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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 By Lawrence Solomon ( Richard Vigilante Books )
Release Date: 2008-04-01
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 Truth At Last
At last someone had the guts to publish the truth about the over-hyped issue of Global Warming. I've never been a fan of Al Gore's, but until he made a big issue about Global Warming causing most the ills that happen on our planet and a movie wrought with half truths and undocumented science, hardly anyone ever heard of it. This book, on the other hand, specifically documents scientific testing and those scientists that are "qualified" to do such testing as compared to those who just wrote a paper and jumped on the media bandwagon to notoriety. I think Lawrence Solomon is a rare environmentalist who just wants to tell the truth.
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 Very Important Book -- But Still Missing a Little ( d21150 )
This is a very important work from an anti-nuclear activitist that offers reams of information and science from credible and reputable scientists taking issue with or disproving the widely disseminated junk science supporting the Al Gore, the Global Warming catastrophy forcasters, and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group firmly under the control of the doomsayers and the European Community (for its own political reasons.)
The format of the book is a methodology/reported facts presentation followed by evidence debunking or tending to cast doubt on the IPCC's stance and a discussion of the individual(s) in opposition with his/their curriculum vitae. The reader is allowed to make his own assessment of the case to a point, although the IPCC's case is presented in summary, often not very sympathetically, or relatively poorly. That's why I gave this book only four stars -- it is not an even-handed presentation of both sides, but 1/5th IPCC/Gore and 4/5ths opposition.
Of course, other reviewers will say I am not being fair since the author only intended to show that there are many scientists who believe the global warming warnings are overblown, unsupported by good science and that man's role (through CO2 emissions) is tiny, possibly even positive, and certainly not the primary cause. OK, guilty as charged, particularly since Gore et al repeatedly present their side as the result of a consensus of the scientific community, which it very obviously isn't.
So, yes, the author does us all a great service in presenting the skeptics or "deniers" who are so often written off as crackpots and similar to the deniers of the Holocaust. But the moral high ground in writing a book to discuss the question of global warming and man's role is when one presents both sides so the reader can make a fully informed appraisal. As it is, one can be suspicious of the author's presentations, and even ignore it as "right-wing lunacy" as some far-left individuals do who see mankind's salvation coming in a One World Government, centered on the EU, and run by enlightened liberal elites (themselves.) Assessing the work from the side of the opposition, it rates five plus stars, but from the side of the IPCC and Al Gore, only two.
Anyway, the issues presented in this work (& the writing is very good) are as follows:
(1) Mann's "hockey stick" graph is discussed with how it purports to definitively show mankind's responsibility for global warming. Wegman et al's presents proof that the graph is nonsense, not based on good science and using terribly flawed modelling and statistics. In short, the graph must be discounted as pretty but untrue as a representation of reality and totally without foundation.
(2)The front page news on hurricanes and how global warming is affecting economies and people's lives is attacked by several scientists refuting the facts presented as unsupportable by scientific evidence, and even worse, showing that they are more often merely propaganda efforts promoting some hidden agenda.
(3) The idea of a consensus already being present in the international scientific community agreeing on global warming being a crisis issue and the efforts needed to combat it, are followed by several deniers disputing that consensus, if by no other mechanism than by their existence and opposition. After all, a consensus means that everyone agrees, but they clearly don't.
(4) The current average temperature is supposedly reaching a critical stage, but disputed by deniers that point out the Earth has been much hotter in past ages, and also that a tipping point may have been reached already so that this century may see a cooling trend set in.
(5) The science of CO2 particle count in the atmosphere as being extremely high at present (supposedly caused by the Industrial Age) based on CO2 measurements in ice from earlier centuries, is almost ridiculed by deniers since the CO2 escapes from ice over time. Therefore, trapped CO2 in ice from earlier ages cannot be used to indicate the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere during those ages. Proof was also presented showing that when the data did not support the "scientists'" theory, the graph was simply moved over by 83 years to fit.
(6) Supposedly the ice is melting in Greenland and Antarctia, will slide into the ocean, and significantly raise ocean levels. This is disputed because both ice masses rest in deep dishes from their own weight, and the ice mass in Antarctia is getting measureably deeper. It is only the ice on the tip of Antarctia towards South American that is breaking off, and that is likely to be the result of changes in ocean currents.
