate Protection.
But there is so much new material in the App just in the year and a half since the book came out. There’s been so much new material, for example Fukushima is in the nuclear chapter and a lot of other examples.
Let me focus on one illustrative example. In Chapter One, in the printed book there was a sidebar about the Great Smog of 1952 in London illustrated by a compelling picture of that event [p. 41]. In the App, you have the same text in the same sidebar, but instead of a picture, you tap on that square there and what you get is the original BBC footage about the Great Smog of 1952, with video coverage of what it was really like to be there.
That illustrates for me one of the extra dimensions that the App experience brings over what a book can provide.
I mentioned that I was impressed with the video of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and Gore pointed out that there is “more than an hour of documentary footage embedded throughout the App.”
No blog post can possibly do justice to an interactive digital book as spectacular as this.
I can report that my 4-year-old daughter was enraptured by the concentrated solar thermal power video and made me play it 8 times in a row. And once I showed her the page in the chapter on wind power where you can blow into the iPad microphone and spin the wind turbine to power a house and charge up a battery, she wouldn’t stop playing with that. Last night I downloaded a couple of top educational Apps for pre-schoolers for a train trip she’s taking today — and she still prefers watching the concentrated solar and other videos, and powering the wind turbine.
The App is $4.99 and can be purchased on iTunes.
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Thanks Joe. Al Gore is really stepping up to his role as climate communicator – and fills it very well. These appear to be dynamic data visualizations that looks very sensible.
Lets not forget your wedges solution. I recall reading your wedges approach. You presented it across a few postings and too many pages – but it made the most sense. And I still remember the concept. Maybe it is time to put some interactive visualizations into those too? Next step would be a simulation game.
I just browsed through the app, and it’s a wonderful use of new media. One small quibble: it would be helpful if the sources at the end used clickable links to make it easy to view them.
Ground breaking ….
It would be nice if something like this were available for other platforms. As appealing as the iPad is, I cannot justify the purchase. I try to resist more and latest electronic gadgets.
I would love an electronic interactive version of the book intended for a learning environment, perhaps as a component of a Moodle course. I would love to add this as a section of the air pollution class I teach.
I don’t own an iPad, and it sounds like the screen on my iPhone is going to be too small to do it justice. Is there a way to view it on my laptop?
And what about that way-cool interactive dial for the “passive solar home” Change the seasons with your fingers and you get a different sun angle and shadows showing the effect on the home!
Dr Romm, so glad your daughter likes this. I expect she will be among those who will save/solve many of the world’s problems in the coming generations. Seriously.
Also, months ago I purchased the digital version of Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis on iTunes and also have it on my iPhone to listen in on walks, jogs or commutes. The abridged version is 7.5 hours long and narrated by Cynthia Nixon and John Slattery – plus some selections read by Gore. I’ve learned a lot from it and trust what I hear. (The unabridged version is nearly 11 hours; $24; narrated by Linda Emond)
Pretty sure the douchebags and climate zombies will start mocking him with the tired old inventing internet schtick and reinventing books in 5….4….3….2…1…
I doubt this app will work on current laptops since touch-screen technology is required.
I’m thrilled with the new app and am encouraged that a lot of young people will tune in for its wow factor if for no other reason. And sometimes that’s the hardest part of all…
Sounds interesting. Has Gore made any changes to his problematic chapter 12 though? The first (paper) edition was full of confused and misleading statements about central station electric generation efficiency – largely I believe stemming from a misleading report from Oak Ridge on the subject of CHP/cogeneration. Most of the book seemed good, but the problems with chapter 12 made me somewhat doubtful about some of the other policy prescriptions where I might not be as familiar with the underlying constraints.
[JR: I didn't really see the same problems that you did with that chapter -- and I have published a number of articles on CHP and micro-cogen, which go through the same kind of analysis that you do. Micro-cogen isn't a huge winner, for sure. Still, I'm more in the Sean Casten camp.]
It’s a cool idea, but I hope that Gore et al are working on an version for Android.
Maybe an html 5 version for use in web browsers on desktop computers? That might be useful and educational for schools too.
Joe, I have to take everything Sean Casten says with a large grain of salt given that’s his dad’s business. The name of Tom Casten’s company “Recycled Energy”, is an abuse of terminology, as is Gore’s repeated reference to “using energy twice”, for example on p. 244:
“combined heat and power (CHP) plants extract more than twice as much useful energy by using energy twice.”
You cannot “use” energy twice and still have “use” and “energy” be actually meaningful terms. That’s getting into perpetual-motion-machine territory.
The fact is, the type of retrofits the Casten’s work on are completely irrelevant to the low efficiency of central-station steam plants. There’s no way a small capital-cost add-on can in any way significantly improve the efficiency of a large steam-turbine system. If you want better efficiency in burning fossil fuels, you have to throw out the old plant and build new combined-cycle, fuel-cell or other types of highly-efficient plants.
But then I would simply ask – why spend the money on burning fossil fuels efficiently, when you can spend about the same or a bit more and not depend on fossil fuels at all?
The whole low-efficiency-of-steam-generators argument is a red herring. And Gore talking about “using energy twice” just makes my blood boil. Sorry, but it’s simply wrong, and misleadingly so.
I purchased this app and it is wonderful! The interactive features really are cool and fun to mess around with. I hope they put out updates to the interactive graphs, that would be a great quick information source. They can easily include more graphs and more information.
Aside from a few typos, it is will written and informative. I have yet to finish the entire thing (its fun to read in sections between classes), but it does state that Indonesia is the third “largest contributor to global warming” (Brazil was also listed as fourth). The app is current up to 2011, but I thought that India had the third highest carbon emissions? I was wondering if these are two different metrics (is Gore taking into account the lost potential of soaking up future emissions due to deforestation?) and how this metric is calculated (because India emits over four times as much as Indonesia and it would be startling if Indonesia still had a greater impact).
I notice some comments about the (in)efficiency of steam-turbine systems. Something to keep an eye on is the Brayton Cycle:
https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/brayton-cycle-turbines/
Turbines (whether Brayton or traditional) are needed by solar-thermal plants, so their relevance isn’t going to fade away. Solar-thermal is expanding of late: witness http://solartrustofamerica.com/ (who are building plant) and http://www.stratosolar.com (who are looking for seed money).
I’d like a version for Android too.