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The Resilient Earth: Science, Global Warming and the Fate of Humanity

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Until I read the "The Resilient Earth" by coauthors Hoffman and Simmons, I did not spend much time thinking about the issue of human-caused global warming. I knew there were those who claimed humans were destroying our planet and there were others who did not agree, and challenged that principle. Now, after reading this wonderful book, I do care about our planet, but I have become somewhat skeptical of the idea that humans can change the climate to the point that we are doomed. In Chapter 1, the first lines in the book read: "Scientists observe nature, then develop theories that describe their observations. Science is driven by nature itself, and nature gives us no choice. It is what it is." How beautiful those words are, and they set the tone of the entire book. I have learned how resilient our Earth is - from its very beginning to its present day. The book is a journey of science and scientific discovery. I was amazed how many scientists made discoveries outside their disciplines. As an example, a man named Joseph Fourier discovered that certain gases could trap heat. Fourier, a mathematician and physicist, made that discovery in 1829. The book describes just how complex Earth's atmosphere is, and that it takes almost all scientific disciplines to try and unravel nature's mysteries. I learned how important the roles of geology, paleontology, glaciology, oceanography, physics, chemistry, and many more disciplines play in understanding, not only the complex puzzle called our atmosphere, but also the history of our planet. Most importantly, I learned how Earth warmed and cooled in cycles, long before modern man arrived. Best told was the story of Otzi the Iceman, who died in 3300 BC and his perfectly preserved body was found in 1991, buried in ice on the Italian Alps. Otzi laid in peace during the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, WW II, and the rise of the United States. What I learned from Otzi, made me think of Greenland. Why was that place, now covered in ice, called "Greenland?" This book influenced my life. I now recycle plastic and paper. I raised my thermostat for summer and lowered it for winter. I use less water. But I learned, reading this treasure of information, that it takes 226 million years for our solar system to make one orbit around the center of our galaxy. That puts the whole climate issue in perspective. Who can imagine what we might run into as we porpoise and sashay on our 226 million year journey. The easy style and anecdotes of "The Resilient Earth" are gems. I recommend this book for everyone. It will open the mind and make one think of things never thought of before. Such as, how lucky we humans are to have survived the ebb and flow of ice on this resilient Earth. Imagine New York City buried under ice, a mile high. I wonder how many times that happened, and could it happen again. Nature, with its infinite reach, will decide that for us. Kudos for the authors of "The Resilient Earth."

Allen and I would like to announce that, after many delays and just in time for the Christmas gift giving season, our book, The Resilient Earth, is now available for purchase on Amazon.com. The Resilient Earth is a book about climate science and global warming but it also includes a wide range of topics, including: the history of global warming, the discovery of ice ages, mass extinctions, the history of science, alternative energy and future energy policy. It is written for a general readership audience with many charts and pictures but very few (almost no) equations. The book is a trade paperback (6x9) with over 400 pages, 161 black & white illustrations, and more than 500 references.

Here is the table of contents listing the titles of the various chapters:

Preface

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 Global Warming-The Crisis Defined

Chapter 3 We are in an Ice Age?

Chapter 4 Unprecedented Climate Change?

Chapter 5 Ice Ages

Chapter 6 Ancient Extinctions

Chapter 7 Changing Atmospheric Gases

Chapter 8 Moving Continents & Ocean Currents

Chapter 9 Variations In Earth's Orbit

Chapter 10 Varying Solar Radiation

Chapter 11 Cosmic Rays

Chapter 12 How Science Works

Chapter 13 Experimental Data and Error

Chapter 14 The Limits of Climate Science

Chapter 15 Prophets of Doom

Chapter 16 The Worst That Could Happen

Chapter 17 Mitigation Strategies

Chapter 18 A Plan for the Future

Chapter 19 The Fate of Planet Earth

Afterward

Alphabetical Index

References

This is not just a book about science and the current global warming hysteria, it is a book about the amazing planet we live on and the tenacious life that inhabits it. You will find interesting facts and historical tidbits such as:

* Did you know that there is a submarine canyon as large as the Grand Canyon just off the coast of New York City?

