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Red Hot Lies: How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed

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During my years in the U.S. Academia, I experienced a couple of events related to the global warming propaganda that I found stunning. Scientists around me (including myself) were subjects of intimidation and disciplinary proceedings - or they were instantly fired - because of their skeptical views about the climate change (or even for skeptical results of their work).

Chris Horner shows us that those events were not coincidences. Environmentalism has become a new ideology that has replaced Stalinism and that is beginning to take over the Western world - a world that has enjoyed freedom and democracy for centuries. You will learn that Greenpeace is reading from Horner's trash, in order to obtain materials that they could find helpful in their propaganda war.

Do you know what's happening to the children at schools? They are being indoctrinated. In fact, they are expected to revolt against their parents who "cause global warming". Because the children have to watch scientifically unrealistic horror movies related to the climate, such as An Inconvenient Truth, many of them don't sleep well at night.

Many politicians are scared of the "momentum" that they demand "action" against the climate change, too. Scientists who don't join this irrational hysteria are being threatened, likened to criminals or even Islamic terrorists. Journalists produce piles of lies and distort scientific findings that are already damaged by biased peer review or full-fledged censorship.

This whole scary machine is moving in the direction chosen by the environmental activists who are always "ahead" of their followers. Right now, they want the "dissidents" to be censored or even arrested. Are their today's dreams going to become reality on the day after tomorrow? Meanwhile, there is no climate crisis. In fact, there hasn't been any statistically significant global warming at least for 13 years. But the society seems to be choosing a direction that is disconnected from any observations or science.

The similarity of the environmentalists' techniques with those of the Nazis and communists are far too obvious. If you live outside the Academia or other sectors of the society influenced by this movement, and you are not certain whether there is a reason to worry, read this insightful and shocking book because it can tell you what you might expect tomorrow unless we manage to defeat this new ideological cancer bubbling in the society.

The subtitle of "Red Hot Lies", "How Global Warming Alarmists Use Threats, Fraud, and Deception to Keep You Misinformed" says it all, and Chris Horner has done an admirable job.

This highly-referenced book details what all too many scientists know, but are afraid to speak about: the truth on global warming is not to be told, or, if it is told, the cost of telling it will be dear. I know from whence I speak, perhaps more personally than most of the people that Horner writes about. And what he says is true. If you don't think global warming is going to be the end of the world, and, especially if you can quantitatively and effectively demonstrate that in public, watch out!

On the other hand, if you are willing to wheedle data to show a foregone conclusion, or puff a kernel of reality into a cornfield of alarm, you are going to do very well.

Horner documents these truths with remarkable clarity and irrefutable evidence. I'm sure he's already received some fine email as a result.

If you want to see proof of his thesis, just watch the reactions. They will attack Horner, or where he works, but not the facts that he elucidates on global warming. This will be because Horner is pretty fair to the data. He's more in the camp that warming is quite real but quite less threatening than portrayed by likes of Al Gore, Joe Romm, or the myriad of apocalyptics feeding on public fear for personal gain. For that he will be pilloried.

I recommend reading this book along with "Liberal Fascism", by Jonah Goldberg. It's too bad that Horner didn't quite get to tying up the connection, but I suspect that will become obvious in the near future. The shouting down of opposition, the agenda of command-and-control, the abject fear of fact-based argument, and the use of youth and students are all tied together.

What is interesting, but left for the reader to ponder, is this: Obviously there is a tremendously well-oiled and funded machine out there that portrays exaggerated climate change as fact, and this includes the political, journalistic, university communities, as well as the guardians of the so-called canon of scientific knowledge, the refereed journals. But Horner does cite a number of papers in the refereed literature that debunk hysteria. Given the overall climate of exaggeration, the fact that these papers were publshed must mean that they were absolutely compelling.

What is fearful, though, is the incident he described at the journal Climate Research, where editors resigned in "protest" of the publication of a non-alarmist paper. I had one in there a few years ago, and I saw the process first-hand. Tom Wigley and a few of his cronies demanded that the paper be withdrawn, and that the process as to how it could have been published be investigated. The message to editors is clear: if you're not with us, we're against you. That creates a scientific climate of fear.

