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| Author | Christopher Booker |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Climate/climate change |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Continuum International Publishing Group |
| Publication date | 17 Oct 2009 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 368 pages |
| ISBN | 1441110526 |
| Preceded by | Scared To Death: From BSE To Global Warming, Why Scares Are Costing Us The Earth |
The Real Global Warming Disaster (subtitle Is The Obsession With 'Climate Change' Turning Out To Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder In History?) is a 2009 book by English journalist and author Christopher Booker that examines, from the point of view of climate change scepticism, the subject of man-made global warming. In the book, Booker chronologically charts the history of how scientists came to believe that global warming – as a result of carbon dioxide (CO
2) emissions – had brought the Earth to what he calls the brink of catastrophe. He interweaves the science of the subject with that of its political consequences to show that, as governments become poised to make radical changes in energy policies, the scientific evidence for global warming is also, in his opinion, becoming increasingly challenged. Booker questions whether global warming is supported by the world's climate scientists, and consistently criticises how the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents evidence and data, citing in particular its reliance on potentially inaccurate global climate models to make future temperature projections. Booker surmises at the end of the book that "it begins to look very possible that the nightmare vision of our planet being doomed" may be imaginary, and that, if so, "it will turn out to be one of the most expensive, destructive, and foolish mistakes the human race has ever made".
The book was described in The Observer as "the definitive climate sceptics' manual" which presents "just about every criticism ever made of the majority scientific view that global warming, most probably caused by human activity, is under way", but without showing any challenges to these criticisms, and The Spectator described it as a "classic which any even vaguely intelligent person who wants to know what's really going on needs to read".
Background
Shortly before the book's publication, Booker wrote in The Sunday Telegraph that the motivation behind it lay in a consideration of "the supposed menace of global warming – and the political response to it" and that "If one accepts the thesis that the planet faces a threat unprecedented in history, the implications are mind-boggling. But equally mind-boggling now are the implications of the price we are being asked to pay by our politicians to meet that threat. More than ever, it is a matter of the highest priority that we should know whether or not the assumptions on which the politicians base their proposals are founded on properly sound science". In the book's introduction, Booker also describes how the book became a necessary continuation of a brief analysis he had made of the anthropogenic global warming issue in his previous book, Scared to Death.
Synopsis
The book is divided into three parts.
In Part One, Forging the 'Consensus 1972—1997, Booker presents a graph depicting average global temperatures over the past 11,000 years showing how temperatures over the last 1,000 years have consistently fluctuated and how when they again began to rise in the 1970s, scientists such as Paul Ehrlich began to postulate that the earth, as a result of the greenhouse effect, was heating up – with potentially disastrous consequences. Figures such as the environmental activist Maurice Strong and scientist Bert Bolin are then introduced, who would allegedly "play a crucial role in what lay ahead" in influencing governmental policy and helping form the scientific basis for global warming. Booker then identifies 1988 as being a key year in which the IPCC was set up and James Hansen appeared at the Senate Committee of Natural Resources in Washington, at which he stated he was "99 percent certain" that man's contribution to the greenhouse effect was the cause of global warming. According to Booker, "on all sides 'global warming' became the cause of the moment" after Hansen's appearance. Booker then describes how:
- in 1990, the IPCC published its first assessment report which made projections of future temperature rises;
- at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit "politicians from 154 countries queued up to sign a 'UN Framework Convention on Climate Change'" that would "commit all the signatory governments to a voluntary reduction of greenhouse gas emissions";
- the second IPCC report (SAR) in 1995 found that the "body of statistical evidence now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate".
The SAR was criticised by Frederick Seitz, who alleged that "more than 15 sections in Chapter 8 of the report – the key chapter setting out the scientific evidence for and against a human influence over climate – were changed or deleted after the scientists charged with examining this question has accepted the supposedly final text". The chapter ends with an account of the signing of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the setting of new targets for reduced CO
2 emissions.
In Part Two: The 'consensus' carries all before it: 1998—2007, Booker asserts that the medieval warm period "contradicted the idea that late twentieth century temperatures had suddenly shot up to a level never known before in history", and that this problem was dealt with by a 1999 graph (see figure, right) depicting temperatures "suddenly shooting up in the twentieth century to a level that was quite unprecedented. Familiar features such as the Medieval Warm Period and the little ice age simply vanished". Booker claims that the the graph became the "supreme iconic image for all those engaged in the battle to save the world from global warming". He then asserts that the IPCC's methods, and in particular the draft summary of its next report, came in for serious criticism from scientists such as Richard Lindzen.
Booker then examines Al Gore's Oscar winning film An Inconvenient Truth and the subsequent questioning of many of its assertions, including retreating glaciers, drowning polar bears, use of the Hockey Stick graph, the melting of the ice caps and snows of Kilimanjaro and rising sea levels.
Booker begins Part Three: The 'consensus' begins to crumble: 2007—2009 by quoting the then British Environment Secretary's stating that the IPCC's fourth assessment report was the "the final nail in the coffin of the climate change deniers", and then contrasting this assertion with what he sees as evidence emerging to the contrary:
that the earth had in fact begun to cool, and how this may have been as a result of solar variation; however, the results of research into this theory by the scientists Knud Lassen, Eigil Friis-Christensen and Henrik Svensmark were dismissed by Bert Bolin as "scientifically extremely naïve and irresponsible". The theory was further expounded in the 2007 film The Great Global Warming Swindle. Booker then alleges that a 'consensus' and 'counter-consensus' had begun to form, and gives details of a 2007 report by the US Senator James Inhofe that claimed to list 400 scientists "now prepared to express their dissent, sometimes in the strongest terms, from the IPCC's 'consensus' view of global warming". Booker then quotes the June 2007 International Energy Agency announcement that the cost of halving CO
2 emissions by 2050 (the US and UK governments were intending 80% cuts) would be US$ 45 trillion – equivalent to "two thirds of the world's entire current annual economic output".