* Did you know that there is a species of extinct mammoth named after an American president and why?

* Do you know the story behind the death of Ötzi the ice man?

* Did you know that more than a billion years before the "atomic age" there was a natural nuclear reactor running in Africa?

* Did you know that there is a society, VHEMT, that wants humanity to stop having children and die out?

* Did you know that for most of the time that complex life has been present on Earth there have been no polar icecaps?

All this and much more awaits you in The Resilient Earth.

Regards,

Doug

The book The Resilient Earth by Allen Simmons and Doug Hoffman is a book about the earth and its climate from its birth. The book consists of a wealth of material and information on the earth and its history. Messrs. Simmons and Hoffman provide a real education. The text is very readable in its explanation of a vast amount of information. There are many stunning illustrations and graphs. The work is very well referenced with numerous references to scientific articles. The book is an impressive work.

Among the topics presented in detail in this book are the earth's time intervals - eons, eras, periods, and epochs of earth`s geological history. Each concept is clearly defined. All the time intervals of the earth are presented in tables with the names and dates. The authors also discuss ice ages, the major time intervals of extinction of earth species such as the end of the Permian period and the end of the Cretaceous period, the changes in the earth's orbit around the sun and the Milankovitch cycles, The tectonic plates at the surface of the earth and how these plates effect the movement of continents over time, and the effect of the solar magnetic field and cosmic rays on the earth's climate. The authors also detail the differences between earth and Venus and how these differences cause abrupt dissimilarity in climate.

Regarding the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis the authors discuss the scientific method and the failure of the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) to adhere to it. Specifically the authors detail the unreliability of the IPCC simulated computer climate models. The authors also take to task climate alarmists who publish fallacious pseudo scientific papers based on unreliable or messaged data and/or methodologies. Included among these false reports is the infamous hockey stick of Michael Mann.

Regarding anthropogenic global warming the authors see "no immediate threat" (p. 312). However they believe carbon dioxide could be a major problem in the future. The authors reject as ineffective and harmful such environmentalist proposed solutions as wind power and carbon cap and trade. Instead the authors propose among other solutions certain solar power technologies, a great expansion of nuclear power, more energy efficient homes, and transportation alternatives.

Messrs. Simmons and Hoffman perceive a greater threat from anthropogenic carbon dioxide than I do. The earth's carbon dioxide level in the last millennium is the lowest it has been since the end of the Permian period 251 million years ago. Yet this book is and excellent resource. The book deserves to be widely read.

This book should be read BEFORE anyone watches AIT (Gore's movie), if it is over your head - go back to grade school. It's presentation of the background, prespective, and scientific methodology for understanding climate change and effects are very well laid out. The Discovery Channel would do well to have these guys produce a documentary series.

RE does not go really deep on its topics;(I think due to OSHA's 40# weight limit)for that one needs specialty books such as "Heaven and Earth", "Solar Fraud", "Shattered Consensus" , "Unstoppable Global Warming - Every 1500 years", "Chilling Stars",etc.

The more I read, the less I know and the more frustrated I grow with the insanity of academic, government, corporate, and non-governmental stovepipes of knowledge in isolation.

Right up front this book, read crossing the Atlantic from Madrid with a bad case of bronchitis, forces me to go back and downgrade my reviews of everything by Al Gore, and insert an update with apology and revisit for the work of The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World whose new book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) I am buying today as part of my apology. In the process of just doing that, I discovered Lomborg's edited work, Global Crises, Global Solutions and the first two words I saw, "Copenhagen Consensus," sold me. Denmark is one of a tiny handful of "smart nations" and pioneered the citizen wisdom council concept that Jim Rough writes about in Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People.