Also touched upon is the unwillingness of scientists to open their data files to others. When Australian climatologist Warrick Hughes asked Phil Jones, the developer of the United Nations' climate history, for the raw data (he wanted to see how the error bars were calculated), Jones responded: "We have 25 years or so invested in this work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it"?

The last I heard, "science" is about finding "something wrong" with what has gone before. But that is not true in a world of Red Hot Lies.

In summary, read this book. Everything you feared about global warming science is true, and it is only going to get worse.

Vaclac Klaus, President of the Czech Republic has said that the "Climate change debate is not about science, it is about ideology".

This is clearly apparent in this thoroughly detailed and carefully documented book about what has got to be the best orchestrated scam (thank you John Coleman for voicing that opinion) ever perpetrated on the good people of the world. It shows many powerful forces complicit in this scam including the UN, the world's governments, the now fat environmental groups, the well-funded internet alarmist bloggers, the mainstream media even in its decline, many academics and universities riding the new grant gravy train and the once professional societies for which the academics are the prime constituents. As Chris documented, Dr. Robert Corell, the Director of the Global Change Program at The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment and a Senior Policy Fellow at the Policy Program of the American Meteorological Society observed candidly and correctly to colleagues at a conference in the early 1990s "we must not miss this golden goose as this field has never before seen funding like that which is going to be involved here."

Even though I have been close to this issue from the science side for decades, Chris's book has profoundly affected my thinking on how and why this perversion of science has taken place and who the real puppeteers controlling the strings are. It left me more worried than ever about the future reputation of our science when the truth becomes clear. I also have enhanced concern for our collective financial security as the policies under consideration can only make the global financial meltdown worse. And it will not be the heating from greenhouse gases responsible. Retirement seems so far away again.

This book is an absolute must read for all decision makers in government and industry who will have a say in carbon emission control strategies, and energy choices as well as all citizens who want to preserve their cherished democratic rights and privileges and save our already battered economies from even more damage from the wrong, costly programs our government seem hell bent on implementing allegedly based on flawed science that is not allowed to be challenged but mainly driven by totally unrelated political or socioeconomic change agendas.

When it comes to books on global warming, there is not much middle ground. As I write this, Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" has 208 5-star reviews and 70 1-star reviews on Amazon.com. And Christopher Horner's previous book, "A Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming", has 136 5-star reviews and 75 1-star reviews.

Chances are, if you truly believe that global warming is all man-made, the Kyoto protocol is a great idea, and the IPCC presents an overwhelming scientific consensus, you will not like "Red Hot Lies". And if you think global warming may not be all man-made, the Kyoto protocol is a bad idea, and the IPCC is a political organization, you will like this book.

Horner presents useful information about those who promote global warming and those who support them. He shows how global warming advocates stifle dissenters and "deniers", often through ad hominem attacks. He explains how the government, the media, and the scientific community benefit by exaggerating the global warming estimates and generating "institutionalized hysteria". If you haven't been exposed to this information before, you will be surprised.

It's important to realize that this book's main purpose is not to refute the science behind the global warming claims. It's purpose is to shed light on the tactics used by the global warming advocates to further their cause, and show how organizations like the IPCC are not what they seem to the uninformed public.

If you want to read a book that attempts to debunk the global warming science, read one of Fred Singer's books. (Keep in mind that the global warming advocates would dismiss Singer because he received funds from "big oil".) Or read on the Internet the U.S. Senate Minority Report in which "700 international scientists dissent over man-made global warming claims." (Again keeping in mind that global warming advocates would dismiss this as the propaganda of right-wing Republicans.)

Global warming advocates would probably dismiss this book because it is written by a lawyer and not a climate scientist. (But note that many of the people working on the IPCC reports were not climate scientists.)

