Global Warming - Myth or Reality?: The Erring Ways of Climatology (Springer Praxis Books / Environmental Sciences) [Hardcover]

Marcel Leroux (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 22, 2005 | ISBN-10: 354023909X | ISBN-13: 978-3540239093 | Edition: 2005

This book seeks to separate fact from fiction in the global-warming debate. The author begins by describing the history of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and many other conferences, and their dire predictions on global temperatures, rainfall, weather and climate, while highlighting confusion and sensationalism media reports. He then lays out the "heretical" scientific case of the sizable skeptical scientific community who challenge the accepted wisdom.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Aus den Rezensionen: "… Als Professor für Klimatologie … ging Leroux dieser Entdeckung nach, indem er eine Vielzahl von Satellitenphotos auswertete. … Der … Klimatologe wirft seinen Zunftkollegen in einer ... grundlegenden Auseinandersetzung mit der These von der ‘Globalen Erwärmung‘ vor, … überkommene Vorstellungen von den Triebkräften des Wettergeschehens kritisch in Frage zu stellen …Demgegenüber hat Leroux Ansatz, … den Vorteil, die seit den 70er Jahren ohne Zweifel wachsende Zahl von Wetterextremen nachprüfbar erklären zu können …" (Edgar Gärtner, in: Schweizer Monatshefte Zeitschrift für Politik Wirtschaft Kultur, 2006, Vol. 86, Issue 11-12, S. 57 f.)

From the Back Cover

To date, definitive answers to questions about ultimate causes and effects of global warming remain elusive. In Global Warming - Myth or Reality? . Marcel Leroux seeks to separate fact from fiction and lays out the scientific cause of the sizable sceptical scientific community that challenges the accepted wisdom. The book begins with a review of the dire predictions for climate trends, followed by a discussion of the main conclusions of the three reports issued by the Intergovernmentall Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It then reviews the predictions made at the time about global temperatures, rainfall, weather and climate, whilst highlighting the mounting confusion and sensationalism of reports in the media. Lreoux takes a hard and dispassionate look at the reality of the greenhouse effect, the "evidence" from climate models, and the limitations of those models. He then postulates alternative causes of climate change and analyses the trends for global temperatures, rainfall patterns, dynmaics of weather and sea level. He argues that the case for global warming is based on climatology which, with its insufficiencies in the understanding and explanation of weather phenomena do not support this prediction. Leroux highlights a number of priorities that climatologists could consider in order to understand the processes of climate change, integrate them into deterministic climate models, and predict accurately changes of climate of the near future.  The most urgent priority for climatology, the author believes , is to leave the IPCC in order that the discipline remains neutral and returns to the pursuit of its proper ends.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 536 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 2005 edition (August 22, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 354023909X
• ISBN-13: 978-3540239093
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,731,543 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 54 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Analysis not Rhetoric January 3, 2007

By Duke

Format:Hardcover

Aside from the first four chapters (which provide an excellent, if strident, history of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), this is a thorough text book on climate analysis for the layman. It develops a cogent theory of how the atmosphere works and explains each of the issues involved from the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, the tilt of the poles, the impact of the solar cycle, to a detailed look at the defects in climate modeling and how one might expect the atmosphere to react if, indeed, the earth were warming or cooling. Great care is taken to explain the impact of each of the green house gases (including the most significant, water vapor, and how its omission from IPCC studies impacts the conclusions). Not light reading, but well worth the effort.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive Critique of Alarmist Theories April 6, 2008

By Fearless Bear

Format:Hardcover

This is a comprehensive and detailed review of what the author, who heads a French University atmospheric science department, views as the co-option and corruption of good atmospheric science by political influence. Leroux not only shows specific faults with various assertions of global warming alarmists, but he puts his criticism in context with discussions of a variety of phenomena. He demonstrates multiple misstatements of past events by people asserting that radiative forcing from human activity has major influence on the earth's climate. He demonstrates the frailty and simplistic nature of existing "models", and offers some interesting theory of his own on how earth's climate and weather work. Do not read this book if you want a short or easy summary of evidence (for that, look up the NIPCC report (Singer ed.) in early March 2008). However, if you want a comprehensive look at the complexity of atmoshperic and meteorologic science and climate change, this book is truly excellent.