Opening quote on page 5: "Fedor Dostoevsky once said, `A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else." What an epitaph for partisan governance based on lies.

Before I lay out my fly-leaf notes, a comment spanning all the books I have read:

1. It is not just the Republican's who make war on science, the Democrats do as well. The two-party tyranny is corrupt across the board, and its worst crime after selling out to Wall Street and eradicating the integrity of the electoral process has been to dumb down the Republic and stifle informed inquiry and deliberative dialog.

2. America--and the world--have largely lost the art of critical thinking, what Jack Davis calls "analytic tradecraft," and in consequence our governments, corporations, and other entities are "out of control." We desperately need "Open Everything" and a renaissance of collaborative consensus with full access to all the facts.

The author's have, for me, pushed the reset button. They provide a tremendous catalogue of scare stories and inaccuracies, and in all this, take special care to demolish Al Gore in absentia (since he will not accept any public debate, only "safe" didactic "shows"). In a court of law Gore's film is found to have nine explicit and substantial errors of fact.

My notes:

+ Scientists don't understand their own science, especially in historical context, the public is a hundred times worse off. WE HAVE A BILLION YEARS TO GO BEFORE EARTH GETS 10% HOTTER.

+ The climate system may be the most complex system within the system of systems called Earth, and our knowledge of it is pathetically incomplete.

+ Science permeates every aspect of public and private life, if we do not restore our citizens' grasp of science we will lose the ability to make good communal decisions that are sustainable.

+ The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is roasted (pun intended) and once again we see the need for total transparency of all UN data and findings so as to better understand their errors of omission and commission.

+ "Species come and go but 'life' is tougher than anything." This was a hugely important observation for me, backed up by documented examples of where the Earth has previously gone through 75-85% extinctions, combined with the observation that the time line between two pulses of a single extinction "event" was TEN MILLION YEARS!

+ Methane from animals is in the top three of climate change factors, one more reason to listen to Francis Lappe Moore in Diet for a Small Planet.

+ The book trashes the US Department of Energy on multiple fronts, points out that NASA and DoE do not play well together such that space-based energy options are not being properly researched and developed, and is generally very pro nuclear to include waste no longer being an issue with new processing methodologies.

+ They favor a carbon tax rather than cap and trade, the latter too corrupt.

Page 255, sources of modeling error:

1. Model imperfection

2. Omission of important processes

3. Lack of knowledge of internal conditions

4. Sensitivity to initial conditions

5. Unresolved heterogeneity

6. Occurrence of external forcing

7. Inapplicability of the factor of safety concept

Over-all I was impressed by the totality of the project in this book, which provides a superb history of Earth along with superb reviews of the various sciences that must be brought to bear on climate change. This is a tremendous primer, along with the other books I link to, and I strongly recommend it for both undergraduate and graduate courses as well as the general adult reader. I actually have a note, no kidding, "This book inspires reverence."

This is a brilliantly told story, carefully constructed. The chapter on Cosmic Rays was completely new to me and totally absorbing.

Their own proposed program:

+ Use renewable energy where possible

+ Be aggressive on hybrid transport

+ Build energy-efficient buildings

+ Overhaul national and continental power grids (they do not mention Buckminster Fuller's global plan)

+ Work on solar both land and space-based.

+ Rapidly expand nuclear capacity while adopting safe recycling.

There is a superb discussion of error and uncertainty, including random error and the misapplication of statistics as well as incomplete data and models that are a travesty of false assumptions and relations.

I put the book down feeling somewhat righteous, as their final conclusion boils down to this: Politics is about consensus, Science is about being right rather than being believed. Governments--and the scientists and media personalities that serve as courtiers to governments, are fraudulent and not serving the public interest. Intelligence, done right, is similar to science: the truth at any cost. E Veritate Potens.

The summary is very well done and the ending was "practically poetic."

