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Customer Reviews (32)

The Great Global Warming Blunder
This book should be read by all of those who think that increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere is causing global warming.It is a rational review of the current science of why and how the climate changes. It shows that natural changes in the climate are not caused by humans releasing CO2 into the atmosphere but by Nature itself.

Spencer takes another crack
The book is wonderfully short, only 162 pages.It would have been much shorter if the author had left out all the whining about people who agree with the mainstream scientific view.But the whining is the reason for the high ratings from his fellow skeptics, and I suppose that without it Encounter Books, a non-profit that specializes in right-wing polemics, wouldn't have published it.

Spencer promises to prove that the mainstream view is wrong, but he doesn't deliver.Instead, he offers a hypothesis.It could be, he says, that a particular weather system, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (not the much stronger El Niño/Southern Oscillation) is a random self-energizing force that drives the climate of the whole planet.To support the hypothesis he shows that carefully tweaking the model parameters allows a near fit to measured temperatures.Even a non-specialist like myself can see the error in logic.If the PDO is a response to whatever is driving the climate, then obviously it would have some relationship to global temperatures.To infer that the PDO is driving the climate is to have the very confusion between cause and effect he attributes to mainstream scientists.To postulate that a random self-energizing force dominates over a clear and powerful known driving force requires that we ignore the overwhelming evidence that greenhouse gases overcame solar activity and aerosol pollution as the main driving force in the last thirty to forty years.

In his earlier book, Spencer displayed a loathing for political views that differed from his in all aspects of public policy, not just environmental concerns.I'm pleased to report that careful editing has minimized the animus in this one to mere complaining.The rest of the writing is downright affable.So I think two stars is appropriate.

The Empiricist View
I especially appreciated Dr. Spencer's excellent presentation of the empiricist viewpoint on the climate change debate, approaching the subject from the point-of-view of the measurements.This is a complex subject and I applaud his effort to bring it to a non-technical audience. He keeps the focus on the most representative data set - temperatures and radiation measurements from polar-orbiting satellites.Through both analysis and a simple model calculation he demonstrates the role water vapor plays as both a forcing and feedback agent in climate change.Yet, he does not minimize the complexity of the climate issue, (The cover illustration is very descriptive of our current understanding.).

Nevertheless, the book has short comings, thus the 4 star rating.In my opinion the text is excessively verbose and redundant, spending too much time criticizing the IPCC report.The reader would be better served by a more through discussion of the important climatic cycles and the feedback processes.This said, "Blunders..." is an improvement over Dr. Spencer's first book, "Climate Confusion", in that it makes a strong case for natural forcing and it contains references and endnotes. (I am not really convinced Mother Nature fooled the modelers,they need positive feedbacks to get the desired results.)

"Blunders..." presents the climate change problem, in all its complexity, from the viewpoint of the measured data base, giving water vapor due consideration.It should be on the reading list for all those in graduate programs of "Environmental Management" (Well, at least Ch, 4-6 and the Summary and Conclusion).I am reminded at this point of the answer given by the prominent climatologist, Henry van Loon, to a question concerning AGW, "Climate changes on all time scales, because a particular change happens on our watch doesn't necessarily mean we are responsible."

A Moses in need of an Aaron
The content is excellent, and it convincingly argues that the measurements going into the calibration of IPCC models are deeply flawed. This is a quick read for someone with the required quantitative literacy. It loses two stars for lack of accessibility to the general public.

Outstanding reading!A must read regarding climate change!
This book really openned my eyes on the truth about "man made" global warming!I consider it a must read for all who want to learn the truth about "man made" climate change!Excellent book!!! ... Read more

Product Description

The award-winning book is now revised and expanded.

In 2001 an international panel of distinguished climate scientists announced that the world was warming at a rate without precedent during at least the last ten millennia, and that warming was caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases from human activity. The story of how scientists reached that conclusion—by way of unexpected twists and turns—was the story Spencer Weart told in The Discovery of Global Warming. Now he brings his award-winning account up to date, revised throughout to reflect the latest science and with a new conclusion that shows how the scientific consensus caught fire among the general world public, and how a new understanding of the human meaning of climate change spurred individuals and governments to action.

Customer Reviews (29)

Please, when are you delivering on my puschase?
I am yet to receive this book - after more than a month of paying for it.

Stellar summary of planetary science
A very enjoyable and lightly-written history of the inception of a new science, this little book deserves to be widely read. Climatology went from non-existence as a field prior to the 19th Century, to a central scientific mystery of what caused the Ice Ages, to a controversial speculation about the effects of anthropogenic emissions in the 1950s and 1960s and finally to a fully-fledged science cross-discipline with a battery of satellites and supercomputers at its disposal by the 1990s. And an urgent message which is somehow still not penetrating in some quarters.

Weart manages to bring across the chaotic brilliance of scientists advancing by fits and starts into a virgin field of knowledge. Historians and philosophers of science have tried to characterise this process and never entirely managed to do so. It is very hard to pin down just what makes science Science. Falsifiability, paradigms and consensus, and the rejection of Method have all been tried and all found their critics. Perhaps this is inevitable, as science by its very nature attacks fields where no-one yet knows what will be found or how to do so. What one can do, however, is to write an account of the persons and ideas and track their development through time, which Weart does with engaging clarity. What I found perhaps a little lacking was a feel for the combative and often eccentric personalities of those who do science, but if you want to follow the events and the growth of an idea, Weart is definitely your man. I went through the book in double-quick time.

That the atmosphere has a warming effect worth studying has been clear since the 1820s, when Fourier noticed that Earth is far warmer than its black-body temperature for this distance from the Sun. By the end of the Century, Arrhenius had calculated that we also would be contributing to this effect with our fossil-carbon emissions. It took nearly another century, however, for the science to acquire enough understanding to turn this into a body of theory backed up by a consilience of evidence and a solid consensus. A variety of convictions stood in the way, such as a fashion for some decades of seeing everything in the atmosphere as self-regulating. The central pursuit for quite some time was to explain the advent of the Ice Ages, and simply to understand how the atmosphere worked. The creeping understanding that the Ice Ages involve a sudden switch from one metastable state to another initiated by extremely subtle changes and governed by feedbacks, and its unpleasant implications for our mid-term future as an industrial society, came by degrees and introduced a feeling of increasing urgency fairly late in the day.

Some considerable personal heroism was involved in this pursuit, as it led scientists onto high glaciers and the ice shields of the Poles, and onto the high seas. One researcher had to embed his ice-axe in the ground through the floor of his tent to avoid being blown from the mountain, while the Russians at Vostok sat isolated for months at a time, living off vodka, pioneering ice-drilling techniques to extract cores kilometres long. Back at the coding coal-face, from the 1950s exploding computer capacity led a different breed of pioneer to model first a column of air and water vapour, then a volume, then an atmosphere and ocean together and finally immense models incorporating cloud formation, ocean currents, albedo and scores of other factors. By the 1990s these had become sufficiently robust that faulty data on prehistoric sea temperatures from the CLIMAP oceanography project could not be reproduced: The models could no longer lie. It was the CLIMAP reconstruction which proved to be false.

Today we can look back on a field which built itself up from nothing and constructed international, interdisciplinary institutions and an entire methodology and warned humanity of an urgent threat. We see a science born, and scientists, moreover, stepping up to do their duty to humanity. Yet despite decades of warnings and a rock-solid scientific triumph behind them, entrenched denial has taken root. Theories that are born in the 19th Century seem to be cursed with the burden of forever battling 19th Century social values. This is not the place to discuss what lies outside the science, as Weart only comes to the phenomenon of denial at the very end, and has more to say about what can really be done. And it is time to do something. But it is also time to reflect on how we came to this understanding. This Weart does for us.

Clearly written and enthusiastic, this book is a pleasure to read. A useful time-line is included after the main text, highlighting the primary events.

Good Book, But Don't Look for any Balance
First of all, I'd like to say that none of my comments are personal. I've exchanged a few e-mails with Dr. Weart and I found him an alert, polite and patient fellow. I think he's dead wrong, that's all. That does not prevent this book from being a good and interesting one. I'm giving it four stars--that's a good review.
To summarize my complaint, I think the title is misleading. It would be more accurate if it was called "The Invention, out of Thin Air, of the Idea of Human-Caused Global Warming". Regardless, if you want to study the genesis of the science of anthropogenic global warming (and I do, though I think the idea is an oxymoron), this book is a great overview.
This book buys completely into the theme that CO2 contributes something measurable to our climate, for which there is no evidence whatsoever. If you are looking for a storyline in chaotic data (like tea leaves or an arrangement of tarot cards), then you will find it. That's part of what it means to be human. If you want to think analytically, you have to separate your preconceived bias from your observation and theory. I will confess one of my biases...I don't think lefty activists are capable of this kind of thinking.
Dr. Weart gives no credit to skepticism of the human-caused global warming theme. As a semi-random example, on page 141 he says: "In 1980 Congress had asked the [National] Academy [of Sciences] to carry out a comprehensive study on the impacts of rising CO2." This paper, Changing Climate, Report of the Carbon Dioxide Assessment Committee, is an important, seminal element in the global warming canon.
The chairman of this committee was a legendary physicist: William Nierenberg. Are Dr. Nierenberg's later contrarian thoughts and opinions relevant to Dr. Weart's book? Sure, it's impossible to include every detail and follow every train of thought, but check this out...

For the remainder of his life Bill [William A. Nierenberg] actively battled what he felt was exaggerated concern over the role of CO2 in climate change.
- NAS Biographical Memoirs, Volume 85

All three of us knew William Nierenberg intimately. If the authors had called him a man whose later work in the field made him a skeptic about some aspects of the climate change debate, that would have been easy to substantiate, and we would not have disagreed.
- A critique of Oreskes et al. 2008 Nicolas Nierenberg, Walter Tschinkel and Victoria Tschinkel

It's as if, when the conclusion supports the human-caused global warming theme, the information is important and gets mentioned. However, when the chairman of the report disagrees later, it's irrelevant and not worth mentioning. That's a form of selection bias which is prevalent in climate change science.

My point is...we have instrumental climate data and proxies to study and argue over. For any dataset, correlations are cheap and easy, while root causes are incredibly difficult. For noisy data, there will be various interpretations that are equally valid (or equally invalid, ha). The fact that there are thoughtful and legitimate contrary opinions to the human-caused global warming theory is given no credence in this book. Don't even bother trying to find balance or respect for contrary arguments. However, that does not detract from the value of this book. If you want to know how the climate change cabal came to the conclusions they reached, this is an excellent treatise and I recommend it without reservation.

Excellent Synthesis of the History of Global Climate Change Science
A centrally important study in the vital center is Spencer Weart's "The Discovery of Global Warming," first published in 2004 but updated in 2008. This masterful synthesis seeks to understand the manner in which scientists came to a consensus on global warming theory, and relates the internal conflicts plaguing the research community and the role government entities such as NASA and NOAA have played in fostering research and analysis. Weart finds this a messy process, as all science is, in which researchers undertake investigations that lead in unproductive directions, insist on theories that prove incorrect, argue among themselves over points small and great, and allow egos and identities to intrude into the scientific process.

Notwithstanding such difficulties, the process moved forward and the result was a resulting portrait of vast, chaotic weather systems that over time yielded an understanding of climate chance on Earth. He author insists that through concerted efforts over more than 150 years scientists came to a consensus that a number of human interventions, including the burning of carbon fuels and the use of aerosols, have created the current situation and some among them have been clamoring for a public policy response since the 1980s.

This only came about because of a long process of incremental research rather than through dramatic discovery. Weart quotes one climate scientist involved in this process as characterizing climate science as a "capricious beast" and "we were poking it with a sharp stick" (p. 141). It was much harder to understand and more wily than they first realized. He also pursues the standard historian objecting of seeking "to help the reader understand our predicament by explaining how we got here," rather than seeking to mobilize readers to a specific position (p. viii).

While not seeking to enter the political process, Weart reflected in his work the consensus of the scientific community seeking to understand this phenomenon. This is a superb study of the history of scientific inquiry and understanding written by an outstanding historian in a highly engaging style.

The First Global Warming Book You Should Read
This is the first book one should read if new to the subject of climate change (global warming). Spencer R. Weart, director of the Center for the History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics, takes the reader on a journey that begins as a scientific detective story about what caused the ice ages and ends up being the story of how scientists realized that humans were influencing climate more than nature.