It is likely that this book preaches to the choir. Horner's presentation is so one-sided that it is unlikely he will persuade many people in the middle ground. He criticizes the ad hominem attacks made by the global warming advocates, then makes his own ad hominem attacks. Horner shows how the global warming advocates cherry-pick the studies that support their cause and ignore or dismiss the studies that don't, but you can't help believing that he is cherry-picking his own facts. He uses sarcastic humor freely, which may amuse the global warming dissenters but is not persuasive. Also, the book needed a thorough editing. The writing is often clumsy and repetitive.

In summary, as with all books related to global warming, read it with an open mind but be skeptical.

I never saw the movie, "Inconvenient Truth" - but I heard people speaking about the movie after it was released.

Among other things, some people (including children) were "horrified" to learn that Polar Bears were drowning in the Arctic Ocean from lack of ice floes to rest upon. Pretty gruesome, I thought, and the sight must have been frightening.

Two years later I learned - the images shown were cartoons of the event. The cartoons were based on some hearsay evidence about four polar bears caught in a storm. No actual pictures of the event (or details of the real circumstances that surrounded the event) were presented.

As Chris Horner most decisively shows, this bit of theatre is a metaphor for the whole "global warming" charade in its entirety. People are being frightened - and policy is being decided - based on nothing more than cartoons. The cartoons are presented in a variety of formats: from computer model projections that have been fixed in advance, to demands to shutter coal energy electricity plants based on nothing more than the emotional harangue of despicable metaphors of genocide.

Parents and teachers who are not familiar with the details of it: the "science" behind the whole scenario is quackery, pure and simple. Many people bought into it because they trusted the word of those behind it. Those who developed this so-called "science" - did so with foregone conclusions in intention. Slowly but surely the truth of the matter is coming to light - and a lot of people are resting their reputations on absolutely bogus work.

The environmental "movement" of course completely rejects that notion - and takes offence (and aim) at those who even question the absolute veracity of it all.

Ladies and gentlemen - your intuition about the whole "global warming" scam is right on target. It IS an abject fraud. Chris Horner shows to what lengths some people with vested interests will go to perpetuate this fraud.

Chris Horner exposes the jack-booted thuggery of the Environmental movement. How inconvenient for the Environuts that it has been cooling under President Bush. Between scaring the kiddies and brainwashing the adults, the Environmental Left has no shame - including sifting through the author's trash!!!
Polar Bears dying out? No, they have actually increased in population. Hard scientific evidence showing the earth is warming? Maybe if they didn't put their equipment above a Weber Grill, they would get a different result. Hey, but don't listen to me - read the book!!! It actually has FACTS, and they most certainly are a stubborn thing.
Finally, all the negative nellies that will write their "reviews" will NOT have read this book. More proof of their fanatical devotion to the Green's Holy Grail. Become informed on the facts - buy this book, it's well worth the time.

It was UN special climate envoy Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland who declared that it was "completely immoral, even to question" the UN's authority and scientific consensus about global warming. (pp 307-8)

Quotes like that make a free speech-loving teacher angry. Isn't science about questioning? Isn't peer-reviewing about questioning?

I guess that's why I teach history, government and economics and not science.

In the old days I used to be an alarmist. I showed proto-versions of "An Inconvenient Truth" to middle schoolers that told them the oceans would be dead by the year 2000 if we did not stop throwing plastic pop can holders into the sea (my students lived in Indiana so I guess they weren't much of a threat to the sea anyway).

However, my training as a junior historian finally kicked in and I started looking around for other sources and I found it that, in a lot of cases, the emperor has no clothes (a scary thought considering Mr. Gore's ubiquitous presence at the forefront of the movement).

While far from perfect, Horner's book does demand an important point: lay your cards on the table and let's discuss everything before we start spending billions and billions and billions of dollars on something that we cannot seem to quite be able to prove. Even the most strident global warming supporter cannot fail to see the logic in that.

Or, can they?

"Global climate change is a fact because the policymakers say it is, regardless of what you may think."(p. 244) - Tom Boggus, Texas Forest Service

Sad to say, but that is the reality of it. Don't argue. Don't complain. Just open your wallets and prepare to pay.