28 of 34 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST read. August 2, 2007

By villegem

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Anyone who claim having an opinion on the issue of Anthropogenic Global Warming cannot ignore this book. This is no journalist romanced account nor a guru dire predictions. This is a scientific demonstration based on observations and accute scientific understanding and reasonning. It should be in every school library and science teachers should have read it answer students' question with knowledge. True it is not light reading but there is no other way to explain the fundamentals of atmospheric circulation, its relation to climates and expose the perversions of cooky cutter science. Should you read one book, this one is the one.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars sensible science May 21, 2012

By Dr. P. R. Lewis

Format:Paperback

The book by an eminent climatologist, the late Marcel Leroux, charts the sad tale of climatology and its politicisation by the IPCC. He starts by summarising the many conferences which ended with the formation of the IPCC under UN auspices. During that the role of CO2 as a prime suspect in affecting world climate grew steadily, finally reaching a crescendo with their 2001 report (and later with the 2007 report, although this occurred after the book was published). The way in which that role was engineered by some scientists and bureaucrats is well described, from the Keeling CO2 measurements of the 1960s to the development of crude computer models by Mann and Jones in particular. From the very start, the science was distorted and manipulated by the IPCC, and spun for the media by eliminating inconvenient truths (such as the uncertainties in the models) and painting a picture of doom to attract attention. As is normal with the press, visions of Armageddon are much more newsworthy than neutral statements about the climate or weather, so alarmist news stories began to fill press column inches. In the early days of the 1960s, the world was just coming out of a cooling phase which had lasted from about 1940, so the doom-and-gloom merchants spoke with fervour about the coming ice age. But the message changed as the temperature rose slowly, culmination in the egregious Mann hockey stick graph which was a centrepiece of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, in which global warming was portrayed as being caused by mankind, and would result in extra storms and hurricanes, sea water rises of several meters, loss of species and biodiversity (such as the hapless Polar Bear) and other traumas. The faults in the hockey stick graph were soon exposed when others analysed the results.... It was a direct example of deliberate manipulation of incompatible data to show what had already been determined. That philosophy of unethical behaviour continues at the IPCC today despite growing independent evidence that world temperatures are actually falling and that storms have not increased either in frequency or magnitude. Land has not been inundated by the sea, and the main floods in the last decade have been from tsunamis, quite independent of CO2 in the air or sea, for that matter.

Palaeoclimatology is also a useful reference for the study of world climate, and Leroux describes the extensive work in this area. The hockey stick graph nearly eliminated the Medieval warm period, well known from historic sources. But CO2 levels were static during this period, so how to explain why the earth was so warm? The theory of AGW simply cannot explain the warming at all, and so fails. Neither can it explain the recent cool period from 1940 to 1970 since CO2 levels were rising. The supposed explanation posits sulphate pollution increasing reflection of the suns rays, but Leroux says this is unlikely since such aerosols were not of widespread occurrence. The book follows with detailed discussion of weather phenomena and other influences such as the huge heat reservoir represented by the oceans, again an area of weak research by the IPCC modellers. Overall the book is essential reading for those who want to understand the problems of climatology in the present over-heated atmosphere engendered by the IPCC, so as to reach a fair idea of what is happening globally. What is for certain, however, is that there is no consensus among the experts at all. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Education November 13, 2012

By Chad W. Jessup

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book is a great educational tool for people interested in meteorology, understanding our weather processes. It also throws a monkey wrench into the CAGW rationale by pointing out the lack of knowledge and understanding surrounding climate issues.

3.0 out of 5 stars Good food for thought but priced way too high for 98% of the population February 22, 2013

By D. Covington

Format:Kindle Edition

Even though it's fallen behind on the wealth of data that has been collected since this book was published (2005), unfortunately being priced at $198 puts this book out of the reach of the people that could benefit the most from this book. And unfortunately the eBook sample only just gets through the introduction making it impossible to tell if the book gets too technical for the average reader to even consider spending $198 for it. Three stars as the best data in the world is useless if few can afford it.

Update:
I'm sorry but this author makes statements that are baised also. Strong emotions cloud judgement and this author states that they are angry. His work was described in an editorial that it was the work of an angry man. His response, "It is just that." That's a potential problem. What happened to their stated objectivity? I quote, "...because the reference to human activity is based merely upon the fact that the greenhouse gas curve is on the rise..." then they just gets "silly" by adding a number of ludicrous and unrelated facts where their data was also rising, that they can be a cause also. Of course they are not serious (I hope!) but they ommit qualifying information. Here we go again. In "reality" the rise in greenhouse gases correlates with the beginning of the "Industrial revolution" and continues to increase as more industries, more people, more cars, more coal burning plants, et cetera are built, operated and accumulate. That brings me back to the books price. $198, no, I'm sorry, I can't risk spending $198 to maybe just find more biased comments.