The current frenzy over global warming has galvanized the public and cost taxpayers billons of dollars in federal expenditures for climate research. It has spawned Hollywood blockbusters and inspired major political movements. It has given a higher calling to celebrities and built a lucrative industry for scores of eager scientists. In short, ending climate change has become a national crusade.
And yet, despite this dominant and sprawling campaign, the facts behind global warming remain as confounding as ever.
In Climate Confusion, distinguished climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer observes that our obsession with global warming has only clouded the issue. Forsaking blindingly technical statistics and doomsday scenarios, Dr. Spencer explains in simple terms how the climate system really works, why man's role in global warming is more myth than science, and how the global warming hype has corrupted Washington and the scientific community.
The reasons, Spencer explains, are numerous: biases in governmental funding of scientific research, our misconceptions about science and basic economics, even our religious beliefs and worldviews. From Al Gore to Leonardo DiCaprio, the climate change industry has given a platform to leading figures from all walks of life, as pandering politicians, demagogues and biased scientists forge a self-interested movement whose proposed policy initiatives could ultimately devastate the economies of those developing countries they purport to aid.
Climate Confusion is a much needed wake up call for all of us on planet earth. Dr. Spencer's clear-eyed approach, combined with his sharp wit and intellect, brings transparency and levity to the issue of global warming as he takes on wrong-headed attitudes and misguided beliefs that have led to our state of panic. Climate Confusion lifts the shroud of mystery that has hovered here for far too long and offers an end to this frenzy of misinformation in our lives.
Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating: Summary: Technical topic made easy to read by a weather guy Comment: This really is fun to read, especially since a meteorologist wrote it, taking pains to talk about how weather really works, large and small scales - as far as he (and others) know. This leads into a main likeable feature of "Climate Confusion": science, and scientists do NOT know everything. Or even as much as most laymen think. Roy Spencer's constant caveats about what we, including most climate alarmists, actually know remind us that there is much, much more to learn about the zillion interacting force and matter transfers occurring in the atmosphere every moment, all affecting weather and climate in some way.
Since determining how much, and in what direction, mankind is altering climate (or maybe many directions at once) then determines what should be done (or not done), we must not be overly hasty to spend valuable resources just to "do something." Chapter 6 spends time talking through the economics, in general, of such spending. The worst we can do are the wrong, expensive things that actually cause greater damage to the climate. He spends a couple chapters giving examples of some dumb things we can do, and some smarter things.
The strength of this book is its readability, its straightforward prose. The examples are helpful in understanding the explanations, although the reader might wish for just a few more. As a scholarly work, this would not do, as Spencer has no endnotes. On the other hand, this fact makes the book easier to get though. Without references, the book resembles a very long feature column. Well worth reading.
Customer Rating: Summary: ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR YOUR BRAIN Comment: IT IS VERY TROUBLING TO DISCOVER THAT 78 REVIEWS HAVE VANISHED. ACCESS TO INFORMATION SEEMS TO BE "MANAGED" AND THIS RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT WHO IS DOING IT AND WHY? AT THIS POINT ALL I CAN DO IS TO RE-POST MY REVIEW OF MARCH 31, 2008 AND PROTEST THE ACTIONS OF CENSORSHIP OF AN INDIVIDUAL OR SOME ORGANIZATION.
I read Roy Spencer's book, Climate Confusion, this weekend. I don't know Dr. Spencer personally but I have followed his work and I've had some occasional email exchanges with him. I have found him to be the kind of personable ("really nice") guy with whom I would love to have a beer and discuss a wide variety of different topics. This book just magnifies that feeling by at least two orders of magnitude. The book was an easy read but it was not exactly what I had expected. But that certainly doesn't mean bad in any way -- the book was a very pleasant surprise! It provides an excellent foundation of weather/climate in layman's terms and then it goes into the philosophy of science, economics, politics, and religion and the implications of their interrelationships not only with climate science but also with science in general.
The key to this book is the subtitle: "How Global Warming Hysteria leads to bad science, pandering politicians, and misguided policies that hurt the poor."
I had anticipated that Roy might drive the nail into the coffin of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), but he did not! Rather, he gave the average guy a hammer and a lot of nails so he could decide for himself and then drive the nails into anything he wants, because the insights Roy provides are equally valid for many different government programs as well as human emotions and reactions in general. Even if your passion is NOT the global warming debate this book will help to make you think more rationally about any topic and just happens to use global warming as the example.
This is the book that poorly informed main-stream media types should read and is written at a level that anyone can understand. It is short, it is funny (at times), and it sets the stage for the reader to make his own decisions about AGW as well as many other issues in the complex climate-change SYSTEM -- where the climate-change SYSTEM also includes the politics, religion, economics, etc of climate.
The book is inexpensive enough at Amazon that everyone should buy multiple copies and pass them around to people who would never buy it themselves. After they read it, they will thank you for helping them to understand much more than just global warming. I bought two copies and one of them is getting mailed to a friend of mine who teaches climatology and is chairman of the earth science's department at a well-respected university. This book "WORKS" whether you are a student, businessman, or PhD in climatology. It is well worth the small investment in time and money. It will provide clarity to many more things than just the climate-change debate.
Customer Rating: Summary: The best popular account of global warming science Comment: This review is being written for the second time because an unknown administrator erased all 78 reviews, mostly excellent reviews, yesterday. The book only has 150 pages but there is a lot to learn here.
First, a few words about the author. Roy Spencer is one of the main people behind the technologies and algorithms to measure the global temperatures from the satellites - achievements that have been rewarded by various awards and that may be giving us the most accurate data about the global mean temperature that is available, even more accurate than James Hansen's GISS data, indeed. (But, despite some people's prejudices, Spencer has been funded from pretty much the same government sources as Hansen, except for those USD 250,000 from Heinz Kerry that Spencer sadly didn't receive.) He is also a very witty and comprehensible expositor who has been writing a website with cute parodies. Recently, he co-authored potentially important papers about the regulating role of clouds for the climate and about the uncertainty about the direction of the causal relationships between the clouds and the temperature.
In the book, he first introduces some basics of climate science and explains the nature of the scientific consensus. If the censors had seen the book, they would almost certainly appreciate it. Spencer reveals that the mankind almost certainly contributes something to the climate change and the greenhouse effect is nonzero, too. I know he has also patiently explained many of these well-known things to some of the less educated and more "radical" skeptics and his balanced treatment in the book wasn't a surprise for me. He is clearly no biased partisan.
However, he quickly turns his attention to a more important question, namely whether the human activity poses a danger for the climate. He explains that there exist no scientific papers that would offer reliable evidence of such a threat and he exposes various political, ideological, profit-driven, and other non-scientific factors that allow the irrational alarm about global warming to thrive and solid science about these questions to be suppressed and neglected. There is clearly no consensus about a dangerous global warming and after reading the book, you will see why.
If I were rating the author's opinions about the origin of the species, he would get less than 5 stars but I suppose this is not what readers should be rating here. This review should be about the book which is witty, technically solid - although avoiding equations -, and revealing the true major scientific and social aspects of the whole debate. Such a book from a qualified expert deserves at least 4.8 stars and I recommend it to you wholeheartedly. Customer Rating: Summary: Where are the reviews? Comment: Re the 78 missing reviews: I hope this was part of the normal process for clearing old stuff on the site and not some worker (with green flunkey tendencies) exceeding his/her authority. But even more so, I hope this was not some editorial type exercising company (green flunkey) policy. Customer Rating: Summary: A subtle case of censorship? Comment: I understand this book formerly had 78 reviews. If so, and they were deliberately deleted in a bid to discourage readership, I say shame on you, Amazon.