Excerpt from review by Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times Sunday Book Review, 10/5/2003:

"Debate persists over the extent of human-driven warming and what to do about it. But recognition that in a short span our species has nudged the thermostat of the planet remains a momentous, and sobering, finding. "The Discovery of Global Warming" describes the intellectual journey toward that conclusion, with all of its false starts, flawed hypotheses, inventiveness and persistent uncertainties. It reveals the effort as one of the great exercises in collective sleuthing, with pivotal insights provided by experts in fields as varied as glaciology, physics and even plankton paleontology." ... Read more

Product Description
This latest installment in the P.I.G. series provides a provocative, entertaining, and well-documented expose of some of the most shamelessly politicized pseudo-science we are likely to see in our relatively cool lifetimes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (285)

Horner
So, I found one these book by Horner in a Barnes and Noble and opened a couple pages to view the material. Not surprising, these few pages were filled with accusations and misleading arguments. I took the book to the front desk and demanded to know why they would sell such a book. The attendant apologized and said, "because it sells". He also added that he feels bad for the people who buy these books. I think we can all thank Glen Beck for that...

Honestly, how much was Horner paid to put this on the shelf?

Glen Beck on the environment
Let me preface this with the fact that I'm a conservative who wants to understand both sides of the climate change issue. In the early chapters of the book, the author makes it clear that he considers the green movement to be a communist plot (1950 all over again.) He laments that the environmentalists have raised nearly $2B to support their cause (as opposed to the poor energy companies who haven't had a forum to express their views?) Pollution is only a local problem (what about the plastic garbage islands floating in the Pacific?) That our planet isn't starving, with 6 billion people, obesity is an epidemic (I'm sure there are several billion hungry people in the world who would disagree with that.) The general theme - if these lazy poor people would just get off their butts and get wealthy, the world would be a cleaner place. I agree that some of the "facts" presented by environmentalists are suspect and was hoping this book would help me identify some of those inaccuracies. But, frankly, with statements such as those that I've listed above, how can I take anything else in this book seriously?Sorry I bought it.

Standard Talking points
Firstly, I have not read the book in it's entirety, but read key sections covering material I am familiar with. On those sections, at best,it failed to be substantive or well thought out, at worst, it was blatantly misleading.

Take for instance where it highlights that only about 3% of CO2 emissions are directly anthropic and then insinuates that this fact makes emissions controls irelevant. Absurd.

I would only recommend this to a denier that wants to pretend to be informed.

I would reccommend Nature's "The real holes in Climate Science" as a place to start for those who actually want to become informed.

Excellent Source of Information
This book is great!
Are you tired of hearing one year that "no snow in winter" is a sign of global warming, and then a couple of years later hear that "to much snow in winter" is *also* a sign of global warming?
If you are tired of listening or reading the misinformation about global warming (now, conveniently renamed "climate change"), then this book is a must read.
The author does a great job at presenting valid arguments to debunk the theories of global warming.

Debunking Persistent Global Warming Myths
Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Christopher Horner has written the best gift you could ever buy for your open-minded friends who enjoy a good read. No reasonable individual could read this very enjoyable book without becoming fully cognizant of the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the citizens of this planet.

Horner combines an unusually clear, concise, and humorous writing style with the keen eye and analytical mind of a scientist, enabling him to tell a comprehensive and persuasive story of how mankind is being fooled by an army of political socialists, anti-capitalist economists, and environmental zealots.


Excuse for Bigger Government

Horner tells us, "Global warming hysteria is truly the environmentalist's dream come true. It is the perfect storm of demons and perils, and the ideal scare campaign for those who would establish global governance."

He's right. Horner shows how, following the spectacular fall of communism, ecology offered liberal-minded people what they longed for: a safe, rational, and peaceful excuse for remaking society and developing a stronger central state. Environmentalism became the anti-freedom vehicle of choice, drawing cash and adoration from leftists in business, Hollywood, media, social elites, and the government. Environmental activism today is one of America's biggest industries. No longer is David fighting Goliath; David now is the Goliath.

Most pollution issues are local, however, and thus the effects of policies regarding them are relatively confined. Global warming possesses no such weakness--it can link alleged problems in Ohio to those in Paris, thereby demanding global solutions and bypassing sovereignty and democratic practices.

That's how environmental activists get away with telling us worldwide deindustrialization is critical if we are to live with declining energy consumption.

We are daily told of an alleged "consensus" on the issue--a concept actually foreign to science--and global warming alarmists want to put disbelievers on trial. They want to control our lifestyles without anyone being allowed to question their cause. This book will give you the details about the issue and convey the debate they want to hide from you.


'People Are Pollution'

Horner shows how the demands placed on business extend from the broadest business decisions to the smallest minutiae, while the green groups operate in a world free from accountability.

Their senior leadership, despite all evidence to the contrary, deeply believes human economic activity is enormously destructive to our planet. Horner observes, "It is important not to glaze over the green antipathy toward people. In the eyes of an environmentalist, people are pollution."

That is why you must read and distribute this book. Those who consider themselves "environmental activists" sincerely believe human development and prosperity hurt the environment in general and the climate in particular. Busy people relying on superficial, breathless media stories about these issues can hardly help succumbing to this view.

Fortunately, with books such as this, their education and experience will enable them to understand that wealthier is indeed both healthier and cleaner.

Despite this correlation between wealth, health, and a clean environment, the greens worship from afar the primitive lifestyle, while those mired in such poverty would do anything to escape it.


Science Under Attack

Nowhere is Horner more brilliant than in convincing the reader of the odious concept of consensus taking root regarding climate science, where alarmists and the rest of the global warming industry assail scientists and other experts with ad hominem campaigns to discredit them.

History, Horner reminds us, is "full of efforts to stifle innovation by reference to unchallengeable authority of consensus." Galileo and Copernicus come quickly to mind.

Science requires observation--not just selectively pointing to compliant glaciers or to computer models whose outcomes are directly dictated by the assumptions behind them. Science requires the testing of hypotheses. In other words, science is skepticism; it is the practice of holding out a hypothesis for others to challenge. Real scientists welcome that challenge.


Science Bringing Optimism

Horner repeatedly shows the amusing sides of global warming alarmism, but he also points out with great gravity the alarmists' desire to use government and law at every level to restrict our freedoms and raise our cost of living with obvious and significant human consequences, all of which are ignored by the prophets of doom. Despite the short-term profits envisioned by the green enablers, we all stand to lose big from their policies.

As the curtain descends on the remnants of scientific inquiry, while governments seek to expand their power further, and while businesses move to profit from people's gullibility, Horner remains optimistic.

"The future does not have to be like the recent past," Horner concludes. "Simply opening the debate and holding it in the open air moves the ball from the alarmists' court--no time for questions, we must act now--to the skeptics' court."

Horner explains how to do that: "Exercise your rights, ... indeed your duties of inquiry and speech, and demand that the future remain free, and full of energy."

MIT atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen, in praising this book, said, "Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century's developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and on the basis of gross exaggeration of highly uncertain computer projections combining implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a rollback of the industrial age."

Through both the laughter and tears provoked by this book, it can arm a large army to fight our way back to sanity.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Jay Lehr ([..]) is science director of The Heartland Institute.

... Read more

Product Description
Irreverent and entertaining, DOWN TO EARTH is filled with fact about global warming and its disastrous consequences, loads of photos and illustrations, as well as suggestions for how kids can help combat global warming in their homes, schools, and communities. Engagingly designed, DOWN TO EARTH will educate and empower, leaving readers with the knowledge they need to understand this problem and a sense of hope to inspire them into action. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (38)

very pleased with vendor and book
book arrived well within promised time and in perfect condition. Great book to explain a complex subject to kids (and adults)

To make your kid an eco-activist nagger
This is a kid's version of a typicalglobal warming hysteria book.

If you do not believe in it (or even know there is another side), you probably will not want this for your kid.

Even if you believe in the IPCC type worries, you should be aware this has a section designed to encourage the kids to nag you about reducing your carbon footprint. Some parents who agree there is a problem still may not want this book just to avoid the nagging.

The books has all of the usual statements abut global warming and leaves out the other side, emphasizing the negative. There is a statement abut increased poison ivy and hay fever but they somehow fail to mention that increased carbon dioxide has been shown repeatedly in green house experiments and open field experiments to promote growth of virtually all plants. For instance, an open field experiment (pumping the gas into a small forest plot)showed increased tree growth, with an incidental observation that the poison ivy also grew more. This book mentions the poison ivy, but fails to note the major result, which was the increased tree growth.If most plants growth more, there probably will be more pollen and hence more hay fever, but it also means food crops gow much better and less starvation, but there is no mention of this.

Increased heat deaths if the globe if warmer are likely (especially if in an effort to prevent warming energy prices have been raised so fewer can afford air conditioning,but there is no mention of the well established fact that death rates increase every winter (flu season) and warmer winters would reduce these, and by far more than any summer increase in deaths.

This book is full of conclusions not based on scientific measurements
The error in the graph on page 18 has already been mentioned by several other reviewers. The book is full of erroneous conclusions with no basis in true scientific data. For example, it is a scientific fact that the oceans are cooling, not warming as claimed. This is from data gathered from actual scientific measurements instead of the flawed computer climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC), a primary source for the authors. This is part of the grand plan to invent a global crisis that will lead to a world government body that will have the right and power to redistribute wealth (via taxes and fees on CO2 emissions) from wealthy developed countries to developing countries. This plan will come to fruition when Obama signs the Climate Change Treaty in Copenhagen this December.

As fake as the rest of them.
I don't take anything serious coming from someone who openly admits she owns two homes, one on each coast, and regularly flies her private jet back and forth.Now she wants to capitalize on the myth of global warming?Typical global warming activist.They want you to change YOUR lifestyle, but they're really not interested in changing theirs.Plus, none of these people actually care about the earth.If anything, they only care about their own personal clean environment.They don't want to be inconvenienced.

And there you have it - the fundamental argument is "this is just fact, no matter what the facts say".
A prior review states: "I also can't help noticing what feels like a coordinated attack based on a single technical error, as if that discredited the FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCE behind this book's premise, WHICH NO SERIOUS SCIENTISTS DOUBTS." (Caps added for emphasis.)The global-warming koolaid drinkers will just keep repeating the mantra that "man-made global warming is a proven fact" over and over again, and referring to the hundreds of highly-credentialed experts in the field who disagree with that fundamental premise as something OTHER THAN "serious scientists".

I'm all in favor of being good stewards of our earth, but this kind of unsupported (and unsupportable) attack on the vast volume of evidence that isn't in lock-step with the agenda of the global warming theorists is pure propaganda.A scientifically legitimate book would consider both sides of the argument. ... Read more

Product Description

"The Sky's Not Falling: Why It's OK To Chill About Global Warming" is for parents sick of seeing their kids indoctrinated by has-been politicians and Hollywood stars. Unlike books written by would-be celebrities without any scientific or economics background, "The Sky's Not Falling" is everything a book about the environment written for kids should be: fact-filled, apolitical, fun and optimistic about the future of our magnificent, ever-changing planet.

Customer Reviews (49)

A "Hot Failure"
This book is terrible and utterly false! Global warming will affect everyone in a negative way.There is no way we can "just live with it" without all suffering serious consequences.You are trying to brainwash the minds of young children.This is what will really happen. 1. The world will heat up. 2. Because of this icebergs will melt, flooding coastal towns.3. Because of this polar bears, seals, and penguins will die.I don't know how you got this book published but I certainly won't be reading it or recommending it to anyone I know!

A book for people who live in bubbles
I read this book because i wanted to hear a different opinion about global warming.After i finished reading it i realized that it was just another case of a human saying ''We didn`t do it,so we don`t have to fix it.'' Although the author was right,global warming is a natural process, she forgets to mention that humans are making the process go much faster.I was also not surprised when i heard that the author was funded by exxon and is not actually a climatolagist. I would not recomend this book to anyone because it supports inaction in a time when it is far better to be safe than sorry.

Buy it
Go right on and buy it. Now buy every other book you can find that is designed to discuss politics and current issues with children. Then sit them down and have them watch the news.

