|
| Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor | 
 enlarge | Author: Roy Spencer
Publisher: Encounter Books
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $13.97
You Save: $7.98 (36%)
New (36) Used (11) from $13.41
Avg. Customer Rating:  82 reviews
Sales Rank: 2696
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 184
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1
ISBN: 1594032106
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.73874
EAN: 9781594032103
ASIN: 1594032106
Publication Date: March 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Well-stated from this former Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA. October 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Roy Spencer presents a well-stated and reasoned defense for the "deniers" of global warming, although he does not deny the globe is warming, he denies that we can definitively lay it at the feet of hydrocarbon emissions. The greatest strength of this book is its readability - Spencer has a great sense of humor and lets it shine throughout - he reminds me of Dave Berry quite a bit.
Spencer cites the difficulty in creating computer-based climate models and the difficulty in understanding all of the relationships between the myriad of variables that come together to create the ill-understood phenomenon we call weather. For example, as has been oft-noted by Al Gore, Carbon Dioxide levels have risen in the last century. Spencer notes that we have no idea what that exactly means for the global climate. Will water vapor increase due to an increase in global temperatures? Will the system self-regulate, or have a cascade effect (which Spencer seriously doubts, as do I) as depicted in Art Bell's The Coming Global Superstorm?
In reality, we don't know and can't really know because we cannot run accurate climate models. We don't understand or even know all of the variables. What we do know is that temperatures fluctuate - they go up and they go down. There is no "perfect" average temperature for our planet.
Spencer's weakest chapter is actually a well-written treatise on basic economics. He looks at cost-benefit analysis and the concept of diminishing returns, but the chapter feels out of place and slows the pace of the book.
Spencer also addresses the Kyoto Treaty but this is done better in other similar works, specifically The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism) by Chris Horner. Spencer also talks about the idea that modern environmentalism is more a faith than a science. Spencer does a good job but Iain Murray does a better job in his book The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You to Know About--Because They Helped Cause Them. If you read all three of them you should have a well-rounded summary of the main arguments.
The Science of Global Warming October 18, 2008
Allan Blackman
522 -29th Ave. South * Seattle, WA * 98144-2430
Phone: 206 323 2080
EMAIL: blackallan26@msn.com
October 18, 2008
REVIEW
Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor, by Roy W. Spencer.
There are a number of books available debunking the hysteria about global warming. Three that I've read are accurate but have key defects as reading for those open to alternatives to Al Gore's message. With one qualification, I can recommend Roy Spencer's book.
Spencer has a Ph. D. in Meteorology from the University of Wisconsin, is a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama where he directs a variety of climate research projects. He was formerly a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA and was co-developer of the original satellite method for precise monitoring of global temperatures from Earth-orbiting satellites. In short, he has the right scientific credentials and experience.
Unfortunately, Dr. Spencer's writing style is heavy with sarcasm. While the sarcasm is justified, it is also off putting. Therefore, I would strongly recommend skipping the Prologue and Chapters 1 and 2. Begin with Chapter 3, How Weather Works and then read Chapter 4, How Global Warming (Allegedly) Works, and Chapter 5, The Scientists Faith, the Environmentalists' Religion. All the solid science in this book is contained in those 57 pages.
You can skip the rest of the book but I do recommend Chapter 9 in which Spencer reviews the key alternatives to imported oil. Spencer is overly optimistic about these alternatives but the chapter is still a good quick overview. Spencer is not an economist but he has prepared a good overview of free market economics and its relevance to the global warming debate in Chapter 6 however you don't have to read this chapter to benefit from Spencer's scientific knowledge.
 Perhaps global warming isn't the BIG issue of CO2 October 13, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The amount of emotion around the issue of global warming is why it's such a political hot potato. But are we missing a perhaps BIGGER problem? See below.
What I liked most about the book was the "elementary" presentation on weather systems, and how weather causes "global cooling". If it didn't, we'd be a much warmer planet than we actually are.
This book points out how funding drives most all scientific research, providing an incentive to "toe the party line" to secure more funding (otherwise known as a job). Hence the built in bias towards agreeing that manmade CO2 is causing global warming. Those wishing to test a different theory seem to have have a more difficult time securing funding. Hence the majority of studies support the theory that CO2 causes global warming.
One book I strongly encourage others to read is "The Chilling Stars" which suggests a different cause of the warming trends we've experienced in the last few decades.
You can argue the impact of CO2 on the earth's climate, and have a chance of being wrong either way. It seems, however, basic chemistry shows that when you have more CO2 in the atmosphere, THE OCEANS WILL BECOME MORE ACIDIC. This is potentially a BIGGER problem than the amount of global warming that's been projected.
 climate confusion September 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is one of those books once you open the cover you put it down when you get to the back cover, I have been suggesting to everyone I know to read this book.
