Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor (Hardcover)

~ Roy Spencer (Author)
Key Phrases: medieval warm period, warming tendency, manmade global warming, United States, Dumb Global Warming Solutions, Global Warming Hysteria (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The current frenzy over global warming has galvanized the public and cost taxpayers billons of dollars in federal expenditures for climate research. It has spawned Hollywood blockbusters and inspired major political movements. It has given a higher calling to celebrities and built a lucrative industry for scores of eager scientists. In short, ending climate change has become a national crusade.

And yet, despite this dominant and sprawling campaign, the facts behind global warming remain as confounding as ever.

In Climate Confusion, distinguished climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer observes that our obsession with global warming has only clouded the issue. Forsaking blindingly technical statistics and doomsday scenarios, Dr. Spencer explains in simple terms how the climate system really works, why man's role in global warming is more myth than science, and how the global warming hype has corrupted Washington and the scientific community.

The reasons, Spencer explains, are numerous: biases in governmental funding of scientific research, our misconceptions about science and basic economics, even our religious beliefs and worldviews. From Al Gore to Leonardo DiCaprio, the climate change industry has given a platform to leading figures from all walks of life, as pandering politicians, demagogues and biased scientists forge a self-interested movement whose proposed policy initiatives could ultimately devastate the economies of those developing countries they purport to aid.

Climate Confusion is a much needed wake up call for all of us on planet earth. Dr. Spencer's clear-eyed approach, combined with his sharp wit and intellect, brings transparency and levity to the issue of global warming as he takes on wrong-headed attitudes and misguided beliefs that have led to our state of panic. Climate Confusion lifts the shroud of mystery that has hovered here for far too long and offers an end to this frenzy of misinformation in our lives.

From the Author

I wrote Climate Confusion for several reasons. In contrast to other works, I wanted it to be an entertaining and easily understood primer on how weather and climate works, showing why manmade global warming is unlikely to be a serious problem for humanity. Furthermore, I wanted to explore the political, philosophical, and religious underpinnings of beliefs in catastrophic global warming, helping the reader to better appreciate why scientific research in this area has become tainted and untrustworthy. Finally, and possibly most importantly, by using basic economic concepts I wanted to counter currently proposed policy "solutions" to global warming that will have devastating effects on the world's poor.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books (March 27, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594032106
• ISBN-13: 978-1594032103
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #47,819 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

340 of 389 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Distrust mathematical models--it's quantification as camouflage, March 26, 2008

By	The Doctor (The TARDIS) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Roy Spencer argues that the reason there seems to be a consensus among scientists regarding "global warming theory" is that 1) most scientists don't actually conduct research on the forecasting models the theory is based on, and so, though they are scientists, are not any more knowledgeable than laypersons regarding this particular theory and 2) scientists are human too, and as humans, fall victim to group think. Spencer points out that the mathematical models used to predict future climate are NOT akin to the forecasting methods meteorologists use to forecast next week's weather. Some important points: Sure, we are good at predicting whether it will rain tomorrow or in two days, but the validity of even short-term weather forecasts shrinks to nearly zero when trying to predict 10 days ahead or more. Climatologists using mathematical models to predict future climate, say, 100 years from now are playing a whole other ball game.

The somewhat steady temperature of the earth is hypothesized to occur because of a somewhat constant tradeoff between the energy coming in from the sun and the infrared energy the earth bleeds back out into space. Global warming theory posits that the accumulation of greenhouse gasses throws off this balance, so that the earth traps more heat than it releases, thereby raising temperatures in the lower atmosphere. A problem with global warming theory is that it seems to be overly simplistic. First of all, most people going around talking about "greenhouse gasses" seem to believe that most of these "gasses" are caused by car emissions. Not so. The greenhouse effect is caused by water vapor in the atmosphere, cloud cover, methane, CO2 and a few other things. Contrary to popular belief, 90 percent of the greenhouse effect is dependent upon water vapor and cloud cover. Very little of it has anything to do with CO2 emissions.

The problem is, mathematical models that project such trends do so by making horribly unrealistic ceteris paribus clauses ("all else being equal" assumptions), when in reality, all else will not be equal in the future. In other words, it is unrealistic to assume that if CO2 keeps increasing that water vapor and cloud cover will remain the same. Global warming advocates assume that as CO2 increases water vapor will either remain the same or increase, thereby raising temperatures. Spencer thinks that water vapor may react by lessening, thereby balancing things out. The bottom line though is that using mathematical models to predict the future, of anything, is an extremely dubious practice. They are almost always wrong (actually, they are right about the same amount of the time one would expect to be right due to chance alone--no different than guessing). In the recent bestseller Black Swans, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that experts who use modeling to forecast are paid liars. Scott Armstrong, one of the world's leading experts on forecasting methods, is an outspoken critic of global warming, and argues that the forecasting models the theory is based on are in no way scientific. He has also, by the way, issued a $10,000 challenge to Al Gore (who of course never responded), reminiscent of the famous Julian Simon-Paul Ehrlich wager. Armstrong states that the models Al Gore relied on are not even technically forecasts. They are unaided subjective forecasts, or, in other words, just a computer model depicting one possible scenario. (Also amusing is that the founder of the weather channel wants to sue Al Gore for fraud!)