How do you feel when you think or talk about political issues? Frustrated? Angry? Indignant? Hopeless?

Congratulations, you've just dumped your adult miseries onto your child.

just food for thought
I was taking a look at this book, and then the reviews. Like one I read on another site, I wonder if most of the negative reviewers even read the books. I skimmed through it and one of the biggest points I noticed. Was not to truly attack global warming. But how people deal with environmental issues. And she is right. We, as a collective, look to the government to solve the problem. She is against this. And I can tell you one reason why she is right.

Rewind about 100 years ago. Something we take very much for granted now was just being invented; something that would truly change the world, something that was believed to be so physically impossible, that is wasn't even given a patent for several years. Even though the government was funding one engineer to invent the very same machine.

With virtually unlimited resources, this well know engineer, worked for sometime to invent this machine, and at his grand test... Failed, miserably. After that, is was thought to be impossible...yet... two relatively young, bicycle repairmen of all things, went to a little known place in north Carolina... and did the impossible. They flew... no government funding. No army of engineers and work me, Just two men with a dream, and determination.

What this book is suggesting, is we need to teach our children, how to learn. How you look and see things for them selves. And to use their own minds creatively. And that is how problems will be solved, the global warming basis is purely and easy way of doing this. Since all we hear is, with some exaggeration, "the sky is falling" but when you look deep into the science. Much of what is said. Doesn't work, and the rest. Is open for interpretation. Thinking for your self, Is the only solution.

And life's a bowl of (pesticide-ridden) cherries
While it's always important to examine all sides of an issue, overall this book scares the daylights out of me. It encourages children to ignore the obvious signs of our planet's distress. And THEY, even more than their parents will be the ones to suffer for the neglect.Even GWB is beginning to talk about the consequences of such ignorance. Don't be swayed by this false science that, as it turns out, was paid for by Exxon, who had this book published. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

A fine educational tool for young student environmental activists
"A Kids' Guide to Climate Change and Global Warming" is a recent workbook for kids in grade 6 and up in the How To Take Action! series. It contains a global warming map, carbon footprints explanation, water audits, youth summits, alternative energies, cool foods, green comics and much more to empower kids to take action to reduce or end global warming. Providing step by step suggestions for effective activities, "A Kids' Guide to Climate Change and global Warming" is a fine educational tool for young student environmental activists.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (83)

Deniers or affirmers?
The title of this book is misleading. On pages 45 and 46, the author writes that none of his growing cast of deniers were deniers. More specifically, he says that they were affirmers in general, deniers in particular. In other words, the scientists agreed that global warming was taking place but did not agree with particular aspects of the forecasted results. One would not expect an author presenting a balancedperspective on the global warming debate to describe affirmers as deniers, and his doing so raises doubts about this book.

Critics of this book are misinformed
Lawrence Solomon has written an excellent book.Most of the aspects of global warming are covered here.The critical reviews here try to refute the statements of four of the total of 34 deniers found in the book, by presenting other alleged quotes, but with no specific references for those quotes.


What the critics fail to realize is that there are different kinds of deniers of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).Most deniers fall into these categories:

1.A believer in AGW, but one who denies that the effects on the planet will be catastrophic.
2.A believer in AGW, but one who believes that it to be a minor contributor to global temperature rise. He believes warming is caused by something else, perhaps the sun.
3.One who denies AGW, and who believes the warming is totally due to other causes.
4.One who denies the magnitude of the global temperature increase.
5.One who denies that there is any warming occuring, other than that of natural climate change cycles of warming and cooling.

Solomon's book introduces us to the full spectrum of deniers listed above.There is only one scientist, Sami Solanki, who has stated that Solomon misrepresented his position on greenhouse gases as the primary cause of global warming, but not in the book.He complained of Lawerence's article in the National Post.The quotes attributed to him in "The Deniers", where he talks of the sun as being a contributor to global warming, are substantiated in the references.I suspect Solanki, as many scientists have done, may have made statements at different times based on their latest understanding, statements which may or may not agree with one another.No other scientists mentioned in the book have publicly disputed Solomon's characterization of their views.

All in all, a fascinating book by a journalist and an environmentalist, who was not a denier himself when he started his investigation.This book contributes greatly to the debate, because the credentials of the deniers profiled lend credence to the various positions of the growing numbers of scientists who are starting to express publicly their skepticism of AGW and its effects, if any.

Al Gore goofs again
The author by examining the positions of numerous scientists concludes that Al Gore and company are deceiving the public regarding climate change in their statments that the science is settled. Al Gore and company also act in a deceptivly political manner, disregarding any scientific findings that disagree with their predetermined position.

First class science.
A showcase against the IPCC and very informative. I often googled the mentioned persons to see if other information contradict the book. But that is definitely not the case.

Judge for yourself
Solomon builds a good case.

He lays out the specifics -- each scientist is working on the global climate change science, and knows his own corner of that science the best.And so each is prepared to say that there is no need for alarm in his particular aspect of global climate change research.

Taken as a whole, it's a thought-provoking book.

I like that it is a reasonable book -- no strident tone, no demands for action.

Read it for yourself and you be the judge. ... Read more

Product Description
From the author of the New York Times bestselling Politically Incorrect Guide(tm) to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) comes Red Hot Lies, an exposé of the hypocrisy, deceit, and outright lies of the global warming alarmists and the compliant media that support them. Did you know that most scientists are global warming skeptics? Or that environmental alarmists have knowingly promoted false and exaggerated data on global warming? Or that in the Left's efforts to suppress free speech (and scientific research), they have compared global warming dissent with "treason"?

Shocking, frank, and illuminating, Chris Horner's Red Hot Lies explodes as manymyths as Al Gore promotes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (60)

A Scathing Expose
These days it's hard to open a newspaper, turn on the TV or browse the internet news sources without coming across another doom-and-gloom story about Global Warming. And then there are all the fictionalized treatments of the subject that create a positive feedback loop with other sources of information, all having the ultimate effect of fueling the general paranoia about the imminent end of the World lest we repent and throw the global economy over the cliff and revert to pre-industrial mode of existence.

And yet, there are those lonely few who dare to raise their voices and question this alarmist mindset. One of the more prominent skeptics is Christopher Horner, the author of immensely popular The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism). In this latest book he provides a barrage of evidence suggesting that no, the extent of the problem if it even exists is not nearly as dire as it's being claimed, the few dissenting voices in the media and the scientific community are continuously being pressured to change their mind or else, the hysteria and the viciousness of the environmental lobby is appalling, and the consensus of the scientific community on many key findings is overinflated by orders of magnitude.

The book provides an incredible list of sources and references for further study and checking of the facts and claims from both sides of the debate. This alone makes it a valuable resource, and anyone who is genuinely interested in finding out if the critics' claims have any merit should definitely consult this book. The style of writing is mostly polemical and journalistic, but this works rather well for this kind of book. Those of us who have been raising questions about the validity of the assumptions behind the Global warming hysteria will find an invaluable ally in Horner.

Since the book came out there have been a spate of very public scandals involving several of the most prominent climate research/advocacy groups, including the University of East Anglia and the famed UN Panel. In the light of these it has become apparent that Horner's claims about the extent of the environmentalists' collusion and conspiracy in promoting bad data and bad science have been vindicated. Even the mainstream media is unable to ignore this side of the story any longer.

As a scientist I have been saddened and troubled by the way that legitimate science has been hijacked for political purposes. One of the trademarks of good science is the willingness to engage opposing viewpoints, and not dismiss them with disdain and with cheap ad-hominem attacks. Hopefully with more books like this one we can go back to discussing event the most controversial topics with cool heads.

A paranoid mess
This book is written by a man with so many unresolved issues he has allowed he boyish rebeliousness and insecurity transcend into modern science.A complete fabrication, waste of time, and quite concerning display of mental instability at its worst.

A lawyer for his client.
Mr. Horner is a lawyer by trade and an employee of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The CEI exists to promote short-term business interests at the sacrifice of every other human value, including long-term survival. Everything he says they pay for. It's best to assume that every word he writes is a lie, including "and" and "the".

Excellent read
The author does a fine job pointing out the misplaced focus of media and global warming alarmists.The idea that the earth warms and cools is not a scientific surprise.But it seems the media ever looking for a big story to sell air time, a group of politicians looking to raise tax revenue and garner more control over the people have become complicit in the deception of catastrophic global warming caused almost completely by man's CO2 emissions. Regardless of the scientific research that shows periods of global cooling with high carbon dioxide levels or scientists who have falsified temperature records to collect government grants to study man made global warming, the media and politicians forge ahead with their plans hoping no one will notice.Now's the time for the public to educate itself.This book provides a nice summary of challenges to the man made global warming theory from which a discussion can begin.

Exploding watermelons cause global panic
Until a week ago, this book could have been (and was) dismissed as "denial."The "scientific truth," we were told, lay in the hands of "peer-reviewed climate science."

Oops.

(That may be the biggest "oops" in the history of science.)

Climategate is upon us.The world has suddenly been handed hard evidence that the whole theory of AGW is not "science as usual," but a tidy bit of grantsmanship gone horribly wrong.The early emphasis of Climategate sleuths was on the e-mails; as a programmer, I was even more horrified by the details provided about the data and the illegible Fortran (!) code used to "produce results" in East Anglia.

"Watermelons," by the way, are reds masquerading as greens.

Christopher Horner deserves a Nobel Prize for being one of the very few to size up and report on this global fraud.I don't have any hope that he'll get one, because the current scandal seems destined to upset a whole boatload of apple-carts, including comfy European (and American) statists, Al Gore (obviously), and (can I say this?) the entire ruling class of the Western World.

Christoper Horner was definitely ahead of the 7 o'clock news with this story.He still is.But the "common people" --- who are not Hollywood stars, and who don't get invited to White House State Dinners --- have awakened.Climategate is not going away, and neither is this book.

By the way, "Official Washington" still does not admit that there is such a thing as Climategate.There are trillions of dollars at stake, folks --- YOUR dollars. ... Read more

Product Description
Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast is a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of global warming. Written in an accessible style, this important book examines the processes of climate change and climate stability, from the distant past to the distant future.

Examining the greenhouse effect, the carbon cycle, and what the future may hold for global climate, this text draws on a wide range of disciplines, and summarizes not only scientific evidence, but also economic and policy issues, related to global warming. A companion web site at (http://understandingtheforecast.org) provides access to interactive computer models of the physics and chemistry behind the global warming forecast, which can be used to support suggested student projects included at the end of each chapter. Solutions and artwork from the book are available to instructors at www.blackwellpublishing.com/archer.

Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast provides an essential introduction to this vital issue for both students and general readers, with or without a science background. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Excellent Primer
Based on a general undergrad course taught by author, this modest book is a very nice introduction to climate science and global warming.Following the arguments requires only a high school level knowledge of chemistry and algebra (knowledge that seems to be lacking in the Oklahoma Congressional delegation).Archer covers the basic features of the earth's energy budget, relevant physics and geochemistry, simplified modeling, and evidence for anthropogenic warming.The exposition is excellent with good use of figures, simple equations, and a direct writing style.As befits a textbook-style book, each chapter concludes with some exercises, useful references, and links to useful data and models.Given Archer's skill as a pedagogue, I would like to see some more discussion of economic models and mitigation strategies, which are really now the major issues.

First rate introduction to the science behind global warming
Brief, lucid, comprehensive, and objective. Covers an amazing amount of material in a short space. Brevity, however, is occasionally a flaw. For many of the topics, I found myself wishing there was more detail. Although everything is fully explained, readers having some basic science knowledge will find this book easier to follow. There is one serious flaw, there is a large number of typographical errors (some figures are badly scrambled).and a few of the illustrations are badly flawed. Find the list errata in the author's website.

Needs some repair.
You will need to visit understandingtheforecast.org right away, to download the errata. There are 32 errors listed in the errata, as of 17 December 2008.Four figures need to be replaced, though one is an update to reflect the 2007 IPCC report.Unfortunately, the replacement figures are not the same size as those in the book.You cannot merely paste them over; you will need to tape them as a flap, so that you can still read the caption.You will likely find more typos in the book than those listed in the errata.Depending on how valuable your time is, you may effectively double the price of the book.