 He's the one trying to create confusion September 17, 2008
14 out of 34 found this review helpful
It's not difficult to discern University of Alabama meteorologist Roy W. Spencer's bias. He writes forthrightly on page 5, "I believe that the only rights that the natural world has are those conferred upon it by humans."
This sort of God-like arrogance characterizes much of what he writes. He ridicules science and beats up on the usual right wing bogeymen, Al Gore, actors, Hollywood, etc. What he doesn't mention here is that he had a conversion a few years ago when he rejected biological evolution in favor of Intelligent Design. While it could be argued that the author of a book on climate need not mention that he is a creationist, it does give the reader pause to realize that Spencer not only is a global warming denier, he is also in that very tiny minority of scientists that deny biological evolution. Well, actually Spencer admits to being a global warming "skeptic," not an out and out denier.
He has also admitted giving talks funded by Big Oil (see page 6), and he is the same Roy Spencer who along with John Christy in 1992 reported that the lower troposphere had cooled over the preceding thirteen years, more or less refuting global warming. However those findings have been refuted in three separate studies, and Professor Christy has admitted that his results were incorrect and that the atmosphere has warmed. (I am paraphrasing from George Monbiot's book "Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning" (2007). Monbiot gives the references for the studies that refute Spencer and Christy in footnotes on page 223.)
What I was looking for here was Spencer's admission that he had misread or misinterpreted the data. I didn't find it.
His philosophy as a "scientist" can perhaps be summed up by what he writes on page 10: "...it is not a question of whether bias exists--for we are all biased. It is a question of which bias is the best bias to be biased with." This reminds me of the idea that my God is better than your God in that a preconceived bias based on notions that have nothing to do with scientific inquiry are what is important in reaching a conclusion about what is true and what isn't. It's really just a faith-based approach to reality.
Here's an example of how Spencer presents his case against "global warming hysteria": "And while you may believe that the all-time record high temperatures in the United States were set in the last ten years or so, the truth is that the decade with the largest number of all-time state record high temperatures was the 1930s." (p. 13) He doesn't mention the salient point that the new records top the old ones. What he writes is similar to saying that more records (in an earlier time: pick the decade) were set in (you name it: basketball scoring, computer processor speed, rainfall, etc.) than during the last ten years, which is hardly surprising since it gets harder and harder to set records as the bar is raised higher and higher.
This sort of sophistry (or sly of hand) is what one would expect on say the Rush Limbaugh Show or Bill O'Reilly on Fox News, just slipshod BS to feed to the faithful. Note too that it's no longer "global warming is not true." Even the Bush administration now concedes that the planet is getting warmer. Instead it's global warming "hysteria"; in other words, Spencer is making a value judgment that we are overreacting.
The very title of Chapter 2 "Science Isn't Truth" is another example of Spencer's tricky presentation. While it is true that science does not lead to--nor pretend to--absolute truth the way the God of Intelligent Designer does, science is our best tool for increasing our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live. Its track record dwarfs all other approaches to truth. Woe is the culture or nation that tries to replace science with "authority" or some other measure of truth.
As an example of the ridicule of scientists mentioned above, there's this from page 14: "A number of scientists, apparently frustrated historians, have created a discipline called 'paleoclimatology.' This is where scientists look at tree rings or ice core layers and magically divine the historical temperature record." Well, they don't "magically divine" anything. They use that evidence to make valuable estimates of past weather patterns.
On page 39 Spencer creates some cartoon dialogue to further his ridicule:
"Scientist: Honey, I'm home!
Spouse: Hi, dear. Did you discover anything exciting today?
Scientist: Oh, yeah! I found that the tsetse fly actually does a little dance before mating! I can't wait to tell everyone at our next international conference!
Spouse: That nice, dear."
This is the sort of distorted view of science that one would expect from a creationist, not a real meteorologist.
Chapter 6 is Spencer's take on economics. He reprises a lot of what one might find in an undergraduate course taught by a conservative economist. Spencer's point is that it is poor economics to take measures against global warming. Why spend money now to help prevent something that we do not entirely understand the consequences of? But this ignores the potential costs down the road--a kind of "let the future take care of itself" mentality that underlies so much conservative economic thought. It also ignores the essence of what it is to be human, which is the use of knowledge and insight to improve our prospects for the future.
But more than anything, a head in the sand attitude toward global warming is dangerous since the worst case scenario suggests a balmy summer day on Venus, and even lesser consequences may bring about enormous suffering to hundreds of millions of people. We owe it not only to ourselves but to our children and grandchildren to stop the denial and obfuscation and work toward understanding global warming and how it is changing this planet.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
