Product Description

But despite the fact that they've been proved wrong, the pessimists are undeterred by their abysmal record. They continue to echo a deep-seated fear that unless we repent and change the way we live, we will be instrumental in destroying our own world. Today. industrialisation, genetically modified crops, scientific medicine, nuclear power and the car are held up as the harbingers of doom. Politicians and persuasive pressure groups play on this same basic fear. They scare us with tales of an inevitable global warming catastrophe blamed on CO2 emissions, they stoke the fires of terror that an epidemic of obesity will kill all our children and they sternly tell us that our indulgent lifestyle will consume the earth's precious resources. But will pesticides kill off life in our oceans, will chemicals in food poison us all and invisible rays from power cables and mobiles kill us with cancer? Stanley Feldman, a professor of anaestetics at London University appointed to the Imperial College School of Medicine looks at the evidence. An author of several books, including From Poison Arrows to Prozac, he is a respected lecturer and explainer of popular science. Vincent Marks is an editor of Panic Nation and an expert on diabetes. He is a former president of the Association of Clinical Biochemists and founder member of HealthWatch.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3419 in Books
• Published on: 2009-06-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 338 pages

Customer Reviews

A waste of money
Like Philip Drury, I am a confirmed sceptic. Like him, I was greatly disappointed by this extremely poor offering. The crude title on the cover gives a good indication of the quality of thought to be found within. It cannot even get its basic science right. I found the first howler on page 10, where we are told that "when there are a lot of sunspots, the energy is reduced and the temperature...falls slightly", which is the exact opposite of the truth. There are other signs in the book that the authors don't know what they are talking about. For example, their unthinking assumption that a global "population explosion" is in progress is completely unsupported by evidence and is just another silly end-of-the-world scare story of the kind the book is supposed to debunk. Despite its claim to be about 'evidence', this book merely substitutes one set of ignorant prejudices and dogmas for another. There are plenty of better and more intelligently written books than this on the topic of global warming. The sceptics' cause is ill-served by tendentious nonsense like 'Global Warming and Other Bollocks', and I think (with respect) that Philip Drury was unduly generous with three stars.

A disappointment
As a confirmed sceptic on 'global warming' (as well as many other so-called 'green' issues) I bought this book hoping for an intelligent discussion of the state of play of the relevant science on a number of key current issues, to learn more about them and in particular to read solid, level-headed analysis and well-referenced debunkings of the alarming claims made by self-styled 'environmentalists' which have become so common in the media these days. Perhaps I ought to have taken more notice of the title and cover, a parody of the Sex Pistols first LP, and lowered my expectations.

What I got was a rehash of stuff I largely already knew, in a book which seems to have been spellchecked rather than edited or proof-read, where several of the contributing writers seem to repeat themselves quite a bit and which contains material on somewhat tangential issues like globalisation, railways and ethics. OK, the sections on the manufactured global warming and obesity panics are decent enough summaries of the position (which is why I've felt able to go to three stars) but overall the book is a letdown.

This sort of material is handled rather better in Booker and North's 'Scared to death'.

Illiterate Twaddle
I'm sceptical of some of the science underlying the man made global warming scare. And sceptical of some of the mitigation strategies advanced. This review concentrates only on the global warming section of the book, 73 pp out of 328 pp. If you want a good intro to the AGW debate, get Climate of Extremes by Michaels et al. If you want a notionally similar book to this one but streets ahead in all ways get Scared to Death by Booker/North.
The AGW section is written by Stanley Feldman, proudly proclaiming himself to be a professor on the cover of the book in the same way as a TV actor in an advert wears a white coat. Feldman's emeritus chair is in Anaesthesia, which does not disqualify him from writing about climate science but hardly needs to be shouted about.
Reading this section, it feels like Feldman has gone to the sceptic literature, including its worst examples, and has done a poor, non referenced, rehash aimed at around the Daily Sport end of the intellectual market.
It is not good enough in a work of 'popular science' to present opinion as fact, and 'evidence' without references. Feldman is barely able to string a sentence together, let alone an argument, and waffles on and contradicts himself, and repeats himself until he decides he has finished, when he stops. This is one of my favourite bits - re the Arctic ice cap:
"Even if it melted entirely - a very unlikely proposition because it is a gigantic iceberg - it will not cause more than a few millimetres rise in sea level as all but its visible surface is already under water" p51.
And there is much more in similar vein.
There is some good quality material about for those who wish to read the sceptic's side of the AGW debate. This load of simplistic tosh does a grave disservice to the debate in general.
My favourite piece of Feldman speak - from his ghastly 'Globalisation' chapter: "Against this background, the pleas of those who protest at globalisation and of those who advocate a massive reduction in industrialisation in case it causes the ice caps to melt are trying to turn back the clock of progress" p295
This book will appeal to those who are already entirely convinced that anthropogenic global warming is not occurring, and find stuff like 'science' or 'reading' a bit too difficult for them. I should have trusted the reviewer who advised me to steer clear on the strength of the title.