In addition to the typos, there are some serious errors in the book.The author is a geochemist.The opening chapter on the greenhouse effect, "The layer model", is incorrect for anything but epsilon=1 (epsilon being the emissivity).A term for radiation from the surface is missing entirely from the last equation on page 25.That term would have a factor of (1-epsilon).Fortunately, the solutions listed in Table 3.1 are for epsilon=1, but that is not stated explicitly in the text.Furthermore, there is confusion about the use of the same symbol, epsilon, for both the emissivity of the atmosphereand the surface.You can repair Chapter 3 (or ignore it) by referringto the Wikipedia for "Idealized greenhouse model".

A minor error appears on 157,in regards to the storm surge associated with a hurricane. We read "These are caused by the low atmospheric pressure inside a hurricane lifting up the sea surface".An elementary hydrostatic calculation reveals the a 100 millibar pressure deficit would lift the ocean surface by merely one meter.Storm surges associated with hurricanes are cause by the wind. See the Wikipedia for "Storm Surge".

On page 89: "If we were to precipitate the CO2 into a snowfall of dry ice ... 7cm of snow on the ground." The correct answer is 4 mm. In Figure 9.2: the label should be Gton C/TW yr.

Some of the presentation of the greenhouse effect is outstanding.Chapter 4, and particularly the figures of the spectra at the top of the atmosphere, give a wonderful graphic presentation of radiative forcing and its logarithmic dependence on carbon dioxide concentration. The equilibrium warming that would result from the radiative forcing is again shown with recourse to a spectra.These spectra for the warmed atmosphere provide a excellent starting point for a discussion of the feedbacks (assuming the discussants understand the spectra), which make the forecast uncertain.

The book really shines in the presentation of the chemistry, the carbon cycle and energy policy.

With a little repair by the reader, the book is turned into a five star book.

Basic mechanisms demystified
There are some annoying typographical errors in this book, otherwise I would give
it five stars --- visit the book's website for a list of errata.

Plenty of books tell you about global warming, but this book really does
dymystify the nuts and bolts of how climate scientists know what they
say they know. The book says it is based on a course for non-scientists and
it shows --- the explanations are clearly honed from experience of explaining
scientific concepts to non-scientists. It is always difficult for scientists
in any field to convey the depth of knowledge which has accumulated over
a long period of time to people coming from other disciplines, but this book
does a pretty good job.

Excellent undergrad-level description of the climate
The climate books by Flannery, Kolbert, etc. tend to be anecdotal, with qualitative descriptions of how the climate works.While I think those books are valuable, what's been missing is a more technical description of the physics of the climate system that's accessible to people who aren't physics majors.This book is it.It serves as a bridge between the fully qualitative books and highly technical textbooks requiring calculus.There is some math in it, so math-phobes might approach it with caution.I think the book would be especially useful to scientists or grad students who want to know something about the climate problem, but don't want to invest a lot of time in reading dense textbooks or journal articles.I'm going to have my incoming grad students who did not major in atmospheric sciences read it in order to educate themselves quickly about the climate. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (71)

Follow the money
If you've thought that the media coverage about global warming- excuse me, "climate change"- has been weird for the last two decades, you're not alone.The author shows that we weren't watching a scientific debate but rather a coordinated public relations campaign.The author should know- he is the president of a successful public relations firm in Canada.

Why wasn't this a scientific debate?Because, as Hoggan explains in his first chapter, there is no debate and there hasn't been for at least 20 years.All articles printed in peer-reviewed journals and all scientists whose expertise is in climate study agree.The earth is warming, human activities are contributing to that warming and, perhaps most importantly, humans can alter those activities to reverse or stop some of the damage.

It is that last point that has indirectly led to the confusion that has played out in the popular media for so long.If we change our behavior, the parties that will be most impacted are the corporations who produce oil, coal and other fossil energy products.Indeed, ExxonMobil has been shown to be one of the biggest contributors to the "think tanks" and "grassroots" organizations that have worked to sow doubt about global warming.Coal companies are close behind.Many of the tactics that are used to discredit the scientific understanding and exploit the minimal factor of uncertainty (more about when than if) were pioneered by tobacco companies in the decades before.

The author worries that we're going to be outraged by what he writes, but at some points you just laugh, especially after you've read about the seventh or eighth "climate expert" who is shown to be anything but.While I admire anyone who can get a Ph.D. in any field, I must agree that someone whose degree is in sociology or classics isn't as qualified to critique climate research as someone whose degree is in, well, climatology or atmospheric physics.

That's funny.What isn't funny are the lies- excuse me, exaggerations- frequently used by the debunkers or deniers.I suppose it's one thing to cherry pick facts and drastically misconstrue someone's position, but it's another thing to essentially forge signatures or trick someone into participating in the making of a video or the authorship of a paper.

As much as we can be justifiably disgusted by these tactics, let's not let the mainstream media off the hook for their role.Media outlets should be open to "balancing" viewpoints when they are talking about matters that are based on opinion or somewhat unknown.Most things might fall into that: politics, economic policy (most agree that's an educated guess) and restaurant, movie and book reviews.But when we're talking about facts (documented historical finding, the law and agreed upon scientific facts), no, they do not have an obligation to host a debate on the matter.Simply claiming that everyone has the right to exercise their free speech doesn't excuse them from publishing something that is factually incorrect, such as the infamous George Will op-ed in 2009 in the Washington Post.

The author made his case very well, but the first few chapters stumbled.His transition from the tobacco company tactics to the climate deniers was a little jarring- how did we get there?- but it otherwise flowed pretty well.However, citing Wikipedia not once but twice just made me shake my head- I had to take off a star for that.

Still, a good history of why and how- everyone should read this.

Great! (But terrifying)
This book is great if you are interested in the topic. Even being in the field, this had a ton of new information I had no idea about previously. The book clearly shows how it is an incredibly organized mission to discredit the science. I particularly recommend Chapter 16 as a nice overview of information and the state of the public image of global warming. I only wish they had put one of the more reputable quotes on the front cover . . . (no offense Leo). Maybe not a page turner for your average reader, but definitely a worthwhile book!

Excellent book!
"Climate Coverup" is a wonderful piece of work, exposing an incredible effort to undermine years of scientific research and fool the public.It is written in a clear, concise style and makes and irrefutable argument.

Lacking focus
I was very excited about reading Climate Cover-Up and the book started off with the powerful, if not particularly surprising argument that the battle over global warming was one more of public relations than of truth or science. It turns out that the author has been a professional in this field for most of his working life. This turned out, initially, to be a strength of the book, but ultimately became its undoing. What should have been the primary theme of the book, global climate change, slowly morphed into a lengthy and ultimately, boring analysis of public relations often delving into the complex histories around the efforts around the long public debate about cigarettes and how they ought to be marketed in the US. Moreover, while global climate change is an international problem, the author tended to focus on Canadian sources which made the book feel parochial and added to the sense that this was really not the book I was look for. Climate Cover Up is not a failure. How these issues are addressed by public relations firms is an important part of understanding the how the problem gets processed in our socio-political world, but most of was both predictable and, finally, less than exciting or revealing reading.
Eric is the author of: Liberation from the Lie: Cutting the Roots of Fear Once and for All

Quite a preach to the choir
Throughout the book Mr Hoggan presents plenty of well-documented cases of cover-ups, wrong-doings by "deniers" and "junk scientists" under the payroll of big industry, the naughty Bush Administration, and other more subtle "saboteurs" responsible for the "bogus"global warming controversy. The book is very comprehensive but almost no new material is presented as most of it has already been available in the web for some time. Mr. Hoggan strongly believes that there is consensus among scientists and no scientific controversy, the only controversy is artificially created by the denial industry, as he called it, and climate change is undeniable and catastrophic. Truly a preach to the choir!

The author is so dogmatic regarding the science and policies regarding climate change, that he leaves no room for any middle ground position, lukewarmers, or even healthy skepticism: you are either a good guy or a bad guy, you either accept the science or you are a contrarian.In the real world however, the fact is that there are plenty of positions between these two extremes. Not surprisingly Hoggan attacks in the book several individuals with no connections to big oil, big energy or the Bush administration, such as reputable scientists Freeman Dyson and Richard Lindzen, independent and healthy skeptic Stephen McIntyre, the self-declared environmentalist Bjon Lomborg, and the late Michael Crichton.I was surprised he did not attack Nigel Lawson, as his book makes quite a few non no-sense criticisms to the economics of climate change (seeAn Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming).

Why? Because these are the worst kind of enemies to the cause, as each of these individuals dared to raise a couple of good questions or painful issues, or the worst sin, tried to verify the results of peer-reviewed papers (such as the famous Hockey Stick) or questioned the economics of climate change mitigation.According to Hoggan if you do not have a Ph.D. in climate science or related fields, and published peer-reviewed papers on the field, you should keep your mouth shut. Throughout the book Mr. Hoggan, from the high moral ground the righteousness of his cause entitles him, uses well-known tactics to prevent any serious debate, so these individuals are subject to ad hominem attacks, guilt by association or age, and as he recommends to the readers, always looks first for the credentials and motive, in particular, the economic interest of those dissenting, never mind the merits of their arguments.As so many other advocates and interest groups do today, Mr Hoggan is dominated by emotion, dogmatism, and intolerance of dissent, and not even once he engages the actual merits of the arguments. Don't you know healthy skepticism is required for science to progress? A good cause is no justification for censoring the scientific debate.

Of course that anyone with a background in science or engineeringwith good common sense can make some uncomfortable questions, these people are more than qualified to ask questions about the methods of science, and anyone with experience in computer simulation surely wonders about climate simulation and particularly the calibration "fudge" factors, as Freeman Dyson calls them. Didn't we learn anything with failure of the infallible financial risk models developed by the best minds and mathematicians of the planet? And regarding climate mitigation, of course that those with a background with economics are qualified to ask uncomfortable questions too. And regarding writer Michael Crichton, most of his science fiction work is based on distrust and misuse of science and technology, and State of Fear is no exception. Crichton raised a quite valid criticism and made objective recommendations in the author's afterword of that novel.

Even the not so innocent Lawrence Solomon in his book The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so, raises some valid issues. Chapter 8 presents criticism by Freeman Dyson and Antonino Zichichi, questioning the confidence and validity of climate simulation forecasts, particularly regarding the use of parametrization or "fudge factors". Also look for Hendrik Tennekes arguments regarding the lack of falsifiability from Popper's philosophical point of view.

And as for McIntyre the Climategate scandal demonstrated that he was right in the money (see details in the book Climategate: The Crutape Letters (Volume 1)). The unethical and non scientific behavior of the two renown climate scientists involved in this scandal more than justify to conduct climate research in the way that Crichton suggested, following the strict protocols used in medical and pharmaceutical research.However, neither this scandal, nor the small big errors in the fourth IPPC report mean that climate science is a fraud as extremist deniers have asserted, indeed it point us to the urgent need of more transparency and accountability by the climate science establishment.

Because this issue is so contentious, I recommend you to read "The Economist" piece on the March 20-26 edition entitled "The clouds of unknowing. This is a very balanced view of the realities and limitations of climate science, and the problem with exaggerations, there is plenty of grey in between, lukewarm indeed, and alarmism is not helpful. In order to understand why this debate has become so polarized and irrational, and a really insightful discussion about the sociological reasons of the controversy I recommend Mike Hulme's Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity, and he is a renown climate scientist just in case you were doubting his credentials. For a book in the same line of thinking but written for the laymen do not miss Climate of Uncertainty, quite a balanced view of the debate and a bold criticism both sides of the controversy and their attempts do manipulate us toward their political agenda.

And finally, regarding any kind of scientific controversy or dubious claims, read Lies, Damned Lies, and Science: How to Sort through the Noise around Global Warming, the Latest Health Claims, and Other Scientific Controversies, quite a primer to explore for your own controversial scientific claims in an objective matter.

