The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with "Climate Change" Turning Out to Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History? |  | Author: Christopher Booker
Publisher: Continuum Pub Group
Category: Book
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Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 102656
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.5
ISBN: 1441110526
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.73874
EAN: 9781441110527
ASIN: 1441110526
Publication Date: December 1, 2009
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Product Description
Booker focuses his attention on the mother of all environmental scares: global warming. This original book considers one of the most extraordinary scientific and political stories of our time: how in the 1980s a handful of scientists came to believe that mankind faced catastrophe from runaway global warming, and how today this has persuaded politicians to land us with what promises to be the biggest bill in history. Christopher Booker interweaves the science of global warming with that of its growing political consequences, showing how just when the politicians are threatening to change our Western way of life beyond recognition, the scientific evidence behind the global warming theory is being challenged like never before. The book exposes the myth that the global warming theory is supported by a 'consensus of the world's top climate scientists'. It shows how the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is run by a small group of 'global warming' zealots, who have repeatedly rigged evidence to support their theory. But the politicians, pushed by the media, have so fallen for its propaganda that, short of dramatic change, our Western world now faces an unprecedented disaster.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
 Beyond 6 Stars--Could Help Destroy Strong, Gore, & IPCC December 5, 2009
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
61 out of 80 found this review helpful
EDIT of 9 Dec 09: Bogged down on the data matrix but have created a ClimateGate Rolling Update at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, linking to others who have inventories lies & "tricks," and dirty deeds against dissenting scientists--but this book is the best I have found overall.
Short version: bad science, bad media, bad politics, bad finance.
Two other books I have reviewed that support this one:
The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity
Global Warming False Alarm: The Bad Science Behind the United Nations' Assertion that Man-made CO2 Causes Global Warming
This book also helps reinstate Lomborg, whom I am ashamed to say I doubted after he was first denounced (publicly) and then redeemed (quietly) in Denmark. See my reviews of:
The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Vintage)
I list these--and point to others at the end of this preliminary review--to make the point that this author's stellar and very complete work with very good notes is the coup de grace--the final bullet in the head of the IPCC, a mercy killing long over-due. [Disclosure: I funded the first three years of the Earth Intelligence Network, a 501c3 Public Charity that accepts the ten high-level threats to humanity for action, and places climate change within priority #3, Environmental Degradation--we also place a very high priority on clarity, diversity, integrity, and sustainability of effort].
This book, in combination with ClimateGate, could possibly be the stake in the heart of Maurice Strong, Al Gore, and the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), all three of them frauds to the core. The UN Secretary General has realized the depth of this fraud and ordered an investigation (not unmindful of the fact that Strong took the $1 million bribe from Saddam Hussein asa determined by Pual Volker's investigation); Brazil, China, India, and Russia may, possibly, be planning to dance on the IPCC's grave in Copenhagen.
The big question on my mind, given that Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in part from being the lead speculator in climate change carbon funds, is: will someone responsible please tell the Queen of England she's being made a fool of, and put a stop to carbon trades? From where I sit Strong and Gore and Carbon trades make Maddoff look like a pick-pocket.
Below are a few rough notes. This is such an important work that I will do a more organized table of notes and prepare something suitable for publication.
Right up front I want to cite Steve Carmel, one of the most talented merchant marine thinkers I know, who helped me understand that it is the bad decisions of governments that cost businesses huge fortunes. In the case of his firm, he was pointing to measures enacted after a terrorism incident that was, in his words, "a traffic accident" that government decisions then turned into a nation-wide black-out and all that implies for commercial shipping.
This book documents both a massive scientific fraud by a handful (50) of individuals who sold their souls for a place on the world stage, and mass insanity across multiple political cadres who swooned before the combination of Strong's financial temptations and Gore's celebrity deceptions. In my view, there should be an immediate freeze of all carbon trades, and a multinational investigation.
At the same time, this book leaves me shaking my head because up to this summer, the US and UK and Australia, among others, have totally hosed their future energy situation by suppressing coal, avoiding nuclear, and falling for the chimera of renewable energy. At the very end of the book the author explains his epiphany in 2003 when he learned Denmark was stopping the building of wind turbines, and why. So much for Boone Pickens and his fantasies, in passing.
Early on this book resonated with me because I had already read, among many others:
Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America
The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations
The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth
The bottom line for me, with that background reading, was that carbon emissions is slightly nuts, that paving over wetlands and Army Corps of Engineer incompetence (they have just been found liable for Katrina damage to New Orleans) and many other things--including sun spots, ocean currents, and other natural trends, make more sense. Indeed, I recommend:
Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of Modern Civilization
Catastrophe & Culture: The Anthropology of Disaster (School of American Research Advanced Seminar Series)
My reviews summarize those supporting works. The first is about volcanoes creating the first Dark Ages, the second is about government incompetence, poor planning, bad programming, inept execution, all turn minor disasters into global catastrophes. The author of THIS book is correct: the real global warming disaster is the idiocy of our governments, our media, and our timid spoiled academics (see my preface on "Paradigms of Failure" in Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography).
A handful of highlights pending my final review:
1) Collapse of the Soviet Union took nuclear lobbying (and profiteering) off the table, Global Warming was a heaven-sent substitute for all those who live on "the big scare."
2) Collapse of the financial marketplace (led by Lehman and its bad carbon investment) has left polititians neck deep in feces of their own making--promises they cannot keep, checks they cannot write.