Other books I recommend to balance this one:

The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters

Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America

High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them

Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications

Philosophy and the Social Problem: The Annotated Edition

See all of my Reviews, and Graphics that Amazon destroyed, at the Public Intelligence Blog, Phi Beta Iota.

Everything I have been trying to explain to my friends about the exaggeration of "human caused" climate change is articulated in this book. I'm not quite done with it yet, as I am reading it cover to cover. It does a great job of providing a clear high level understanding of so many integrated topics (which is of course the only way to understand the more focused questions facing us today.) I think the authors have done an outstanding job and I recommend this to anyone willing to take the time to learn and understand the wonders of this planet.

Large parts of the book are concerned with giving people a background on science: continental drift, the evolution of life, ecology, climate, and computer modeling. These are factually accurate, based on up-to-date research, and quite readable. It also covers some less settled issues, such as the effect of the sun, cosmic rays, and other factors on the climate, but appropriately qualifies them.

The remainder of the book is concerned basically with the questions of how strong the influence of human activity on climate is, how good the evidence for that is, how fast climate change is likely to occur, what the effects of climate change will be, and whether any of the proposed measures will be effective. These are exactly the right questions to ask of both policymakers and scientists, and the answers are nowhere near as clear cut as they are frequently presented.

In terms of climate change, looking at longer term climate history, it is clear that the planet has undergone massive cooling and warming over time, without any human intervention, and that such change is likely inevitable in the long term. And looking at the history of life, it is clear that the kind of change we are currently facing has not threatened life or even mammalian life. In particular, we are coming out of an ice age, and it is inevitable that sea levels will rise substantially, that the polar ice caps will melt, and that species will die out, even without human activity--like has happened many times before. Human carbon emissions probably are accelerating the process a little, but it is inevitable in the long term. Of course, in the short terms, we might even face another massive glaciation event, which would likely be far more harmful to humans. Given the choice of glaciation and warming, warming would be far preferable.)

The book spends a bit more time discussing the economic effects and the ability of humans to adapt to such changes. It then goes on to look at the plausibility of countermeasures: even if we start with the premise that carbon emissions are dangerous and we want to reduce them to pre-industrial levels, what can be done about them? The sobering realization is that there is no effective technical, political or economic means of making effective changes: Kyoto merely burdens industrialized nations without being an effective remedy, and no government on earth is going to be able to enact the kind of draconian measures to actually reduce carbon emissions to substantially reduce anthropogenic effects.

The books conclusion is effectively that many of the policies proposed for fighting climate change are good policies: increase energy efficiency, reduce the use of non-renewable fuels, develop renewable energy sources. But they are good policies for reasons pretty much unrelated to climate change. The policy implication of climate change is that, anthropogenic or not, climate change is inevitable and human societies better be prepared to deal with it, lest humans join the long list of species extinct because they couldn't adapt to the inevitably changing conditions on earth.

In the highly politicized discussions about climate change, many people will dismiss this book sight unseen as a book written by a bunch of cranks with some kind of hidden agenda. It is none of those things. It is a well written science book that happens to bring together mainstream and up-to-date science that happens to be relevant to the question of climate change and policy. In fact, overall, the book is fairly unpolitical and you can in good conscience still vote for your preferred political party after reading it. What the book will do is remove some of the hysteria and hyperbole surrounding the issue and give you a lot of the scientific background to actually try to understand what the science is actually all about.

This is an informative book which gives the science behind the sceptical view on the climate change debate. An excellent read if anyone wants the balance of information in a world where the media and political hype are flooding the airwaves with dramatic predictions of the world coming crashing down...

Well worth reading.

Great book, well written..no kooky rants here.

If you were concerned before the book..you will be scared after it.

"The science is settled"...yeah right..

And lets chase the money trail...

This should be required reading for everybody who wishes to be taken seriously on either side of the debate of the century. The debate has been almost cut off by those claiming that "The Science Is Settled". Few people who make such a claim know 10% of the facts related here. For those wishing to know the facts, read this book.