PS: for those who think my review was too harsh, please read the Hartwell Paper published in May 2010 (available for free in pdf format in the web, just google). In this publication Hulme and another 13 academics and energy advocates argued that the Kyoto Protocol has failed to produce any discernable real world reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases in fifteen years, and therefore, after the Copenhagen fiasco, Kyoto has crashed. They argued that this failure opens an opportunity to set climate policy free from Kyoto and they propose a controversial and piecemeal approach to decarbonization of the global economy which will be more pluralistic and much more effective than the policies based on Kyoto. They also are quite honest about the uncertainties and limitation of climate science, not precisely what Mr. Hoggan wants you believe in his book and proving that there is indeed a quite spacious middle ground. Do not miss it. ... Read more

Product Description
John Houghton's market-leading textbook is now in full color and includes the latest IPCC findings, making it the definitive guide to climate change. Written for students across a wide range of disciplines, its simple, logical flow of ideas gives an invaluable grounding in the science and impacts of climate change and highlights the need for action on global warming. Is there evidence for climate changing due to human activities? How do we account for recent extremes of weather and climate? Can global electricity provision and transport ever be carbon free? Written by a leading figure at the forefront of action to confront humanity's most serious environmental problem, this undergraduate textbook comprehensively explores these and other issues, allowing students to think through the problem, assess the data and draw conclusions on the action that should be taken, by governments, by industry and by each and every one of us. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (13)

Beneath the scientific pretense, woefully little evidence proving the theory
As readers of my reviews know, I am skeptical about the theory that civilization is in danger because CO2 emissions are causing catastrophic levels of global warming.Of the books that I have read, the skeptical books are of higher quality than the pro-global warming books.For some time, I have been looking for a solid statement of the science that supports the Al Gore theory.

At first, this book looked like it provided the science that Gore does not.John Houghton is a qualified scientist, and he knows this field.The book is filled with cool charts, graphs and photos.It contains a great deal of information.It is grounded in the scientific literature.

Despite this, however, this book is not science.It is a "briefing" in the sense that lawyers use the word "briefs."It is a sustained argument for one point of view. It never takes the other side seriously.It is an advocacy piece.

Let us be clear what the argument is about.No one disputes that a lot of CO2 is going into the air.No one disputes that CO2 is a greenhouse gas.The questions are: (1) is the globe, in fact, warming; and (2) if so, is this warming caused by CO2?

Beneath all of the charts, graphs and photos, Houghton has two pieces of evidence, and two pieces of evidence only, for the Al Gore theory.First, global temperature rose from 1970 to 2000.Second, scientists have constructed computer models which suggest that, if CO2 levels keep rising, the globe will get warmer.That is it; that is ALL the evidence that Houghton has.

The rise in temperature from 1970 to 2000 is suggestive, but, in itself, proves little.Temperature fell from 1940 to 1970.Temperature has stayed about the same since 2000.In short, the trend lines are all over the place.There is, it is true, a long-term rise in temperature since the 19th century, but given that the 19th century was the end of a cooling period -- called the "Little Ice Age" -- one would expect temperature to rise since then.

As for the computer models, Houghton makes no effort to prove that they work.Instead, he simply asserts that they work.He says, "I am a big deal scientist.I say the models work.Accept it."

This is an appeal to authority.This is not an appeal to reason.Here is what an appeal to reason would look like.If someone like Houghton seriously wanted to persuade a non-believer of the accuracy of the computer models, he would give us examples of the models working.For example, take one of the models, as it exists today.Feed into it raw data from the 1980s.See if it is able to predict the weather of the 1990s.The advantage of this approach is that, since we know what happened in the 1990s, such an approach tests whether the model actually works or not. If the model can accurately "predict" the past, then the model has some credibility

There are other ways to show that the models work.Houghton uses none of them.I assume that, if he had any arguments like these, he would use them.He is, after all, an advocate.I trust him to find all of the arguments for his position.If he has nothing to show that the models work, except pounding on his chest and telling us to believe them, then I assume there is no evidence that the models work.

Global Warming
Product was exactly how it was described, in great condition with little to no marks on the inside. thanks!

Propaganda disguised as science
You have to admire a writer like this, who can tidy up all the assumptions in global warming so they disappear in the 'facts'. Who needs to question such an authority!? I mean, if you disagree with Mr. Houghton (we don't use titles of nobility in this country, fyi), well, you are obviously just a dense neanderthal!

So instead of really examining whether humans are causing significant global warming, let's just assume it, and then hype the issues that follow. These self-righteous government 'scientists' love to play the part of savior, but never disclose how much money they are making while selling their snake-oil from the government. But oh, if you are debating them, they will quickly sneer against you if you are actually living off of money provided by the free market.

The book may be just fine for learning what kind of problems occur when global warming occurs, but it might as well be a book about what kind of problems might occur if a big meteor hits Earth, or aliens attack, and it is just about that relevant. This book is great pabulum for the sheeple.

Yes, It Really Is A Good Complete Briefing on Global Warming
The title of the book "Global Warming - The Complete Briefing" is aptly named, as it is an excellent briefing, or primer, on the subject of global warming.The book avoids the politics of global warming, which can grow tiresome to those of us who actually work in the climate change field. Instead, the book focuses on the basic science behind global warming, and is a very balanced, non-partisan approach to causes, effects, uncertainties, and potential impacts.

The reading level of the book is college level science, similar to a beginning or intermediate level physical science or meteorology class. If you are looking for an over-all guide to the science of global warming, this is a great book. If you are looking for a less academic, more popular-culture point of view on global warming, look into "Hell and High Water - Global Warming - The Solution and the Politics and What We Should Do" by Joseph Romm for an eminently enjoyable, easily readable guide to some of political and cultural aspects of global warming.

Excellent resource if you want to know the facts on global warming and climate change
I have just gotten half way through this book but am already finding it an excellent source of background information on global warming and climate change.It has a lot of technical information but is written at a level that most people can understand.I'm using it to prepare for a community education class I'll be teaching and finding it most helpful with facts on the science behind global warming.I recommend this book to anyone that wants to delve into the reasons behind what you're hearing in the news.The author is an internationally recognized expert and obviously knows what he's taking about.The book it written in a well balanced way pointing out the uncertainties and sticking to the facts.I'm looking forward to completing the rest of the book this week. ... Read more

Product Description
In 2006, a team led by the English economist Sir Nicholas Stern issued a striking report that analyzed the economic dimensions of global climate change and called for immediate collective action to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This seminal report poses the critical question of how much emissions should be reduced within specific timeframes. To answer the challenge of finding a best-practices approach, Global Warming and the World Trading System looks at the economic aspects of GHG emissions and seeks a policy method to reduce them without adversely affecting global trade. The book begins with a survey of relevant data--such as emissions reports per sector--and evaluates current US climate policy options, focusing on the intricacies of specific Congressional bills. In this vein, this study examines whether the competitiveness provisions now under consideration are compatible with the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and explores the pragmatic opportunities the WTO should capitalize on in order to accomplish two goals simultaneously: (1) Ensure policy space for countries to limit national GHG emissions without sacrificing the competitive position of their own industries. (2) Preserve an open trading system relatively free of discrimination and opportunistic protectionist measures. Should governments use trade measures to encourage other countries to cooperate in the adoption of environmental policies? The authors anticipate the potential negative environmental and economic outcomes as well as the disputes over violation of GATT articles. This book addresses how to avoid serious setbacks in an effort to reduce emissions without compromising the status of both domestic and international carbon-intensive industries. Most importantly, the book considers what can be done by environmental organizations to head off conflict with the WTO. ... Read more

Product Description
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been issuing the essential facts and figures on climate change for nearly two decades. But the hundreds of pages of scientific evidence quoted for accuracy by the media and scientists alike, remain inscrutable to the general public who may still question the validity of climate change.

Esteemed climate scientists Michael E. Mann and Lee R. Kump, have partnered with DK Publishing to present Dire Predictions-an important book in this time of global need. Dire Predictions presents the information documented by the IPCC in an illustrated, visually-stunning, and undeniably powerful way to the lay reader. The scientific findings that provide validity to the implications of climate change are presented in clear-cut graphic elements, striking images, and understandable analogies. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (11)

Climate Change Illustrated
This is a comprehensive, attractive summary of the recent IPCC report on climate change by recognized authorities in the field.If you accept global warming, as I do, you'll find the book excellent; if you deny climate change you'll hate it because the case for change is so clearly and forcefully presented.

Excellent introductory and/or reference book
Excellent book for those interested in getting the facts and science of climate change. It is actually a summary of the 3000+ pages of the IPCC AR4 2007 reports. All the aspects are covered efficiently: physical basis, paleoclimatology, climate models, impacts, projections and GHG emission scenarios, adaptation and mitigation measures. The authors have done a wonderful job in making complex, interdisciplinary science understandable to anybody. Recommended to those wishing to have a quick guide to climate change without scientific compromise.
On the aesthetics side: this book is very nicely done. Text easy to read, nice pictures, well-chosen relevant and easy-to-grasp figures and charts, everything is done so the reader enjoys reading the book. Its structure is so that each set of two pages is independent on the previous ones. That means that you can browse through the book and pick up any random page to read! Cross-references are numerous.
A reference for the layman.

Game, Set, Match
This book could easily be titled, "A Guide to Help Climate Skeptics Understand Why They are Wrong."It's written, not in a dull, didactic, "here are the facts," manner, but more as a presentation of the arguments in which the standard questions from the other side are addressed as major section headings, such as, "Couldn't the increase in carbon dioxide be the result of natural cycles?."

Pretty much the bottom line conclusion of the book is presented in large, bold font near the end of first section where the authors say that if we don't do something to change our ways, the atmospheric carbon dioxide level will exceed "anything experienced on earth for over 50 million years."Could the stakes be laid out any more clearly?

The tables need to be turned on the climate skeptics -- it's time for the burden of proof to be placed upon their shoulders -- as in, you folks need to prove to us that it's possible to alter the atmosphere so significantly and NOT have something undesirable happen.

The structure of the book is very simple and powerful.In five nicely color-coded sections they lay out the basics of the problem, what the science predicts will happen, and how to avoid or cope with it.The style of writing is efficient, direct, to the point, and periodically snappy, such as asking, "Is it time to sell that beach house?"

The overall look of the book is almost as VISUAL as a slide show. This is a book that is perfect for undergraduates, the general public, and pretty much everyone willing to put their trust in science rather than politics.

Incomplete Work...
This book is a scantily clad picture of our earth and what may or may not be happening to it.Instead of at least paying a minimal tribute to its opponents (currently 31,000+ scientists strong) it delves into global warming as if it were a truth akin to the most fundamentalist of bible, islam, or torah theorists.It fails to mention what some of the opponents of global warming addresses....namely the cooling of our climate, the expanding of our artic ice caps, and the cooling temperatures of our world at its core, which is a much more definitive measurement than that of the crust or air above the crust.

This book is one-sided, unscientific, and no better than blatant dogma.I guess in the days of climate change scares, dogma is merely short for dog-manure.

Excellent science primer
Dire Predictions offers an excellent primer on climate change science and potential means for reducing emissions. The authors address the basics of climate science with informative text and graphs that are simple, intuitive and straight-forward. This is a great book to pass on friends and relatives who would benefit from information about climate science from scientists.

I work with climate scientists and it is often difficult to translate climate science to the public. The authors of Dire Predictions have made an excellent go at it. ... Read more

Product Description
Former Vice President Al Gore's New York Times #1 bestselling book is a daring call to action, exposing the shocking reality of how humankind has aided in the destruction of our planet and the future we face if we do not take action to stop global warming. Now, Viking has adapted this book for the most important audience of all: today's youth, who have no choice but to confront this climate crisis head-on.

Dramatic full-color photos, illustrations, and graphs combine with Gore's effective and clear writing to explain global warming in very real terms: what it is, what causes it, and what will happen if we continue to ignore it. An Inconvenient Truth will change the way young people understand global warming and hopefully inspire them to help change the course of history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (39)

A Convenient Scam
I purchased this book in an attempt to find out more about global warming and the associated global climate change.Having heard so much about the book and video, I felt that the work might be worth reviewing. I was saddly disappointed!Mr. Gore's book is a sham, nothing more than a 7th grade reading level, or lower, picture book with sound bite captions.There is no scientific information, only cleaverly manipulated photos and catchy personal opinions and catch-phrases.If this is what earned Mr. Gore his Nobel Prize, then that too is a sham.Any thinking person would see right through this book...there is nothing of value in the book and no real information.If this is considered a definitive work on the global warming, then the the state of science is saddley misdirected.

wrong order
This product it's wrong. I wonna reback you and order other. What can i do?

