The subtitle of this excellent, well-researched book by Steve Goreham is “Science, Common Sense, and the Twenty First Century’s Hottest Topic.” The book is over 400 pages long including notes and references. It provides both practical and technical details disputing the insistence that “The Science is Settled, Man is Causing Global Warming.” The book presents ample evidence that the science is far from settled and that man has had little impact on climate. However, there is a dire warning that you will be labeled a “Denier” if you question the politically correct positions. Those who have worked diligently to develop the “global-warning-disaster created- by-man-scenario” have invested their reputations in that outcome. They will eagerly attack anyone who has the audacity to ask, “But is it supported by science?” Science at one time was dependant on freedom of thought and criticism that required explanation based on facts. On this subject, questioning the legitimacy of the predictions is equivalent to when people were accused of being witches and treated badly. (This is my comment, and is not in the book.)
The Author’s Note points out that people aren’t shocked when the five day weather forecast isn’t accurate, but are willing to accept that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations knows what the climate will be in 2100. The dominant public assumption is that the IPCC predictions are accurate, but the number of scientists who question the predictions has grown rapidly despite the attacks they know will be leveled at them for being “skeptics” or “deniers.”
The author proposes the title Climatism for the ideology that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate, “…an extreme form of environmentalism that is using the natural climatic changes of Earth to re-define our societies.” Those who advocate that ideology want to limit population growth and replace all hydrocarbon-energy production with solar and wind power. What they don’t mention is that those energy sources cannot provide even a fraction of the energy produced by hydrocarbons, which means that society will have to do without. There has been a slight warming, but evidence is presented that the cause is likely natural and has nothing to do with the activities of man. ”
If global warming is from natural causes, then all efforts to stop the Earth from warming are not only futile, but destructive to our way of life and economic prosperity of the developing nations.”
No book on climate change would be complete without an analysis of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” A judge in London ruled that the film could be used as part of school curriculum, but the teachers must point out there were nine scientific errors or assertions not supported by scientific evidence. The nine corrections did not include mention that the film does not point out that the carbon dioxide increases lag the temperature increases. Therefore, temperature increases are the cause of carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere (carbon dioxide is less soluble in warm ocean water). The basis of the climatism ideology that man’s generation of carbon dioxide is the cause of climate change is therefore false from the beginning. That didn’t stop Dr. James Hansen, an outspoken climatist from saying, “CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, those CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”
There is a summary of the eight disasters that climatists predict with descriptions of why the predictions are already known to be incorrect. The dominant disaster predictions are rising sea levels (the sea has had a steady rise of 6-7 inches per century), devastating hurricanes (frequency and strength have not increased) and increased famine and death from droughts and floods (droughts and floods have not increased). Of course there is the concern about polar bear drowning, although polar bear populations have doubled since 1950. One of my granddaughters read that increased carbon dioxide will lead to acidification of the oceans and coral bleaching, but the actual data indicates the increase in water temperature and is having a positive effect on coral growth.
It is true that the climate will change just as it has always changed. The Medieval Warm Period occurred from about 900 to 1,300 A.D., and Vikings were able to settle and prosper in Greenland. The climate then moved into the Little Ice Age, and the last written evidence of the settlement was in 1408. The year 1816 is known as the “Year Without a Summer,” and that is the only known instance of a missing oak tree ring.
Chapter 5 presents data that, not surprisingly, solar activity is the main driver of global temperatures. “The scientific results…indicate that the varying activity of the Sun is indeed the largest and most systematic contributor to natural climate variations.” “There is little doubt that solar-wind variability is the primary cause of climate change…Once the IPCC comes to terms with this finding, it will have to concede that solar variability provides a better explanation of…warming than greenhouse gases.” Conversely, solar activity has declined. By April 2009 the sun had hit a 100-year low in sunspot activity and a 50 year low in solar wind pressure.
The saddest bit of evidence offered by the book is the discussion of Dr. Michael Mann’s infamous “Hockey Stick Curve.” The actual record of temperatures from about 900 A.D. is shown along with the modified graph that became known as the “hockey stick” on page 149. The actual graph shows the Medieval warm period and Little Ice Age with a slight upward trend in the late 1900s. The “hockey stick” graph shows basically unchanging temperatures until a sudden spike upward to much higher than anything that had been measured in a thousand years. It is said the Mann data “…contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components, and other quality control defects.” In other words, the graph was and is a fraud.
The climate research community was shaken when an unknown hacker downloaded and posted more than a thousand documents from the University of East Anglia, the “…world’s leading source of global temperature information.” The emails revealed “…a high level of bias toward man-made warming…” One email quoted Dr. Kevin Trenberth of UCAR lamenting a cooling trend didn’t match predictions and referred to it as “…a travesty…”
There are detailed discussions of the flaws with solar, wind, and biofuel energy production. I won’t detail them here to be consistent with my goal of keeping reviews to two pages or less. I will jump ahead to pages 393 -394 where the story of the P-38 “Glacier Girl” is told. A flight of planes being sent from the U.S. to Britain in WWII was forced to land on the ice of Greenland. An expedition set out in 1981 to retrieve the planes from the well-documented location. The planes were eventually found under 270 feet of solid ice.