Negatives of the book:

The first half of the book was a real chore to read. It was full of acronyms, names and quotes without names (the quotes are endnoted, but you have to flip to the back of the book to see who said it) and it times was a bore.

Positives:

The last half of the book is very good. Horner at his best is Horner going after silly policies and the laughable standards of the vaunted Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. He uses their own quotes and practices to show how the ICPCC documents have been warped and misinterpreted beyond recognition.

His photographs of the climate measuring stations on page 269 should throw into doubt our entire system of measurement (and this throw all of the conclusions into doubt).

The discussion of the Urban Heat Island effect (pp. 284-292) is perhaps the most powerful section of the book.

The discussions of data manipulation throughout only reinforce my call (up above) to lay all of the cards on the table before we start spending billions of global warming.

While I liked this book, I prefer Horner's The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism). It's a good place to start and covers most of the same ground. Red Hot Lies is really the sequel to that book.

I also recommend The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You to Know About--Because They Helped Cause Them. It is much more topic specific.

This book should be read by every American. Mr. Horner does yeoman work exposing the global warming alarmist network and the fraud and repression by which this group tries to advance its case. Mr. Horner's book is generally very well written, factual, and abounding in references. The quantity of references is so vast that a person availing him or her self to all of them would achieve the equivalent of a college education.

Mr. Horner digs deep into the prevalent mainstream media balance. Media reports to resounding degree any claim or factoid the climate alarmists come up with but ignores even the most scientifically proven rebuttals and refutations to the climate alarmists views. A large part of the problem is that the journalists covering the global climate issue are the environmental journalists who happen to be mostly dedicated to all environmentalist causes and direct their reporting accordingly. Often these journalists are too biased or lazy to seek out the truth.

Then Mr. Horner reports on the represion of dissenters of climate alarmism by bureaucratic establishments and ignorant demented zealots. The bureaucrats deny funding and media access to climate skeptics many times. The ecofreak zealots are often on hand to demand that government, academic, and other institutions act to suppress the views of climate skeptics. The more extreme and debased ecofreaks even issue threats and sometimes even try to harm scientists who refute the climate alarmists. Their activity adds a great burden to the democratic system and human welfare.

Mr. Horner also discusses somewhat well known and not so well known instances of scientific fraud. Specifically he brings up the fraud of Michael Mann's hockey stick. He brings light on the refusal of many alarmist posturing scientists to make public their data and methodology. Thus their presumed research can not be replicated and tested. This hiding of data and method is definitively not genuine science. New to this reviewer is the data manipulation and messaging at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies under noted alarmist James Hansen. It is a disgrace and blow to science that Hansen is allowed to continue his control of the Goddard Institute.

Then Mr. Horner exposes the Interplanetary Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations. He demolishes many myths of the the IPCC such as its reports are the result of scientific endeaver and that the reports represent the views of most world climate scientists and the scientists who provided the group with their research. In fact the IPCC is controlled by a small number of international bureaucrats and pro alarmist scientists who concoct and manipulate the climate evidence and data to support their biases.

Basically the global warming hoax is not a scientific theory but a debased religous sect that is both misanthropic and power hungry. Martin Durkin who produced the documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle attributes much of the growth of this sect to romanticism, a hatred for technology and science and a longing to return to some imaginary pristine past where debased intellectuals and psuedo philosophers would be at the upper echelons of society and not have their authority challenged by a literate, scientifically and technologically aware population. Instead these would be gurus would dominate an sub literate herd of peasants living in ignorance, desease, and filth. This society woud be a nightmare for most of humanity. Mr. Horner deserves our attention, thanks, and praise for standing against these demented ecofreaks.

These days it's hard to open a newspaper, turn on the TV or browse the internet news sources without coming across another doom-and-gloom story about Global Warming. And then there are all the fictionalized treatments of the subject that create a positive feedback loop with other sources of information, all having the ultimate effect of fueling the general paranoia about the imminent end of the World lest we repent and throw the global economy over the cliff and revert to pre-industrial mode of existence.