What a waste.
I thought I was buying a book with information supporting Global Warming.Instead I got a brochure of PowerPoint slides which contained little or no information and, what little there was, had obvious errors.My grandson told me not to waste my money and I wish I had listened.

Convenient dishonesty
Al Gore is using scare tactics to further his own interests, while pouring CO2 into the atmosphere with his lavish lifestyle. Concurrently, he is telling the rest of the world to clean up their act.Some of the photos are good even though the captions are misleading.

Junk Science
What can one say when a book contains no evidence to back up his claims, nor is it scientific. However one does get an education as to why the global warming scare. It's called $$$$$$$ and ideology. When you have those two things together then rationale is not significant and is actually an enemy to one's purported lunacy.

Don't throw the book out though, I find it useful for my cat box. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

A good start to learn about global warming
I'm 11 and Im confident that my generation will end up having to find a way to begin changing the direction of apathy and neglect relating to our one and only home that we share - Planet Earth.This book helps begin to interest kids into the responsibility that we must step up to.New jobs, new vision, new attitudes etc are necessary. I like the examples and suggestions the book provides and mostly the concept that it continuously suggest that we must begin working on it today. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Semi-insider view of Climate Wars
Although I read a lot about our Climate Wars, there is much in this book that I did not know.The author (Fred Pearce) is a UK reporter who talks directly with all sides of the debate and for that I will call him a semi-insider.He provides the time-sensitive context of many of the more celebrated emails extracted from Climate Research Unit (CRU) at University at East Anglia (UEA). For instance the "hide the decline" and "Mann's Nature trick" private email from Phil Jones (given in mid 1999 but released to the public in Nov 2009) was said by Sen Jim Inhofe in Dec 2009 to demonstrate that "the science [behind global warming] has been pretty much debunked" and "the science has been rigged".Let's explore that statement.For years the CRU has put out plots of the measured "instrumental" (aka thermometers) temperature data showing an approx 0.8C temperature increase since pre-industrial times mostly in two upturn periods 1910-1940, 1977-1998, other periods being essentially flat. It is the most fundamental evidence for global warming and the same data has been analyzed with similar results by NASA's GISS.Now according to Inhofe this data had really declined, the CRU knew that, and the "hide the decline" amounts to proof that they knew that but were fabricating data to say otherwise. But the context makes it clear that the "hide the deline" phrase was related to the Paleoclimatic data of over 1000+ years based on proxies, and not the instrumental temperature measurement starting globally in ~1850.The paleoclimatic researchers acknowledge "divergence" later than 1961 or 1981 (depending on the data set) in tree ring reconstructions which does not show consistent trends - temperatures from some trees went high, while others went down. Yet for the years 1850-1960, the tree ring data matches the temperature anomalies of the "instrumental record" quite well.So following Michael Mann's "hockey stick" article published by Nature magazine in 1998, the inconsistent paleoclimatic data (post 1961 or 1981) was replaced by an overlay of the "instrumental record" to display all the available (and reliable) data on one plot - this was "Mann's Nature's trick" which is not an attempt to deceive but an attempt to display all the relevant data on one plot.Jones was not "hiding the decline" in the instrumental data; instead he was hiding some of the latter unreliable Paleoclimatic data that they did not understand.This procedure was clearly pointed in Jones's text accompanying the plots as it was in Mann's papers earlier. No intent to "hide" anything and no "trick" was played. The "trick" referred to a data display choice and was shorthand in the context of private email between Jones and other climate researchers.Jones would have explained it more if he knew it was going to be a public text approx 10 years afterwards.And if by chance the Paleoclimatic data were totally debunked, global warming itself would remain as established fact by other data sources (instrumental record showing highest rates of heating since 1977 than ever recorded in the ice core data, satellite temperature records, sea level rise records, ocean heat records, etc).Boy that was detailed for a book review, but necessary to give the true context.

But one would be totally wrong, if one thought Pearce was merely a defender of the Climate Mainstream Scientists and a detractor of the Climate Skeptics. He starts out in chapter 1 by saying there are "no heroes" here - fault can be found in virtually all the players. Wrt the Mainstream, he comes down hard on Michael Mann (too sure of himself and verbose), Phil Jones (too eager to refuse release of data to the skeptics' FOI request), Rajendra Pachauri (too defensive about IPCC reports that actually had several mistakes in it among it's thousands of assertions), Kevin Trenberth (too quick to claim hurricane frequency was due to global warming); and not so hard on Tom Wigley (ex- CRU boss), Keith Briffa (tree ring researcher at CRU), and Stephen Schneider (Stanford U).Wrt the skeptics side, he comes down hard on Pat Michaels, Fred Seitz, Anthony Watts, Ross McKitrict, Bennie Peiser, Jim Inhofe, Myron Ebell (for being ideologically motivated and too adamant in scientific fields they did not understand fully);and not so hard on Steven McIntyre (data sleuth), Dick Lindzen (hurricane researcher from MIT), John Christy (climatologist from UAH). He discusses all the pointed technical discussions concerning the Hockey Stick, CRU email wording/context, GlacierGate, Yamal tree ring data, number of stations in the temperature data, and the accounting for Urban Heat Island effects.You will find plenty of "red meat" about CRU and Manistream Scientist "tribalism", lack of williingness to release data, and sloppiness in the caretake of data. You will also find plenty of details of who funds the many skeptics orgainzation (and a few who hide their funding),and the outlandish PR coming from that side (e.g calling GW a "hoax", with data maliciously "manipulated", the earth is actually cooling).As such both sides could use this book selectively to badmouth the other side.

But in the end, Pearce believes that the Mainstream Scientist position is the correct one as he stated in the first paragraph of the final chapter (I'd like to quote it but not sure that I should copyright-wise).Pearce just believes the details have to be cleaned up in a very public/transparent/thorough way. I agree.

After reading this, I feel a thorough reconstruction of all the available "original" data needs to be done by truly independent people doing the heavy analysis with all "sides" as watchdogs/guides all working together (may be too much to ask for). None of the three CRU email investigative teams have had the time or charter to do so. This will in all likelihood prove out the mainstream position of man-caused global warming and the need to control greenhouse gases. But nontheless the interested public needs and deserves convincing (if such is possible).I also would demand a opening up of the global warming skeptic organizations' email files/data(if they have any) to similiar scrutiny as the CRU has received, all in the interest of truth.

The book is well written (a few Britainisms) and reads like a detective story. I recommend it highly to interested parties. ... Read more

Product Description
Get positive suggestions for practical solutions to this heated issue.

Hotly debated in the political arena and splashed across the media almost 24/7, global warming has become the topic of the moment. Whatever one's views on its cause, there is no denying that the earth's climate is changing, and people everywhere are worried. Global Warming For Dummies sorts out fact from fiction, explaining the science behind climate change and examining the possible long-term effects of a warmer planet. This no-nonsense yet friendly guide helps you explore solutions to this challenging problem, from what governments and industry can do to what you can do at home and how to get involved. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Wast of money Tipical tree huger far left bull.
pg 68 talks about empowering women so they will have less kids ( abortion? )

Even more controversial is the assertion on pages 256-257, where May and Caron argue that people who question global warming orthodoxy should be excluded from media coverage of the issue. But Later, they claim that, "Giving both sides equal coverage creates the inaccurate perception that it's an equally weighted debate." "Because journalists are supposed to give both sides of the story, sometimes they actually create a bias in their reporting," they say. Later, they claim that, "Giving both sides equal coverage creates the inaccurate perception that it's an equally weighted debate."
They also say: "Although `balanced' reporting might seem fair, the likelihood that humans are contributing to climate change is 95 percent certain." So typical of the type, you can talk if I want to hear what you have to say, other wise shut up.

They will steer you away from books they don't like page 266.

They hate Nuclear power page 222. (but that don't emit carbon? )
and kiwi fruit pg 90 ( has to be shipped in.)

Pg 90 also condemns product packaging, especially bubble rap and kiwi fruit( has to be shipped in.)


On pg 39 good old h20 causes 60 percent of the planet's warming??
for us Dummies that is water

On pg 156 they are into rasing yor taxs

Elizabeth May is in the Canada Green party looking for face time and you money. In 10 yrs she will me screaming about the next Ice age and we are all going to starve as the glassier comes down ( look up the 60s and 70s and global cooling.)

for a full book review far better then mine go to


[...]

A Positive Reaource for on a Critical Subject
This book offers a simple and easy to reference guide into one of the most complex and defining issues of our time.Outlining the possible effects of global warming and how they are linked to almost every other social and ecological challenge we are face locally and globally, this book is a reminder that we all need to be a part of the solution.

I applaud May and Caron for their clear writing and solution orientation. All of us need to understand the complexities, trade offs and potential ways forward and this book is a wonderful resources in that direction! I recommend it to beginners and climate change champions alike.

A Valuable Resource
Authors May and Caron provide a clear, well articulated picture of what global warming is and how it affects us. The different chapters break the issue down topic by topic in an easy to read fashion. This book goes one step further and provides the reader with practical solutions for change that everyone can use. As an Environmental Science professional with a strong background in climate change I would recommend this book as a great go-to resource for everyone. A perfect blend of hard hitting facts, practical solutions and just a splash of humour!

Very informative book on climate change
I found this book overall to be very informative on the issues of climate change. The book explains greenhouse gases and how those gases affect the climate, the carbon cycle, man's impact on greenhouse gas emissions, what people can do to decrease their carbon footprint, and much more. It is a great book for getting people up to speed climate change.

I definitely recommend this book for people who want to learn the basics. People who already know a bit about the issues of climate change might even learn a little bit. I did.

Unfortunately, I have to detract 1 star for a lack of objectivity and some areas of the book could stand to be condensed. ... Read more

Product Description
In this New York Times bestseller, authors Singer and Avery present the compelling concept that global temperatures have been rising mostly or entirely because of a natural cycle. Using historic data from two millennia of recorded history combined with natural physical records, the authors argue that the 1,500 year solar-driven cycle that has always controlled the earth's climate remains the driving force in the current warming trend. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (198)

Singer's organization SEPP receives funding through oil companies, such as ARCO, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Unocal.
Before you read this book do some simple research on the authors. You will find that they both have conflicts of interest and receive substantial funding by those who like to see climate action defeated. Would you trust a judge that was ruling on a case against a company where he had significant stock in?? I think not...

In 1990, Singer set up the Scientific & Environmental Protection Project (SEPP) to argue against preventive measures against global warming. After the 1991 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the Earth Summit, Singer started writing and speaking out frequently to cast doubt on the science.

When SEPP began, it was affiliated to the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, a think tank run by the Unification Church. A 1990 article for the Cato Institute identifies Singer as the director of the science and environmental policy project at the Washington Institute for Values in Public Policy, on leave from the University of Virginia.

Singer has since cut ties with the Washington Institute, and receives funding through consultancy work and grants from foundations and oil companies, such as ARCO, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Unocal. Singer has said his financial relationships do not influence his research. Scheuering writes that his conclusions concur with the economic interests of the companies who pay him, in that the companies want to see a reduction in environmental regulation.

In August 2007 Newsweek reported that in April 1998 a dozen people from what it called "the denial machine" met at the American Petroleum Institute's Washington headquarters. The meeting included Singer's group, the George C. Marshall Institute, and ExxonMobil. Newsweek said that, according to an eight-page memo that was leaked, the meeting proposed a $5-million campaign to convince the public that the science of global warming was controversial and uncertain. The plan was leaked to the press and never implemented.

A Great, Essential Read
Well written, fully documented, a vast array of references from referred journals!Makes an overwhelming case for the 1,500 year cycle that ties climate change into the ice ages as well as the lesser known climatic swings of historic times, from the Romans to the American colonial period.Evidence varies from ice drilling cores from Greenland and Antarical to borings into ancient oceanic sediments, as well as an array of data from archeology, history and other sciences not normally related to paleoclimatic research.

There can be little doubt about the basic 1,500-year warming cycle, imbedded within the larger cycles such as the the sun cycles accounting for the glacial periods.

An interesting conclusion is the assertion that a little global warming will be good for us and benefit global humanity greatly.Given this conclusion, the relatively minor variations attributed by global warming sensationalists to greenhouse gases virtually irrelavant and of little interest, even if they are accurate - which is highly doubtful.