3) Wirth-Gore manipulated the original hearing, picking hottest day, cutting off air conditioning the day before, this sordid little story describes Al Gore's life in a nut-shell.
4) Enron got its big breaks under Clinton-Gore, not Cheney-Bush
5) Maurice Strong is ripe for a massive investigation, to include not only the illicit funds he has been attracting, but also the specifics of how he arranged for 5,000 lobbyists to have their expenses covered for Kyoto in 1997.
6) Flawed code, expensive super-computers, complete lack of integrity among individuals to be listed in my final review,, and politicians who collectively lost their minds are all part of the story.
7) A number of key articles have been identified. I almost sent this book for a $1000 scanning job to be converted into ASCII and then clustered and visualized, but the cost and time argue for me doing the highlights manually. At Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, I will create an electronic backdrop for this book, I consider it that important.
Hit Amazon word limit. More at Phi Beta Iota.
The Real Global Warming Disater December 23, 2009
G. Garcia-Cano (Monterrey, N.L. Mexico)
15 out of 19 found this review helpful
I have read dozens of books about the global warming, from both camps, and found this one the most informative and well documented. It is difficult to understand and believe Barak Obama and Gordon Brown, Angela Merkel and other heads of States are still believing Al Gore and the other few catastrophic OVERT LIES produced by the IPCC bureaucrats, and not the true CLIMATE SCIENTIST like Professor Richard Lindzen. As he put it, they are threatening the whole human kind with "a roll-back of the industrial age", or a global economic suicide, from an unbelievable set of gross exaggerations and lies.
A must-read for all serious defenders of the thruth and sanity.
Important Contribution Even If Full Truth Remains Unknown January 23, 2010
Eugene R. Walker (Ketchikan AK, USA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I think this is a valuable book that should be widely read. I don't mean by this that the author's thesis will be proved true--maybe not--but nonetheless the chicanery of the IPCC and Al Gore need to be thoroughly examined, as this book does.
Those guys might turn out to be right, but only on blind luck, not the crappy propaganda they have been issuing, and certainly not on the sloppy scientific "reasoning" they employ. The recent emails fiasco, and an even more recent goof about the rate of glacier retreat, simply add to the Keystone Kops aspect.
That said, my understanding is that CO2 levels were about 280 ppm say 50 years ago, but about 330 ppm now. The earlier number has been questioned lately, but I don't yet know how meritoriously.
Sticking tentatively with the 280 to 330 growth, whether human-caused or otherwise, suggests that we should be looking for ways to reduce atmospheric CO2. Even if this ultimately proves unnecessary, we would gain the ability to control this variable. And even if we overreacted, it would be easy to reverse course and generate more "greenhouse gases." The main thing is, we should find methods to go BOTH ways.
In that regard, noncoercive measures are likely to be best. If it becomes better determined that atmospheric CO2 should be reduced, a proper cap-and-trade system would be a good tool. I don't want to start a long disquisition on Ronald Coase's theorem, except to say that it applies. The problem with cap-and-trade is that it is vulnerable to political-football games, unless it is set up carefully. What I hear so far is not careful, and would mostly reward fakers and speculators.
Christopher Booker's work may not prove to be the ultimate truth, but I think it is highly important at this stage of human knowledge, or lack thereof. And it is a good read.
Best book on the global warming scam! December 27, 2009
Andres Valencia (Key Biscayne, Florida United States)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is the best book on the global warming scam I have read to date.
With lots of references to information from reputable sources.
Helped me improve my conference on climate change.
[...]
Higly recommended.
Well done for a science writer February 4, 2010
G. Stelzenmuller
5 out of 7 found this review helpful
This, as opposed to an actual scientist. Christopher Booker makes the argument (generally) that the earth is probably not warming so much from greenhouse gases, as from solar activity variations and ocean current changes. Further, current pushes to spend heavily on greenhouse gas cures for global warming will rather shift the balance of power and money away from the U.S. In fact, he argues that the whole process being forced by supporters of the IPCC will simply mail us the hugest bill for any project in history. His "conclusion" chapter lists the four reasons why global warming will likely end up the most expensive scare in history (p. 338). To his credit, the author details the myth that the global warming theory today is "settled science," and that "all scientists" support the IPCC findings, as claimed by Mr. Al Gore. The IPCC was shown to have been started and kept active by only a few famous scientists (and several non-scientists).
Importantly, Booker lists a dozen fields of science which will have to be heavily involved with analysis and remedy for global warming; simply listening to single-science advocates, especially from marginal science fields, will lead us to dangerously incomplete conclusions. He also spends considerable time demonstrating why the popular "hockey stick" graph turned out to be at best, just incorrect. At worst, and more appalling than the very bad statistical methodology used to create the conclusion, was the sloppy way the IPCC dealt with the whole affair, from acceptance to lack of critique (p.104)
Booker interlaces the science with the politics, a method that makes for interesting reading, if not causing occasional flipping pages back and forth the check former details and claims. The book's editor should take 10 lashes for not catching some publishing errors (10 were discovered by this reviewer!), but these are easily passed over, as they are mostly not substantial ones. The smart reader will catch the few more substantial ones. No science writer can be fully up-to-date with all sciences, and Booker may need to do more research on biofuels, as he discounts the energy value of this source because of crowding out food crops (p. 221). He makes no mention of using methanol, which would not have to use edible crops, and can exist in huge quantities on non-farm lands. Anyway, get this book to get one of the best, and most easily readable, critiques of global warming hyperbole.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 20
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