And yet, there are those lonely few who dare to raise their voices and question this alarmist mindset. One of the more prominent skeptics is Christopher Horner, the author of immensely popular The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and Environmentalism). In this latest book he provides a barrage of evidence suggesting that no, the extent of the problem if it even exists is not nearly as dire as it's being claimed, the few dissenting voices in the media and the scientific community are continuously being pressured to change their mind or else, the hysteria and the viciousness of the environmental lobby is appalling, and the consensus of the scientific community on many key findings is overinflated by orders of magnitude.

The book provides an incredible list of sources and references for further study and checking of the facts and claims from both sides of the debate. This alone makes it a valuable resource, and anyone who is genuinely interested in finding out if the critics' claims have any merit should definitely consult this book. The style of writing is mostly polemical and journalistic, but this works rather well for this kind of book. Those of us who have been raising questions about the validity of the assumptions behind the Global warming hysteria will find an invaluable ally in Horner.

Since the book came out there have been a spate of very public scandals involving several of the most prominent climate research/advocacy groups, including the University of East Anglia and the famed UN Panel. In the light of these it has become apparent that Horner's claims about the extent of the environmentalists' collusion and conspiracy in promoting bad data and bad science have been vindicated. Even the mainstream media is unable to ignore this side of the story any longer.

As a scientist I have been saddened and troubled by the way that legitimate science has been hijacked for political purposes. One of the trademarks of good science is the willingness to engage opposing viewpoints, and not dismiss them with disdain and with cheap ad-hominem attacks. Hopefully with more books like this one we can go back to discussing event the most controversial topics with cool heads.

If you are a proponent of anthropogenic global warming, Christopher C. Horner's Red Hot Lies will make you mad. There are three basic questions to the global warming debate: Is the earth warming? Is that warming anthropogenic (i.e., man-made)? And is that warming harmful? Proponents of anthropogenic global warming answer yes to all three questions. Horner answers no. Greenpeace has labeled Horner as a "climate criminal" because of his negative answers.

If you are an opponent of anthropogenic global warming, Horner's book will make you even madder, for it systematically exposes "how global warming alarmists use threats, fraud, and deception to keep you misinformed," as the subtitle accurately summarizes the book's message. Its eight, long chapters document how journalists, activists, educators, bureaucrats, scientists, and especially the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) distort, manipulate, and hype scientific data for a variety of political and economic--not necessarily environmental--ends.

The debate over anthropogenic global warming is, appropriately, a hot one, and Horner's book will no doubt add fuel to the fire. What is striking to me, however, is how easily Horner documents his major claims about the activities of what he calls "climate alarmists." For example, proponents of anthropogenic global warming routinely ridicule opponents for taking money from industry. Horner's Competitive Enterprise Institute has been accused (falsely) of receiving funding from ExxonMobil. But if receiving funding from industry invalidates one's factual claims, what are we to make of environmentalist scientists and organizations who receive millions from "green" energy companies? Or what about the rent-seeking behavior of those companies who seek legislation subsidizing their product or putting legal strictures on the petroleum products of their competitors? If cui bono? is a good question to ask of opponents, it's equally a good question to ask of proponents.

Horner also easily documents how the IPCC's reports on climate change subvert the scientific peer review process in favor of last-minute political edits, how they do not represent scientific "consensus" on global warming, and how their much hyped summary statements outstrip the factual data underlying them by overstating the certainty and malignity of anthropogenic global warming. But perhaps this is not surprising: the IPCC is, after all, an intergovernmental panel, and it is the interest of government bureaucracies to increase their power and authority. What better reason to do so than a certain, imminent, and devastating global crisis?

Red Hot Lies is too long to summarize and engage in a short review such as this, but I hope I have given you a flavor of its contents. I also recommend that you read Horner's Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming alongside Red Hot Lies. The former will tell you what's wrong with the science of anthropogenic global warming. The latter will explain why alarmists nevertheless promote it.