Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #49300 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 184 pages

Synopsis
If you listen to the media, you would think that a man-made environmental catastrophe was about to engulf the world and imperial civilization. From Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" to nightly jeremiads about CO2 emissions and "carbon footprints," we are bombarded around the clock with alarmist reports that disastrous global warming is on the rise and that it is all our fault.The noted climatologist Roy Spencer shows that fears about global warming are vastly exaggerated and are driven by politics, not truth. He shows that a global superstorm has already arrived - but it is a storm of hype and hysteria. "Climate Confusion" is a ground-breaking book that combines impeccable scientific authority with great wit and literary panache to expose the hysteria surrounding the myths of global warming and climate change. Spencer shows that the earth is far more resilient than ecopessimists pretend and that increasing wealth and technological ingenuity, far from being the enemies of the environment, are the only means we possess to solve environmental problems as they arise.

Customer Reviews

Climate Confusion?
Don't be put off by the title, this is an interesting and thought provoking book written by an open, sceptical but trained scientific mind. The author's acceptance of the differences of opinion in the scientific community regarding the degree of human attribution to the perceived threat of global warming/climate change precludes him from giving the reader direct answers to the fundamental questions, but rather he provides them with much of the material to get the answers, or make valued judgements for themselves. This is done with humour and is intellectually insightful, but without presumption of any kind I would say. All in all, a thoroughly good read and one that successfully pricks the bubble of the many preposterous predictions we see promulgated by the media on the subject, but, somewhat worryingly, not challenged by the many informed individuals who know better but prefer to remain silent. Recommended without reservation.

Excellent debunking of global warming hysteria
Spencer is a research meteorologist who has testified before American government committees giving the skeptic's view of global warming. His book approaches the subject in a humorous vein, but his treatment is a highly skilled rapier thrust into the heart of the warmists' flawed arguments. He treats the scientific, economic, political and moral facets of the issue in a rational and reasoned way, and with a writing style that makes the book a joy to read. You'll finish the book being much more worried by the consequences of letting the warmists take control than by the distant possibility that there is any substance to the climate scare stories. Highly recommended for anyone with a desire to see a bit of balance in the climate change arena.

Useful study of the Green campaign
Dr Roy Spencer is a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama and was formerly a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA.

He says that we should ask - how much of global warming is the result of natural processes? Every scientist-sceptic believes that global warming is a fact, but it is not a fact that is manmade: scientists just do not know how much warming is due to natural climate change.

He explains why global warming is unlikely to be a serious threat. The atmospheric CO2 concentration was 320 parts per million in 1960 and 380 in 2005. The rise was one extra molecule for every 100,000 molecules of air, every five years.

He advises that we should also ask - how much will any `Green' proposal cost? Cutting CO2 would cut the benefits of industry, production, technology and energy use. Isn't Gore just another US billionaire telling the rest of us to stay poor?

The Kyoto Agreement encourages firms to move to developing countries, which have fewer environmental controls, so the firms can pollute more. Kyoto shifts, not cuts, pollution.
Kyoto is also causing the destruction of old-growth forests - which do not soak up carbon - because some third world governments cut them down and replace them with plantations that do soak up carbon. Kyoto has also made countries turn farm land over to growing biofuels like ethanol, which are very water-intensive, taking water from crops and people.
The world has enough coal reserves for 1,000 years or more. We should be building nuclear power stations like France, 75% of whose electricity is nuclear. So we don't need `alternative energy resources' - the hope of some new non-fossil fuel - which anyway is about as likely as some new alternative range of food.

Spencer points out that alarmism can be lethal, for example the ban on DDT has killed millions of Africans. Restoring residual spraying of African homes with DDT would save a million lives a year, but the EU threatens to impose trade sanctions on any country that does so.