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Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media (Hardcover)

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Key Phrases: temperature projections, global warming science, hurricane activity, United States, New York, National Assessment (more...)
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This spirited critique challenges the conventional doom saying about global warming. Climatologist Michaels acknowledges that the earth is warming because of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but he insists that the warming will probably be modest and that nature and humanity will easily adjust to it. Writing in a lucid, engaging style supported by a mountain of data, he debunks such recent scare stories as melting ice caps and glaciers, intensifying storms and droughts, species die-offs and a Day After Tomorrow–style ice age. He argues that researchers and reporters mistakenly ascribe normal fluctuations in local weather to global warming and commonly ignore the facts (reports that the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is being submerged by rising sea levels, for example, ignored research demonstrating that sea levels in that region have actually been falling). Michaels, who is a fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, sometimes allows his own agenda to intrude. Advocates of the precautionary principle will note that he fails to demonstrate his claim that "there is no known, feasible policy that can stop or even slow these climate changes." And while he chalks up global warming alarmism to an unholy alliance of climatologists hungry for grants and media sensationalism, his remedy for biased science is not better science but a "wider source of bias" in the form of more funding of climatology by the fossil fuel industry. He also calls for the abolition of academic tenure—a crushing blow against an independent professorate that libertarians and their allies in the world of academia view as the intellectual wellspring of the regulatory state. Nonetheless, Michaels’s challenge to global warming orthodoxy should invigorate the debate over climate change.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Product Description

Why is news about global warming always bad? Why do scientists so often offer dire predictions about the future of the environment? In Meltdown, climatologist Patrick J. Michaels says it’s only natural. He argues that the way we do science today—when issues compete with each other for monopoly funding by the federal government—creates a culture of exaggeration and a political community that then takes credit for having saved us from certain doom.

Michaels starts with a succinct discussion of climate-change science and then unrolls a litany of falsehood, exaggeration, and misstatement. He cites hundreds of errors and exaggerations in scientific papers, news reports, and television sound bites—from the "National Assessment" of global warming, a Clinton-era document that used computer models that its authors knew did not work, to the infamous New York Times story about the melting of the North Pole, published in September 2000 and halfheartedly retracted three weeks later.

An eminently readable and often humorous critique, Meltdown explains why these exaggerations persist and what to do about them.

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Product Details

  • Hardcover: 208 pages
  • Publisher: Cato Institute (November 25, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1930865597
  • ISBN-13: 978-1930865594
  • Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #461,157 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Patrick J. Michaels
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
temperature projections, global warming science, hurricane activity, warming rate, future warming, color insert, temperature history, heat index, climate models, apparent temperatures, warmest year
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, New York, National Assessment, United Nations, New England, Great Lakes, Washington Post, Intergovernmental Panel, National Climatic Data Center, Los Angeles, Gulf of Mexico, Third Assessment Report, Atlantic Ocean, Vannevar Bush, North American, Kyoto Protocol, Lake Superior, Pacific Ocean, West Nile, World Wildlife Fund, Arctic Ocean, Canadian Climate Centre, Dan Rather, Gulf Stream, Met Office
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278 of 327 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Climate Change Incompetent Reporting Exposed, October 29, 2004
By Warthog_1 (Palatine, IL USA) - See all my reviews
For those of you whose understanding of climate change or global warming comes from the main stream media (New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, CBS-TV, et al) this book is a must read, that is if you subscribed to the "chicken little" thesis that the sky is falling, or in the case of climate change that we will be unable to live on planet earth because rising global temperatures will destroy civilization.


The sub-title of Meltdown reads "the Predictable Distortion of global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media" and in this he admirably succeeds in documenting and proving. The book is a compendium of headlines and stories found in the media mentioned as well as in a number of scientific journals, mainly Science and Nature. He also addresses some of the more outlandish stories, press releases, and declarations by organizations such as Greenpeace and the World Wild Life federation. Dr. Michaels provide chapter and verse, 12 of them, documenting the egregious errors and in some case patently false information foisted on the public at large by all of these organizations. That said the main stream media comes in for the most criticism.

His method is really quite simple. He looks at the data gathered in the real world and uses it to confirm or rebut the hypothesis that anthropogenic warming is causing glaciers to shrink and retreat, is the root cause of rising sea levels that are about to inundate the island of Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean or that malaria is making a come back due to warming trends or a plethora of other disasters just over the horizon.

Though he doesn't explicitly say so, the book amply illustrates the incompetence, ignorance, and lack of skepticism by the science writers, as well as their employers, in the main stream media. They come across as cheerleaders with a bull horn instead of skeptical fact reporting and investigative individuals they claim to be. For example, in an USA Today article on the effect of warming sea temperature, the text tells us an increase of 10 degrees will cause a volume increase of .1%. The accompanying graphic shows a 100% increase that are in fact 1000 times more than the actual effect. Or more blatantly, the New York Times in its August 19, 2000 edition reported on Page 1 that "The North Pole is Melting". This story was based on an eyewitness report of a professor of oceanography on a Russian cruise ship in arctic region that had sited open water. According to the Times, "it had been 50 million years since the pole was awash in water". That the Times failed to exercise due diligence is obvious since as Dr. Michaels points out that public domain information available with just a few "mouse clicks" would save them from printing a retraction, of sorts, on Page 3 of Section D three days later. In fact open seawater is not unusual at this time of year and in fact a common occurrence.

