| | Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor |
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 2008-12-17 - Beware
There is a reason one of the tags on this book is "junk science". Junk science is psuedoscience, or somebody's spin made to look like science, which is exactly what this is. Save your money.
 2008-12-11 - Light & Breezy With Much Good But Not Scholarly
This is an interesting and enjoyable book to read on a "Hot" issue but do not expect a scholarly treatise that presents fact after scientific fact to support the author's points. Rather is an introduction to the subject from the viewpoint of an interested layman (which the author is not -- he's a climatologist). That being said, author Spencer does hit the main, non-technical points, and skewers the elitist environmentalists who have adopted an absolutely rasict approach to solving the world's environmental problems as they see them by turning to the public (everyone other than themselves) to sacrifice economically and let the 3rd world's poor die off as rapidly as possible (after all, we need to reduce the world's population.) And he does it with humor.
An aside to remember when listening to politicians bloviate on global warming: If every politician had to pay the US Treasury $10,000 every time they told a lie, we'd have the national debt paid off in a year.
So what does this book add? Well, environmentalism has become a new type of religion, pagan in orientation, in which Mother Earth is the all-powerful God (as ably assisted by her disciples, the environmental elite.) Insects and animals are more important than humans, and we had better watch our step lest we tread on an endangered Furbish lousewart.
The impact of mankind's industrial revolution is probably miniscule compared to the father God, the Sun, and probably this is all much ado about nothing. Wait twenty years and the Earth will be in a cooling phase regardless of what we release into the atmosphere in the way of greenhouse gases. That's the nice thing about the whole argument -- we'll find out shortly (geologically speaking) who is correct. And if he is wrong, will Al Gore return all the money he has made terrifying people plus all donations?
The author explains how the climate system works -- more or less since there is much we don't know -- and treats forecasts beyond the very short term as meaningless. Perhaps the Farmer's Almanac can tell us what will happed July 4th, 2030, but the model used by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can't predict two weeks out. There are too many clouds and other factors about which we know next to nothing.
Instead, the global warming catastrophic scenerio is a political theory with a huge bureaucracy and academic community depending on it for their well-being (including the author.) To be scientific, a theory must be provable, or at least be subject to possibly being disproved and pass those tests. Unforunately for the GW cult, literally all of the details in their theories have been or probably soon will be disproven. Can we say like Roseanne Roseannadanna, "Oops, never mind?" This assumption that global warming is manmade (and I will assume the earth has been warming one degree per century for the last three centuries as the best scientific evidence now indicates) has NOT been proven, and likely never will be.
The author points out in classical fashion the huge human catastrophy brought about by Rachel Carson's propaganda in "Silent Spring" that caused DDT to be banned. Tens of millions of people in Africa and the 3rd World have died from malaria as a result, but apparently these are just necessary losses among the unfortunate. The environmental elite and their fellow traveler politicians should come and work on my cattle ranch picking off deer ticks and worry about getting Lyme disease. That should change their attitude. Many a few tens of thousands of deaths in the US will bring back DDT or Diazinon, but several thousand per year so far hasn't caught their attention.
So read this book as a starter, then become informed from the dozens of good books presenting the science of the situation. That's why I gave this book only three stars -- it is a teaser without much scientific meat for the reader to hang his hat upon. But it is going in the correct direction, and it does ask the right questions and pose the situation in an understandable light. For that I thank Dr. Spencer.
2008-12-06 - Amazing arrogance
I expected a book that would discuss the latest thinking on global warming which is that global warming is more a natural than a man made process. What I got was Roy Spencer's personal views of everything from politics, narrow-minded science and philosophy. His book is nothing more than an opportunity to get up on his soap box. Save your money.
 2008-11-26 - Technical topic made easy to read by a weather guy
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.
2008-11-04 - ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR YOUR BRAIN
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.
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