A fresh dose of objective science in an arena where political posturing and special interests are so deeply entrenched in scientific institutions, academia, corporate interests likely to benefit from GW panic in massive governmental grants, liberal media outlets and Hollywood.Its nice to hear from a scientific community that doesn't have to cower at the threat their scientific emails might be made pubic.

Orin C. Patton, BA, MS, PhD

S. Fred Singer?
This is the same S. Fred Singer that was under contract from Philip Morris to deny that tobacco and second hand smoke didn't cause cancer.

Excellent discussion
Fred Singer presents a cogent argument that describes the actual data of global warming and its relation to past history.He successfully looks beyond the distortions of the IPCC report and provides insight into the actual science, not jury rigged models.As a physicist, I enjoyed his repeated recitation of global warming as a natural phenomenon, replete with references to real work, rather than interest group hyperbole.

Careful Review of Science Refutes Global Warming Myths
With their new book, Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years, S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery skewer all the misinformation that has been used for so long in an attempt to convince society that mankind is the root cause of all global climate change.

The book is truly amazing! It meticulously supports, with hundreds of detailed, published references, the clear facts and conclusions that the Earth's climate has been traveling a well-defined rollercoaster path of temperature change for at least 900,000 years.

Everyone reading this review should buy two copies of the book, keeping one in plain view at their home or office while sending one to a friend or government official who may be called upon to make a decision regarding CO2 emissions into our atmosphere.


An Inconvenient Antidote

In almost a point-by-point refutation of Al Gore's unsupportable rant that "the debate is over; man is warming the Earth," Singer and Avery explain technically but lucidly why nearly every cherry-picked fact in Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" is contradicted by science, which weighs heavily in favor of a very different truth: Man is in fact all but irrelevant to global climate, as the sun and its accompanying solar system rule.

Anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming has been the scare du jour of the collectivist environmental movement, socialist countries, and academic money launderers for nearly a decade now. Unlike the past Y2K scare, ozone elimination, and avian flu, efforts to combat global warming will have long-term, serious, negative impacts on the citizens of the world, whose quality of life, especially in the poorest nations, will be disastrously worsened.

It will not be possible to read Unstoppable Global Warming without being convinced a sham is being perpetrated on society. Even a 30-minute perusal of the text will impress the average unbrainwashed person that despite Gore's beautiful pictures of heaving ice flows in both his movie and book, man is not the culprit behind climate change. Singer and Avery's well-chosen book title alone should give the thinking person pause.


Data in Ice Cores

In the opening chapter, "Is Humanity Losing the Global Warming Debate?" Singer and Avery explain how the ratio of two isotopes of oxygen allows us to date the age in which air bubbles were trapped in ice, and that with almost a million years of ice cores we can readily tell that periodic warming of the Earth has occurred persistently almost every 1,500 years.

That obviously does not square with efforts to get us to reduce our use of cars, air conditioners, and fertilizer in order to reduce carbon in our atmosphere. Technological advances have increased our life expectancy by 30 years during the past century, but now we are being asked to give much of it up and return to organic farming, which was able to support only 1.5 billion people 100 years ago.

If we gave up high-yield farming, as many global warming alarmists desire, we would need to clear all the world's forests to sustain our current food demands, and thus eliminate about half of the world's wildlife.

This brings up a key question: Do environmental zealots really care about the environment, or do they simply hate people? Singer and Avery make it clear: "Humanity and wildlife may both be losing the debate."


Climate Cycles

Singer and Avery document the exhaustive data search they performed to confirm conclusively the existence of a 1,500-year warming cycle. They grappled with the 100,000-year elliptical cycle of the Earth's orbit, the 41,000-year axial tilt cycle of the Earth, and the 23,000-year precessing or wobble cycle.

In addition to those cycles, they thoroughly document the most influential cycle of all: the 1,500-year solar cycle that drives most of the Earth's climate cycle.

The authors shatter the greenhouse gas theory, making it clear humanity's modest addition to the atmosphere's small amount of carbon dioxide does not add up to a significant alteration in temperature.

In obliterating the Kyoto Protocol as a construct to change anything, the authors uncover a suppressed report from the federal government of Canada, which concluded that country's expenditure of $500 million to reduce greenhouse gases was "largely wasted, producing neither a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions nor the development of new, cleaner technologies."


Scaremongering Exposed

With merciless precision and incontrovertible scientific proof, Singer and Avery show mankind need not fear there will be sea level surges, devastating floods, the mass extinction of species, famine, drought, barren soil, more frequent and fierce storms, death by warming, and then an eventual sharp turn to killer cold.

One of my favorite chapters focuses on common sense regarding the extinction of species. The authors explain that most of the world's animal species evolved 600 million years ago, so we know most of today's species have successfully dealt with ice ages and global warming periods that have sent temperatures much higher and much lower than today's temperatures.


Ulterior Motives Unmasked

Singer and Avery unveil the best imaginable view of global warming alarmists' true objectives when they explain that what the Greens want is "to end or severely restrict the use of fossil fuels."

Famous fear-monger Paul Ehrlich saw civilization self-destructing as a result of having too many rich people using too many resources. Following his lead, global warming alarmists want solar and wind energy because they are erratic and expensive, and they want organic farming because reducing yields by half will achieve a radical reduction in our capacity to populate the Earth.


Warming Benefits the Biosphere

In addition to disassembling the absurd scenarios of the anti-human zealots, the authors calmly present the logical lessons from history that provide so much cause for optimism. A case in point:

"Human food production historically has prospered during global warmings. ... Warming climates provide more of the things plants love: sunlight, rainfall, and longer growing seasons. During warmings there are less of the things plants hate: late spring frosts and early fall frosts that shorten the growing seasons, and hail storms that destroy fields of crops," Singer and Avery observe.

"Human food production today depends far more on farming technology than on modest climate changes," the authors note. "We are no more doomed to famine by the Modern Warming than we are doomed to malaria in the era of pesticides and window screens. In fact, the food abundance the world has increasingly enjoyed since the eighteenth century is primarily due to scientific and technological advances."


Dramatic Weather Events

Along the same lines, Singer and Avery look at history and confirm that the frequency and severity of hurricanes, droughts, thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes have not increased in recent years.

They point out, for example, that John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, in testimony before Congress, "noted that the most significant droughts in the Southwestern United States occurred more than four hundred years ago, before 1600. He stated that before 1850, America's Great Plains were called 'the Great American Desert,' and experts at the time said the region couldn't be farmed. Weather just seems unusual and dangerous these days, said Christy, because of the increased media coverage of major storms."


Computer Model Flaws

The authors explain a subject few of us really understand--the global warming computer models that are used to scare the public on a daily basis. They are properly called Global Circulation Models, or GCMs, and they are the megastars of today's climate and environmental research.

Unstoppable Global Warming is worth owning if just for chapter 11, which explains the limitations of GCMs quite clearly for folks without a deep scientific background.

Here is a sample:

"The GCMs are three-dimensional computer models that attempt to pull together and project into the future all major causes of climate change--jet streams in the upper atmosphere; deep ocean currents; solar radiation reflected back to space by ice sheets and glaciers; changes in vegetation; naturally changing greenhouse gas levels; eddies in the ocean that transfer heat laterally; number, type, and altitude of clouds in the skies; variations in radiant energy coming from the sun; plus hundreds of other factors."

Singer and Avery explain in meticulous detail why these efforts are instructive on a pure research level but foolish as a guide for any precise decision-making, especially given how the models have failed to reproduce today's climate accurately when inputting real-world data.

From cover to cover, Unstoppable Global Warming is truly elegant reading--so much so that I cannot wait to read it again.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jay Lehr, Ph.D. (lehr@heartland.org) is science director for The Heartland Institute.

... Read more

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Customer Reviews (8)

A Hoax
Global warming is a giant hoax that is costing us millions and millions of dollars that could be spent on medical research, poverty or some other really important issue. Obviously someone is making money off it! For shame!

A bit sketchy on the science.
This is one of those books you kind of have to stick with before it gets good. The book starts out with an overview of why global warming is an issue. While everything these scientists say about global warming is right on and referenced in the notes, some of the things they talk about are done in a but of a sketchy fashion. This is unfortunate because it could cause some who are predisposed to climate skepticism to criticize the conclusions. However, the second half of the book delves into the whole issue of what to do about global warming and this section is much better. Usually when scientists talk about what to do about global warming, they end up offering one or two throw-away ideas. In this case, the authors even-handedly cover all the angles, at least as much as they can be in a short book like this. They cover all of the different potential avenues that can be pursued politically and they give a brief rundown on the situation of many of the countries that emit a lot of greenhouse gases. They don't necessarily advocate any one solution over the other. So in this sense, the book is a good overview that isn't too slanted towards any one idea. Many skeptics love to oversimplify issues or make unfounded assertions about other countries and the economic impacts of attempts to fix global warming. This book puts a more balanced spin on the whole thing.

I recommend this book with a few reservations. If you don't know much about global warming and you want to learn more, you are probably better off starting with another book. If you want a book that provokes some thought about the political side as it relates to the scientific side of global warming, you might enjoy this book.

Must-read
Apparently some people have criticized Al Gore's "an inconvenient truth" because it contained some (minor) scientific errors. But as a practicing scientist myself I would tend to say that this book is about as iron-clad as possible as to scientific research on climate change. If you have a sceptic in the family, or yourself have some scepticism because some data seem(ed) to contradict global warming (for example, CO2-levels rising AFTER rising temperatures in ice cores), this is THE book to find consistent explanations for the complex bundle of data and the most recent science possible.

Unfortunately, the truth of climate change as it is described is not merely inconvenient. It is bad. Mass extinctions, famines and wars seem inevitably linked to "business as usual" scenarios. For people who do not think global warming will have serious consequences, or at least not in their lifetimes, this is a rather unsettling book. For those who DO believe in the reality of global warming, it is even more unsettling, as we may be setting all kinds of "positive feedbacks" in motion, such as methane release from the arctic which can bring an enormous amount of extra greenhouse gas into the atmosphere compared to which our industrial emissions over the last century seem paltry.

If journalists ever said that you owed it to your children to watch Al Gore's movie, I'd say you owe it to your children (and quite likely and frighteningly, yourself) to read this book and give copies to your friends, company management and elected representatives.

Then why four stars instead of five? The book has some minor inconveniences (for example, distributing various tips for better living throughout multiple chapters instead of having one checklist) and the website where the authors promise to post their updates does not seem to be functional. The lacking star is more of a call to the authors to not only have a important and well-researched message, but to do their utmost to bring the message even more strongly and more easily for people to act upon. For time, unfortunately, seems to be running out.

Decent bibliography, not enough *how*
It gets 4 stars because the bibliography is better than most open audience, non-fiction, persuasion books. In terms of actual content, I would give it 3.

Perhaps the most valuable contribution Walker and King have made with this book is a publicly distributed extensive bibliography that consolidates a reference list on the topic of climate change. Regardless of the reader's opinion on this topic, one can read the book and cross reference to satisfy his or her own curiosity, as most data is cited.

Whether the book is actually free of "spin" is in the eye of the beholder. It is a book for the public, so in order to sell it must have a certain dramatic element that keeps the reader interested. The authors avoid taking an _us vs. them_ approach which helps them appear objective rather than parochial in their writing. Rather than shaming and admonishing humanity with haughty reprimands, the book instead explains the problem in a fairly logical way and identifies things that a person might - on an individual level - to make a difference. Most of this is accomplished in the first 3rd of the book.

And that is where the book stops and action by the reader starts. The middle section is somewhat less objective, and the last section of the book offers recommendations, assuming that the reader is open to them.Most of the recommended solutions are changes in habitual daily activity that can be easily handled without a drastic change in lifestyle. Other recommendations may be impractical - such as the recommendation to avoid air travel which is unavoidable for many working people. The solution to pay for carbon offsets is explained, but again offsets are not practical for everyone, and the authors completely ignore the possibility that offsets, unless thoroughly verified and reviewed, are not necessarily an equal trade solution. So the authors have done a good deed by potentially educating willing readers on how to make a difference on an individual basis, but it stops there.

And this comes down to the main fault in this book: it motivates change via fear of climate change, and it speaks to individuals rather than industries, governments, and businesses. Therefore this book is no different than many other persuasion pieces on this topic, many of which have had less success. Since its focus is fear and its audience is individuals, its sphere of influence is limited. Since its readers are assumed to be agreeable, its sphere of influence is further shrunken.