Space and time will not allow me to discuss the problems Dr. Michaels found with peer reviewed papers found in supposedly scientific journals, but suffice it to say it certainly should make one question any article from now on that was "peer reviewed".

Though not footnoted, the book provides references to all scientific articles sited as well as specific dates and editions for all news articles and scientific journals. So if one is inclined to "fact check" this book they have a great starting point.
Because science is numbers related, there are a substantial number of charts, graphs, and data summaries that allow the reader to easily follow the great deal of data provided. Ironically many of them come from publications and individuals and who are the targets of his book.

Even if this book does not change your mind it ought to give one pause about most any article published in the mainstream press, and for that matter "peer reviewed" scientific journals that purports to prove that climate change is about to destroy the human race or life as we have know it.
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68 of 77 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Read the book, April 8, 2006
By Dan (San Anselmo, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media (Paperback)
If you are interested in climatology read Meltdown. It's a short, easy read.

Whether you are a lifetime member of the Sierra Club or a lobbyist for the coal industry, Michaels' cites the same publicly available data used to support the myriad of negative global warming scenarios to dispel many popular beliefs.

Meltdown does not dismiss global warming, although it questions its severity and impact. Meltdown does question whether warming is due primarily to human activity or, more likely, to solar and other large-scale natural cycles that living things have adapted to many times before. The author does not dispute that human beings have influenced the environment, but does not believe we can affect global warming in any meaningful way by reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Meltdown's overarching sidebar is about how good people (scientists) go astray when their careers (lives) depend on networks and hierarchies (the paradigmatic status quo) who influence purse strings controlled from places of power (primarily governments) indirectly through political pressure (me and you, the media, and environmentalist groups). The resulting feedback loop leads to prestigious journals awash in bad papers that mysteriously pass peer-review while good, less tabloidesque science is ignored. The resulting avalanche of false claims and hair-raising global warming scenarios strike fear into our hearts so that we donate to environmental groups and write elected representatives pleading for increased funding to study global warming.

Meltdown was published by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank often derided by the left for having been co-founded by Charles Koch, a self-made oilman, and supported by major US corporations (although 70% of their funding is from individuals). The problem with Cato as publisher is no so much the potential for bias (I think the author is very smart and believes what he is saying) but the lost opportunity for a better book. Since Cato is not a publishing company, the manuscript lacks the organization, clarity, and logical progression that a good editor would have brought to the project. For example, the professor often begins to build a thread then disappears forever into an aside (some of which were merciless and unrestrained non-PC lampoons that were, well, funny).

Once of my best advisors always recommended reading the New York Times in the morning and the Wall Street Journal at night. Climate change is too important to ignore either side in the debate.
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71 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars An Oasis in a Desert of Hyperbole, January 7, 2007
By Timothy J. Reed (Highlands Ranch, CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media (Paperback)
MELTDOWN by Dr. Patrick J. Michaels attempts to shed light on the "Global Warming" debate but as the subtitle states; "The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians and the Media", the book takes a broader view of not only the scientific implications but societal and institutional issues that the discussion has raised. Michaels, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, doesn't deny that some of the earth is warming and some of it is cooling, his position is that it is a natural cycle and that the impact of human activity is not significant enough to justify the "hysteria" produced by some scientists, politicians and media outlets.

The major portion of the book provides the basis for his position; it is well documented with graphs, charts and materials that traces the climate for at least the last 100 years substantiating that there have been periods that have been hotter, dryer, cooler or wetter previous to today when there were fewer "greenhouse gases". Intermixed with the data are quotes by scientists or politicians as well as newspaper or magazine copy that builds a case for greenhouse gas induced "global warming" where none seems to exist.

He talks of a peer review process where scientific articles questioning GW are subjected to an institutional bias against these arguments resulting in many not being published. This bias has an impact on the university system because to receive tenure and move through the ranks, the younger instructors have to be published. Michaels believes the system doesn't produce enough independent thought. MELTDOWN also goes into detail about the federal funding of climate research and the cycle of politics and science (plus their lobbyists) where one funds the other to produce data that will result in conclusions that bring more funding. Scientists have a tendency not to produce work that will result in a decrease or elimination of funding. The media does its part by sensationalizing climatological events attributing normal occurrences to "global warming"; they also ignore positions that are counter to current scientific thinking, this way the "heat" is kept on the politicians.

For the "Global Warming" skeptics the book provides substantial information to reinforce that position. To the "Global Warming True Believers" no amount of evidence to the contrary will change their point of view. If you approach the subject with an open mind it is an informative and interesting book.
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