(7) The climate model in use by the IPCC is touted as useable to predict trends for this century. This is a idea thoroughly debunked by scientists who stress that there are too many factors about which little to nothing is known, so "fudge factors" are put in to approximate past climates from known data. Particularly the prediction of clouds and their effects is based on sheer guesswork because so little is currently known about their formation and effects.
(8) CO2 in the atmosphere as the primary cause of global warming (about one degree per century over the last three centuries) is disputed by several scientitsts who are researching the sun's variability and cosmic ray effects. Some feel these effects may account for all or almost all of the variability in temperatures on the Earth.
And on and on. Hopefully the reader can get the idea that the problem of global warming (if it is a problem) is just beginning to be researched so that governmental policy decisions can be made (or not made) at some future date. Meanwhile, conserving energy simply makes good economic sense, although one wouldn't know it looking at Al Gore's energy consumption and his purchase of carbon offsets from his own company.
Gee, and I thought everything was settled....
Buy and read this book.
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 Wow! Is It A Complete Fabrication? ( denisjh )
This book may be judging from the "quotes" the author uses to publicize it.
They are all easy to google, but start with this one. here is his version of David Bromwich:
"It's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now."
Here's what Bromwich actually said:
"It's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now," he said. "Part of the reason is that there is a lot of variability there. It's very hard in these polar latitudes to demonstrate a global warming signal. This is in marked contrast to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that is one of the most rapidly warming parts of the Earth."
Uh.....
Putting the sceintists aside, anyone who claims that human activity involving the release of carbon-based energy and CO2 has no role is claiming that there is a cause which has no effect.
You can argue "how much" within a pretty narrow range. But it is not possible to argue "no effect."
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Brilliant presentation of the debate over climate change ( willyvan )
Lawrence Solomon, the noted environmentalist, has written a most useful book on the debate over global warming. He shows that scientific opinions still differ across the whole field.
He cites Edward Wegman, former chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences, who demolished the famous `hockey stick' graph which supposedly proved that the 20th century was the hottest ever. His team of expert statisticians also disproved the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2001 report's assessments, "the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported."
Solomon criticises Dr Nicholas Stern, once the World Bank's chief economist, whose 2006 review has become the most influential global warming report, embraced by the Blair and Brown governments. Stern seemed to bring hard economic facts into the world of scientific forecasts and guesses.
Yet his review is now wholly discredited. Dr. Richard Tol, Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University, calls it `preposterous'. Crucially, Stern estimated the cost of additional carbon emissions as $29 a ton, as against Tol's conclusion that the costs were `likely to be substantially smaller' than $14 a ton.
Tol said, "In sum, the Stern Review is very selective in the studies it quotes on the impacts of climate change. The selection bias is not random, but emphasises the most pessimistic studies ... Results are occasionally misinterpreted. The report claims that a cost-benefit analysis was done, but none was carried out. The Stern Review can therefore be dismissed as alarmist and incompetent."
Solomon also cites Roger Revelle, who led the President's Science Advisory Committee Panel on Environmental Pollution in 1965 which first identified CO2 from fossil fuels as a possible problem. Yet in 1992, he wrote, "Drastic, precipitous, and especially, unilateral steps to delay the putative greenhouse impacts can cost jobs and prosperity and increase the human costs of global poverty, without being effective. Stringent controls enacted now would be economically devastating, particularly for developing countries for whom reduced energy consumption would mean slower rates of economic growth without being able to delay greatly the growth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."
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Global-schmobal warming ( virginiakev )
I really could have cared less about "Global Warming" until Al 'Creater of the Internet' Gore won a Nobel prize for passing on this messege. There is no doubt the climate changes as Gore points out. The cause however is not, has not, and will not be by man-kind. Even the "Great Myans" pointed out several thousands of years ago climate changes drastically due to a myriad of circumstances, most of which still have not been taken into consideration by this group at the UN.
Why is it that everything, absolutely everything, those clowns at the UN have to do with turns into an extreme fiasco? Mr. Solomon really drove that point home whether it was his intention or not. Nice job Lawrence, whatever you write next I am definately buying it.
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