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| Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor | 
 enlarge | Author: Roy Spencer
Publisher: Encounter Books
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
Buy New: $10.92
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Avg. Customer Rating:  74 reviews
Sales Rank: 2064
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 184
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1
ISBN: 1594032106
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.73874
EAN: 9781594032103
ASIN: 1594032106
Publication Date: March 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Ships immediately! Perfect and New! 2008 Hardcover.
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Product Description
If you listen to the media, you would think that man-made environmental catastrophe was about to engulf the world and imperil civilization. From Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth to nightly jeremiads about CO2 emissions and carbon footprints, we are bombarded around the clock with alarmist reports that disasterous global warming is on the rise and that it's our fault. In Climate Confusion, noted climatologist Roy Spencer shows that fears about global warming are vastly exaggerated and are driven by politics, not truth. He shows that a global superstorm has already arrived-but it is a storm of hype and hysteria. Climate Confusion is a ground-breaking book that combines impeccable scientific authority with great wit and literary panache to expose the hysteria surrounding the myths of global warming and climate change. Spencer shows that the earth is far more resilient than exopessimists pretend and that increasing wealth and technology ingenuity, far from being the enemies of the environment, are the only means we possess to solve environmental problems as they arise.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 69 more reviews...
 ALL of my research has been 100% U.S. Govt. funded March 21, 2008
554 out of 597 found this review helpful
The very first review of my book to appear here claims I (the author) am funded by Exxon-Mobil, which is totally false. Apparently, people can say whatever they want on the internet, spreading rumors, and this is the eventual result. My research has always been 100% U.S. Government-funded. No oil company has ever even ASKED me to do anything for them, let alone paid me. I have written on this issue for 15 years, and am supportive of the oil and coal industries simply because of the huge benefit to mankind that has resulted from access to abundant, affordable energy.
I have a "full disclosure" on my website if anyone is interested in more details...just Google [Roy Spencer full disclosure]. If the best a reviewer can do is say they haven't read the book, but they know I'm just a shill for big oil, then they are seriously misinformed on the global warming issue. Unfortunately, this is becoming commonplace.
-Roy W. Spencer
Distrust mathematical models--it's quantification as camouflage March 26, 2008
254 out of 295 found this review helpful
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!!"
Sanity at last.... March 25, 2008
107 out of 135 found this review helpful
Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor by Roy Spencer is a breath of fresh wind. Written by a highly qualified NASA scientist, Climate Confusion examines the current evidence about global warming and the debate surrounding it.
Well written for a mass audience and expertly researched and documented, Climate Confusion should be read by all sides of the climate debate. One thing that everyone should note is that their is not massive agreement among the scientific community about global warming. Spencers book is but one voice among many that cries out that we are all being fed a bill of goods by the doom and gloom crowd. He is to congratulated on work well done.
Peace to all.
The best popular account of global warming science March 22, 2008
81 out of 94 found this review helpful
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.
 The view of a respectable contrarian May 7, 2008
63 out of 89 found this review helpful
As I have been trying to learn about climate change, I was interested to see several points of view. Spencer's book is a good example of the contrarian view from an expert in the field.
From my understanding so far, the reason that man-made climate change is hard to grasp by the general public is that the signal for it is, at present, comparable to the size of natural fluctuations. Therefore it requires an analysis within the context of physics models to see if it exists. The models are also important for predicting the future climate. The models contain a number of effects like solar activity, sulfur emissions, volcanic activity, CO2, etc. There is an important graph in the IPCC 2007 report (I'm referring to fig 8.1 in "Climate Change 2007, the Physical Science Basis") which shows how all the available models agree well with the data, but this result is not described in Spencer's book. Maybe he simply doesn't believe it.
Spencer says the models leave out things which are not fully understood, such as a possible water-vapor feedback. Spencer asserts that the model-builders are biased and try to conform to each other. I find this hard to believe, but then I wouldn't know. The IPCC 2007 report lists the uncertainties with it's findings. My understanding is that not all the issues are completely settled, but that's why it's scientific research: the answers are not obvious.
To amplify his points, Spencer is sarcastic and often disrespectful, and he complains about environmental extremism. He's right that we should avoid hysteria, but I think he misrepresents how science works. Science is a process for finding the truth. On some rare occasions, erroneous "group-think" may occur, but a wrong hypothesis is always proven wrong eventually.
I cannot recommend the IPCC 2007 report, as it is too long and detailed; however, a nice short book for the general public which explains the findings is "The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change" by A. Dessler and E. Parson. Overall I found it to be a much more balanced presentation, including explanations of the uncertainties such as those Spencer mentions.
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