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116 of 131 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Evolving Mainstream?, July 6, 2000
By A Customer
At the outset, I have been a global-warming-as-disaster agnostic. But I have followed the arguments for years and try to read everything that comes out, and I try (but maybe fail) to not "prejudge" if I know something about the authors etc...I also look at reviews with I hope an open mind.That brings me to The Satanic Gases. The argument is really very simple: The planet warms, partially from human beings, but humans themselves cannot stop what they are doing and in fact have been adapting to this all along. But extreme scenarios get play from a political process that only funds our most lurid problems and a media that exists to sell media (surprise!). In fact, though, future warming is likely to be near the low end of the range, unless almost all scientific models are wrong to the core. This argument is made in very convincing fashion in this book. What amazes me is that it seems you either agree with these guys, citing the obvious plethora of facts and figures in the book, or you disagree and attack personally. This itself bumps my review of this book up one star. But, more important--and I hope I am not wrong here--it's beginning to look more and more like Michaels and Balling were in fact the correct prophets about the ultimate (non)-resolution of this issue. They have been screaming this from every available mountaintop (some supplied by industry, others from their University positions--major institutions like ASU and Virginia don't hand out Full Professor from cracker jack boxes) for years now. I give this book 4.5 stars (rounded to 5)as a result. More evidence: A few months ago Nova/Frontline had a global warming show in which the entire second hour was devoted (without credit) to precisely Michaels' and Balling's proposition: you can't stop it, and you can't even slow it much, so why try? The July Atlantic Monthly is even more telling. A huge piece by Daniel Sarewitz and Roger Pielke concludes 1)The science will never adequately support policy, and 2) We can't do much about it anyway, and 3) We have adapted if we have enough money, so maybe we ought to help poor countries with infrastructure. Pielke was a Democratic staffer for the late (of Southern California) congressman Brown's Science committee. Hey, those are the same arguments Michaels and Balling make in Satanic Gases, only based upon mountains of data. It's rare to see (what I used to think) were caterwauling naysayers turn out right, but I am very close to moving off the agnostic fence as a result of The Satanic Gases. It probably doesn't hurt that the book is very well written--I have seen in local papers several Op-Eds by Michaels and he is a very hot, entertaining writer for a scientist, almost like the "Anti-Sagan".
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