Interestingly, a lot of the backbone of global warming theory rests on the famous hockey stick graph from Mann et al., 1998, showing that it is warmer now than it has been in 1000 years. What most people don't know is that in 2006 the National Academy of Sciences issued a report stating that this graph used flawed data. It used tree ring data, which is dubious considering that tree ring size is confounded by amount of rainfall. (Land-based devices used to measure temperatures often fare little better as they are typically installed on buildings, around asphalt and cement, which artificially inflates their temperature reports.) A corrected graph shows that it was much warmer in the medieval period than it is today. The medieval warm period was followed by a little ice age that lasted almost 400 years. That makes the claim that "it is warmer now than it has been in 400 years" a little less alarming. Of course it is if we are coming out of a little ice age! That's a good thing! The little ice age was very hard on people in the 17 and 1800s. Vikings who settled Greenland right after the medieval warm period ended found that it was lush and habitable. When the little ice age started they were all but wiped out by the weather, as Greenland became an ice-covered wasteland.

Global warming advocates also seem to assume that it got progressively warmer throughout the 20th century. Not so. It got warmer until about 1940, and then started getting colder until the 1970s (and if car emissions make the earth warmer, isn't it during THIS time that we would most expect to see a sharp increase in temperature?), and then reversed again. Some other points that seem to be unappreciated: A big part of the greenhouse effect is amount of cloud cover, which is in part dependent upon sun activity (a lot of this is probably just natural fluctuation). People seem to assume that most of the CO2 out there is manmade. Not so. Only about 2 percent of it is from car emissions. About 20 percent is from, not car emissions but (can you guess?) manure. That's right. There are so many animals making so much excrement that this causes more CO2 than cars. If you REALLY think we are responsible for global warming you shouldn't buy a hybrid, you should attack factory farming by becoming a vegetarian, for cow farts trump SUV exhaust easily. Furthermore, all of this biofuel nonsense such as ethanol is worsening global poverty and contributing to starvation from places as disparate as Italy to the bread riots in Egypt.

It is important to also remember that correlation does not imply causation. What we know is that warmer weather is CORRELATED with higher CO2 levels. It is a mistake to ASSUME a priori 1) that this is a causal relationship (it could be a third-variable problem) or 2) if it is a causal relationship, what the DIRECTION of it is. People are ASSUMING that higher CO2 levels CAUSE warmer temperature, when there is emerging evidence (such as from Willie Soon) that it's actually the other way around!! Warmer temperatures cause higher CO2 levels!!

Here's a fun fact for you: If you live within walking distance of work, which do you think would put more CO2 into the atmosphere, driving to work, or walking to work? Contrary to what most would expect, the correct answer is walking to work! The food production that would be necessary to replace the calories that you would burn would put three times as much CO2 into the atmosphere than driving your car the same distance! Thus, if you buy into this global warming stuff, you better not exercise, because you are "causing global warming!!"

139 of 157 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best popular account of global warming science, March 22, 2008

By	Lubos Motl (Cambridge, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The book only has 150 pages but there is a lot to learn here.

First, a few words about the author. Roy Spencer is one of the main people behind the technologies and algorithms to measure the global temperatures from the satellites - achievements that have been rewarded by various awards and that may be giving us the most accurate data about the global mean temperature that is available, even more accurate than James Hansen's GISS data, indeed. (But, despite some people's prejudices, Spencer has been funded from pretty much the same government sources as Hansen, except for those USD 250,000 from Heinz Kerry that Spencer sadly didn't receive.) He is also a very witty and comprehensible expositor who has been writing a website with cute parodies. Recently, he co-authored potentially important papers about the regulating role of clouds for the climate and about the uncertainty about the direction of the causal relationships between the clouds and the temperature.

In the book, he first introduces some basics of climate science and explains the nature of the scientific consensus. If the passionate reviewers below had seen the book, they would almost certainly appreciate it. Spencer reveals that the mankind almost certainly contributes something to the climate change and the greenhouse effect is nonzero, too. I know he has also patiently explained many of these well-known things to some of the less educated and more "radical" skeptics and his balanced treatment in the book wasn't a surprise for me. He is clearly no biased partisan.

However, he quickly turns his attention to a more important question, namely whether the human activity poses a danger for the climate. He explains that there exist no scientific papers that would offer reliable evidence of such a threat and he exposes various political, ideological, profit-driven, and other non-scientific factors that allow the irrational alarm about global warming to thrive and solid science about these questions to be suppressed and neglected. There is clearly no consensus about a dangerous global warming and after reading the book, you will see why.

If I were rating the author's opinions about the origin of the species, he would get less than 5 stars but I suppose this is not what readers should be rating here. This review should be about the book which is witty, technically solid - although avoiding equations -, and revealing the true major scientific and social aspects of the whole debate. Such a book from a qualified expert deserves at least 4.8 stars and I recommend it to you wholeheartedly.

60 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR YOUR BRAIN, March 31, 2008

By	John W. Brosnahan "Ionosphereman" (Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.