Booker ends the book by describing events in the lead up to the climate conference at Copenhagen:
- President Obama's taking the issue of climate change very seriously;
- the emergence of bloggers such as Stephen McIntyre and Anthony Watts placing IPCC data under close scrutiny;
- the BBC reporting that "the severity of global warming over the next century will be much worse than previously believed";
- the failure of the Caitlin Atlantic Survey to establish that ice at the North Pole was diminishing;
- a conference organised by the Heartland Institute entitled "Global warming: is it really a crisis";
- the reluctance of BRIC countries to reduce their CO
2 emissions, frustrating efforts before the Copenhagen conference; and - the increasingly astronomic forecast cost to Western economies of decarbonising their economies.
Reception
The book received a mixed reception by press reviewers.
A review in The Observer by Philip Ball, former editor of Nature, was critical, and, though expressing "a queer kind of admiration for the skill and energy with which Booker has assembled his polemic", dismissed the central claims made by the author in the book as "bunk". Ball criticised Booker's tactic of introducing climate sceptics "with a little eulogy to their credentials, while their opponents receive only a perfunctory, if not disparaging, preamble" and rejected his implication that the entire scientific consensus on global warming rests on the "hockey stick" graph.
In The Sunday Times, guest reviewer Charles Clover, former environment editor of The Daily Telegraph, criticised the book for ignoring entirely the issue of the acidification of the oceans, a subsidiary effect of CO
2 emissions.
In The Scotsman, writer and environmentalist Sir John Lister-Kaye chose The Real Global Warming Disaster as one of his books of the year, writing that "though barely credible in places" it was an "important, brave book making and explaining many valid points".
In The Spectator, Rodney Leach wrote that "the shelf of sceptical books keeps filling and Booker's belongs there with the best", remarking that Booker "narrates this story with the journalist's pace and eye for telling detail and the historian's forensic thoroughness which have made him a formidable opponent of humbug".
In The Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens wrote that "anyone seriously interested in this subject owes a great debt to Christopher Booker, who has set down all the arguments for doubt in a single, concise book" and praised Booker for producing what he saw as a "courageous" piece of work.
Writing in The Herald, Brian Morton was largely sympathetic to the position taken by Booker in the book: "The question isn't whether climate is changing, but what is to blame. A crippling tithe of international political effort and social action is directed to the assumption that we are", and "the climate change debate – or enforced consensus – concerns the way science is done and perceived. As Booker says, "consensus" is not a term in science but in politics".
See also
- Climate change consensus
- Global warming
- Global warming controversy
- Global warming conspiracy theory
- Scientific opinion on climate change
- The Hockey Stick Illusion
Bibliography
- Booker, Christopher (2009). The Real Global Warming Disaster. Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. ISBN 1441110526.
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Notes
- Booker in particular refers to the cost of implementing the UK's Climate Change Act of 2008
- Booker 2009, p. 342
- ^ Philip Ball (November 15, 2009). "The Real Global Warming Disaster by Christopher Booker". The Observer. Retrieved February 4, 2010.
- James Delingpole (October 28, 2009). "You Know It Makes Sense". The Spectator. Retrieved April 5, 2010.
- Christopher Booker (December 2, 2009). "The real climate change catastrophe". The Sunday Telegraph. Retrieved February 5, 2010.
- Booker 2009, p. 4
- Booker 2009, p. 21
- Booker 2009, p. 32
- Booker 2009, p. 41
- Booker 2009, p. 38
- Booker 2009, p. 53
- Booker 2009, p. 63
- Booker 2009, p. 65
- Booker 2009, p. 80
- Booker 2009, p. 83
- Booker 2009, p. 84
- Booker 2009, p. 88
- Booker 2009, pp. 144–150
- Booker 2009, p. 175
- Booker 2009, p. 180
- Booker 2009, p. 183
- Booker 2009, p. 208
- Booker 2009, p. 255
- Booker 2009, p. 233
- Booker 2009, p. 270
- Booker 2009, p. 279
- Charles Clover (December 13, 2009). "If climate change doesn't grab you, meet its evil twin". The Sunday Times. Retrieved February 5, 2010.
- John Lister-Kaye (December 5, 2009). "Books of the year: Writers' choice". The Scotsman. Retrieved February 5, 2010.
- Rodney Leach (November 4, 2009). "A wild goose chase". The Spectator. Retrieved February 2, 2010.
- Peter Hitchens (November 30, 2009). "The inconvenient truths Mr Gore and his fanatical friends DIDN'T tell you about climate change". The Mail on Sunday. Retrieved February 9, 2010.
- Brian Morton (November 3, 2009). "Is a climate-change sceptic more like a flat-earther or a Holocaust denier, merely out of touch or mendacious and evil?". The Herald. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
Further reading
- Booker, Christopher; North, Richard (2007). Scared To Death: From BSE To Global Warming, Why Scares Are Costing Us The Earth. Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. ISBN 0826486142.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - Montford, Andrew (2010). The Hockey Stick Illusion; Climategate and the Corruption of Science. Stacey International. p. 482. ISBN 1906768358.
External links
Booker's synopsis of the book in The Daily Mail
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