Product Description

Why is news about global warming always bad? Why do scientists so often offer dire predictions about the future of the environment? In Meltdown, climatologist Patrick Michaels says it?s only natural. He argues that the way we do science today - when issues compete with each other for monopoly funding by the government - creates a culture of exaggeration and a political comunity that then takes credit for having saved us from certain doom. Michaels starts with a succinct discussion of climate-change science and then unrolls a litany of falsehood, exaggeration, and misstatement. He cited hundreds of errors and exaggerations in scientific papers, new reports, and television sound bites.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #289879 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 280 pages

Customer Reviews

A society that can no longer rely on the wisdom of science can only be governed by irrationality and fear
So concludes Professor Michaels at the end of this book of 246 pages (excluding references), of which only 15 are given over to his hypothesis, and just five to his recommendations as to what to do about it. The first 219 pages are devoted to exposing the scientific imprecision, and the political and media exaggeration based on that imprecision, on which his hypothesis is based. If I have any complaint, it is that these proportions are out of balance, and that it is rather longer than it needed to be.

Michaels' hypothesis is in fact the restatement, updating and specific application (to global warming theory) of an earlier one - that of Thomas Kuhn, who published "The structure of scientific revolutions" back in 1962. Kuhn defined a paradigm as a body of knowledge that defined the problems and methods of research for succeeding generations of practitioners. The problem, Kuhn and Michaels argue, is that paradigms become self-referential: they solve the problems defined by their creators as being most acute, presumably ignoring other issues, they bring together people of a like mind, and once a scientist has begun to subscribe to a particular paradigm he or she will probably do so for the rest of his or her life. The concept of a scientific paradigm is worsened, Michaels argues, by the effect of the state funding of science (since WW2).

Michaels, who is a climatologist and "environmental" scientist, argues that man-made global warming, and that it is out of control, has, since the 1980s, become the prevailing paradigm (or as the IPCC calls it, the "consensus") and in so doing has made it more and more difficult for those who believe differently. The first 219 pages, needless to say, pick holes in the flawed science of those scientists who are working to demonstrate the validity of the paradigm and the exaggerations of politicians and publications that support it. He does so in a humorous and, to my mind, credible way, although whether you will agree will depend rather on what your own paradigm is! Chapters focus on icecaps, hurricanes, droughts and floods, disease. He is highly critical of lapses in what ought to be basic peer-review in major scientific journals.

Michaels has three recommendations; while these are written in the American context, they probably hold true in the UK and Europe as well:

1. To break the government monopoly of the funding of science - and so to eliminate the problem of such funding being devoted exclusively in support of one paradigm or another.
2. To change the peer-review structure, by requiring that reviewers' names, and a synopsis of their views, are stated on published papers.
3. To abolish academic tenure - i.e. the security of employment that academics may receive after a few years

This book is published by the Cato Institute - a libertarian organisation based in the US. Michaels is himself, in all probability - a libertarian - i.e. he believes in making markets as free as possible, and in reducing the role of governments as far as possible. Not everyone will find that a comfortable concept, irrespective of their understanding of global warming, but I would have thought that everyone could agree to his second proposal - "peer-review" is a much hallowed phrase of the AGW lobby!

Is Prof Michaels a global warming "denier" as such? This is the paradigm that he supports:

"The earth's surface temperature is influenced by human activity, and changes that are being measured today are largely consequences of that activity. We know, to a very small range of error, the amount of future climate change for the foreseeable future, and it is a modest value to which humans have adapted and will continue to adapt. There is no known, feasible policy that can stop or even slow these changes in a fashion that could be scientifically measured."

My reading of the rest of the book is that he thinks that human activity may, at worst, be having a small effect on the climate, but that it is not large. I do recommend that you read this book. I shall have to turn my attention to Thomas Kuhn!

Cool analysis of hot air
As governments spend untold billions, and seek re-election on the promise of "doing something" about global warming, this book is required reading. Particularly if you're a taxpayer. Michaels carefully describes, in great detail, such reality as he is able to prove behind many of our favourite global warming myths (arctic ice, rising sea-level, disappearing islands, polar bears, etc). This can be particularly satisfying when such myths are baldly stated as evidence of global warming; a quick reference to Michaels' book will invariably give a broader context and a better understanding of each of the issues.

And context is all: I am no scientist so much of the mathematical science is noise to me but I can read a graph and an x-axis timescale. And by so doing it is easy to see how many of the global warming scare-mongerers (the most vocal of whom tend not to be scientists either) use data so selectively as to be almost wilfully negligent. No make that wilfully wilfully negligent. Michaels strives to contextualise all single-point global warming issues and presents his research in an even-handed manner. Of course even-handed when Global Warming is concerned means agreeing with the person who agrees with your point of view but Michaels approaches each proposition, outlandish or not, as a potentially valid thesis, before examining it in detail (and more often than not disproving it).

These are the most enjoyable parts of the book; the global warming doomsayers can be so shrill and so convinced of their position, that it is rewarding to see these arguments supported by copious amounts of data and thereby to understand what really is happening to the polar bears and the penguins and the Kilimanjaro icecap. Michaels has rightly cherry-picked the causes celebre of the global warming community and methodically picked apart their theses. This is all the more useful as it's possible to read in the media on a daily basis about one or other of these supposed phenomena either with no supporting data or with incomplete time series. We already know the media to have a no-news-like-bad-news obsession yet it is valuable to see just how it focuses on a potentially catastrophic future rather than the much more likely modest changes in temperature and our lifestyles as a result of the current warming trend.

In the latter part of the book, Michaels assesses why it should be that established, intelligent scientists as qualified as he is might be perpetuating many of the global warming myths. He puts it down to vested- and self-interest; funding is easier to secure if there is no questioning of the current paradigm (or Litany as Lomborg describes it) and this seems logical if slightly conspiracy theorist. Equally, he asks us to believe that this is all too predictable given the structure both of science research funding and of tenure at our academic institutions. Indeed he believes that security of tenure results in precisely the opposite effect to that intended (academics are less not more likely to question those interest groups and their theories). This in response to the question of why so many well-qualified academics in climatology and related disciplines are seemingly unable to search, if only on Google, for further available information related to their work which might have lead them to differing conclusions. To believe that such a level of self-perpetuating self-interest exists strikes one first as incredible. Reading Michaels' book, however, with its cool and precise refutation of much of those academics' work, one struggles to come up with any other explanation.

Excellent specialised reading

This is the ideal companion to the Lomborg "the skeptical environmentalist" book as far as ecoterrorism is concerned.

Other than the Lomborg book, this is exclusively focused on climatology issues, clearly explained from a leading climatologist. The author ruthlessly explains how the "system" works, how the climate change hype has been created and fueled and who profits from it.
It also, like Lomborg's book, lifts the veil on the so called "consensus" on the supposed terrible consequences of climate change.

Money very well spent.