The middle of the book is sprinkled with bits of questionable facts, such as the contribution of agricultural methane (i.e., cow farts and burps) to the greenhouse effect. There is also a brief mention of the worry that contrails from airplanes contribute to cirrus cloud formation thus further extending the greenhouse effect. These examples hurt the argument rather than help it.This babble doesn't differentiate between "important" and "unimportant". Telling the reader to worry equally as much about jet contrails and cement plant emissions is not helping, and it still hasn't told anyone how to solve the problem.

The book doesn't want to admit, or perhaps fails to see, that satisfaction of short term needs is the best motivator. Whether we like it or not, no one will do anything to help the climate problem unless it is also profitable. This book does nothing to show how that is done, at least not in any useful detail. If the goal of the book is to inspire real change, it falls short from its goal because its focus is too narrowly limited to those who are already aligned with its ideas, and it fails to keep the promise stated right on the cover: "The Hot Topic- How to Tackle Global Warming and Still Keep the Lights On."After reading the book I gained a few references for my library and I reinforced what I already knew to be good energy saving practices... and that's about it.

good overview of research to date
Other that An Inconvenient Truth, not too much exists in the pop culture that describes global warming and its possible consequences in a way that is accessible for the general public to understand.More books need to "cross over" to increase public awareness and understanding about this pressing issue.This publication acts as bridge between the scientific community and concerned citizens who may just be interested in the topic.It is an easy read and is laid out in a straightforward manner.I would recommend this book to anyone who is looking for basic facts about climate change and what humans can do to change the course.However, it may not be captivating for those that are not interested in the topic to begin with. ... Read more

Amazon.com Review
The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook is the official companion volume to the Live Earth concerts, 24 hours of nonstop concerts broadcast from around the world on July 7, 2007. The book presents 77 essential skills for stopping climate change--and for living through it. It is a fun, compelling, and sly deconstruction of a survival guide (think Boy Scouts of America crossed with WorldChanging atop the Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook) that offers equal parts tongue-in-cheek suggestions, practical advice, factual information, and bluesky dreaming of ways to save the world. Each skill is presented on a spread featuring a bright, full-color instructional illustration, a brief introduction to the skill and its core ideas, a set of instructions, spin-off ideas, and scientific and environmental facts. The book also includes a resource guide that provides useful resources for the eco-conscious reader.

More to Explore

An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It

Climate: The Force That Shapes Our World and the Future of Life on Earth

Home Enlightenment: Practical, Earth-Friendly Advice for Creating a Nurturing, Healthy, and Toxin-Free Home and Lifestyle

Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit

An Inconvenient Truth: The Crisis of Global Warming

... Read more

Customer Reviews (36)

Follow the money - Rothschild benefitting from Global warming carbox tax
This is called propaganda, mixed with cutesy easy to follow common sense green ideas.

Global warming is an agenda started by the rothschild family, the jewish banking family, to benefit immensely from carbon tax trading. Al gore, david rothschild are all front ends to this evil scheme.

It will prevent industrialization of india, africa and china and cripple US economy.

The idea is to created a carbon tax trading system, with derivatives, credit swaps etc and for the rothschild to benefit. They own the carbon trading company. Google and research the rothschild.

The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook: 77 Essential skill to stop Climate Change
I absolutely love it!! It is fun, easy to follow...I already incorporated couple of the skills in my everyday life. This is a must have book and I think it will make a huge impact if we all a least practice 10 of them in our everyday life.

Nice and easy to read
This book is very enjoyable and in a very playful form sets out the strategies that must be followed so that each of us contributes with a sand granite to diminish or to mitigate the effects of the global warming. The book was a gift for my children of 10 and 13 years old, and they think that is brilliant and funny.
It would have to be translated to Spanish and to be located for developing countries, because it is a very useful tool to include the paper that each person has in her commitment with the climatic change.
We love the part of the letter to the Congressman where you are asking him or her about what has he or she have done to prevent global warming.

F U N N Y.......C O M P E L L I N G..,,...E S S E N T I A L !.!.!.!.!
DO YOURSELF, (AND EVERYONE ELSE ON EARTH), A FAVOUR....B U Y....
T H I S....B O O K....! Utilize everything you can from and in it,
and follow, (please!), at least one, (and hopefully more!) of its
many great tips.

This is a very easy book to read.It is even, (yes!), actually FUN
TO READ, in many parts.I mean, let's face it....Global Warming is
a VERY scary subject.Scarier than any other disaster imaginable,
really.For example, take disasters depicted in movies. I mean, if
you are, really, in the midst of an equivalent to "The Towering In-
ferno", you have an admittedly big problem: getting out of the build-....but after that, you're OK.If you're in an "Earthquake" zone,
it's scary...but find a way out of the city, or earthquake area, and
you're OK!The same is true with an "Airplane!" disaster....find
SOME way to land, or get out of, the stricken airplane craft, and you
may be shaken for a while, but you'll be OK soon."The Killer Bees"?
VERY scary, indeed.But I have heard that there was an experiment
to give the killer bees a weakening disease...myasthenia gravis....so
the killer bees would be killed.Unfortunately, that didn't work --
but I have suggested to the Interior Department that they try to give
these bees an even MORE debilitating ailment...ALS, (or "Lou Gehrig's
disease.) With medication, people with Myasthenia Gravis have been
able to live long and productive lives.....but not so, (yet, anyway),
with ALS.I haven't received any message back from the Interior
Department....I'll try them again, soon.But, in any event, killer
bees haven't killed everyone in any town yet, (that I have heard), &
the possibility is always there, to just escape them, (at least tem-
porarily), by leaving town.

But what do you do when the "town" one is speaking of is the ENTIRE
PLANET?One COULD imagine going to another planet, (and just such a
possibilty is, in fact, discussed....with tongue firmly in cheek)...
by David de Rothschild, in his "IF ALL ELSE FAILS" section, at the
very back of this book -- along with such other things as "Harvest The Clouds", "Learn To Barter" Barter", "Evolve", "Buy A Camel", "Beat
The Heat", "Learn to Barter", "Start A Menagerie", and "Build A Floating House",These ideas may seem semi-humourous now -- and perhaps are intended to be,But there is always the distinct possibility that these things COULD become really necesary things to do!Humourous and chilling at the same time!Ingenuis!

Along with the rest of this book, David de Roths-
child's small, but chilling "If All Else Fails" section, at the
back of his book, (clearly marked with a red-and-white striped bord-
er), is written with a deft pen, and clever, witty words, THAT MAKE
THE READER WANT TO KEEP READING EVERYTHING IN THIS BOOK, NO MATTER
HOW AWFUL ARE THE EVENTS HE DESCRIBES!

This is definitely one big attribute of this book.Reading of things
people are now doing to increase global warming, and of other things
which we can, (and really should) be doing, to keep it at bay -- or
even reverse it -- could be pretty terrifying, or at the very least,
pretty boring stuff.Not so here!With an optimistic, (but also,
totally realistic) style, sparked with humour and enormous amounts of
common sense, this book is, as mentioned, fun (or almost fun) to read!
The illustrations by WILLIAM VAN RODEN enter into the spirit of this
book perfectly.They are realistically drawn, and the experessions of
the people depicted are rarely actually smiling, but rarely actually
unhappy, either.I guess most people depicted have a PURPOSEFUL ex-
pression on their faces.They seem to KNOW they are doing sometimes
difficult things, but the RIGHT things. People of all ages, genders,
racial and political groups are also depicted -- from the older black
gentleman, in shirt and tie, blissfully riding a bike (backwards????),
on page 75, to a young white hippie, complete with Mohawk hairdo,
jeans and tatoo, shown thoughtfully looking at his collection of organ-
ic labels.Global warming is obviously EVERYONE's problem, since we
all live on Planet Earth!

More immediate, (and practical) solutions, such as "Say No To Styrofoam", "Replace A Lightbulb", "Bank Online", "Convince A Skeptic", "Ride A Bike", and many others, are presented in the front section of this book.Each topic is not only discussed in detail, but is given ratings for the amounts of 'Cost', 'Time', 'Impact', and
'Effort', they will require and/or give.

IMPORTANT ATTRIBUTE OF THIS BOOK:On the bottom of most pages, (and also within the text of a few of the
pages), are internet links to the topic on that page. Nice to be able to find more info on the topics you are interested in the most!

There is also a nice section, in the back of the book, entitled "RESOURCES", with even more web addresses, for specific subjects.The Introduction, (in the
front of the book, of course!), gives a concise description of what
global warming is, and what it is doing to the planet we all, at present, live on.The FORWARD, by ROB REINER, (yes, THAT Rob Reiner),
introduces the organization LIVE EARTH, (whose offical handbook, this
book is), and also S.O.S., (SAVE OUR SELVES)...an allied organization,
as well as giving a broad outline of what the book itself is about.



There are 87 suggested activities in this book, to help stop or turn
back, global warming. 10 of these are near the very beginning of the book, in a short list entitled, "10 Easy Steps To Help Stop Global
Warming", (adapted from Adventure Ecology's Top 10 For The Planet) These are easy, common-sense things, like "Bring Your Own Mug", and "Shop
Locally."Common sense pervades this book -- and it's no wonder that
David de Rothschild, author of this book, is the founder of Adventure
Ecology!

The main section, consisting of 67 other ideas, some difficult to do,some quite simple and easy to do.The remaining 10, in the back, highlighted "If All Else Fails" section, range from the difficult ("Mine A Landfill"), to the the ridiculous, (but at the same time, practical), such as "Evolve", (a neat trick if you can do it....but I have yet to hear of anyone who could evolve voluntairilly.It usually takes millions of years....)

Well, make that, the PHYSICAL evolution of living things takes years and years. The MENTAL evolution of people on this planet need not take so long. Our ATTITUDES towards this planet, and our ability to continue to live on it, as we have done, needs to change. Above all, we have GOT to realize there IS such a problem as GLOBAL WARMING....and that it is happening NOW.Also, we must realize that it is NOT necessarily fatal for life on this planet, as we know it...IF we recognize it, and IF we ALL do something ...or as many things, as we can, to stop it.THE LIVE EARTH GLOBAL WARMING SURVIVAL HANDBOOK, by DAVID DE ROTHSCHILD shows 87 ways to help save the planet....surely, everyone can pick out at LEAST one or two, (and hopefully more), to practice?

"SAVE OUR SELVES" (SOS), is NOT a selfish motto.It is a motto of SURVIVAL FOR EVERYBODY ON THIS PLANET, AND FOR GENERATIONS OF PEOPLE, WHO WANT TO LIVE ON THIS PLANET, TO COME......

I someomehow think back, now, on an early disaster movie, "On The Beach".
It's interesting for me to think back now, that when our family first saw it, my father -- in a jovial mood -- decided that we should see it on January 1st!I couldn't understand why he would want to see such a movie on January 1st, but later discovered why... I thought he knew, (as I did), that it was about the aftermath of a nuclear war.But, from the title, "On The Beach", he assertained that it was a sort of Annette Funicello/Frankie Avalon type movie, only with the older actors of Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner!Well, seeing the movie was, I guess, a shock to him. (If I had known what he believed the movie to be, I would have corrected it....but I thought he knew....)The interesting thing is, there were some other people in the movie theatre too.Surely, ALL of them couldn't have expected a "beach" movie?Were they there as sort of tempting fate?Was it a sort of
"sticking out their tongues" at the possible reality, then, of nuclear war (In 2008, are WE doing the same thing now, by ignoring ideas such as those presented in David de Rothschild's engrossing book?)

Nuclear war really COULD have happened. But brave people fought it, and no nuclear war occurred.It can be the same with the present danger of global warming: the worst need not happen, if we all do SOMETHING, OR THINGS, to stop it.
You need no other book, in my opinion, than this one by David de Rothschild, to get you started, and involved.Buy one copy for yourself, and buy others as gifts!

In "ON THE BEACH", the very last frames of the movie are unforgettable.All the people are gone, but a sign remains.It reads:

'......THERE___IS___STILL___TIME___BROTHER.....'

Nonsense book
A really nonsense book that tries to shove the myth of global warming down our throats.. ... Read more