BOOK REVIEW: CHRISTOPHER BOOKER - THE GLOBAL WARMING DISASTER
Christopher Booker is a columnist for the Telegraph (right of centre, highbrow). If there is a thread to his columns it is railing against abuses of authority and the resulting impact on individuals or (mostly small) businesses. If the authority stems from the EU then his invective steps up a gear. He is also the co-author of “Scared to Death” which looks at exaggerated scares, mainly but not always in the medical field (SARS, CJD/BSE, listeria, the Millennium bug, etc). A chapter of this book was entitled “Saving the Planet: Global Warming – the New Secular Religion.”
As he describes it himself he got interested in global warming via Nimbyism (NIMBY = Not in my Back Yard). He got involved in protests against a wind turbine near his home and from that started looking at the need for renewable energy sources and threat of global warming.
The book moves chronologically from cooling worries of the 1960s, past Hansen’s appearance before a sweltering Senate committee, via the successful legal challenge to Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”, on to the recent cooling and the run-up to Copenhagen. One disadvantage of a chronological approach is that events which are logically consecutive get split up between chapters. So we get Mann and the Hockey-stick and the McIntyre and McKitrick challenge in chapter 4, Gore’s use of the Hockey-stick in his book and the Wegman report on it in chapter 6 and papers to support the Hockey-stick in chapter 7.
He also demonstrates a lack of altruism in some of the major players. Gore has invested heavily in alternative energy ventures and even offset his high carbon footprint by paying money to a company in which he has an interest. Maurice Strong, who was closely involved in setting up the UNEP and the IPCC, was implicated in the Iraq ‘money-for-food’ scandal and now has a major role in the multi-billion dollars carbon credits business. (Booker has recently returned to this theme in his newspaper pointing out the many business deals of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC.)
It is commonplace to accuse “deniers” of being in cahoots with the energy industry. What this book shows is that money is also an important motivator among the ”warmists”.
In one sense the book is prophetic. It was written before the CRU emails and details the lack of independence of many of the leading climate scientists behind the IPCC reports. It was also written before COP15 in Copenhagen and identifies the problems of getting China and other developing countries on board for any binding international agreement.
If, like the author, you believe that the real “global warming disaster” is the vast amount of money being diverted to fight a chimera then this book will give you more ammunition. On the other hand, if believe that the effects of global warming are real and dangerous this book will do little to convince you otherwise.
Ron
Publisher: Continuum
ISBN: 9781441110527
As he describes it himself he got interested in global warming via Nimbyism (NIMBY = Not in my Back Yard). He got involved in protests against a wind turbine near his home and from that started looking at the need for renewable energy sources and threat of global warming.
The book moves chronologically from cooling worries of the 1960s, past Hansen’s appearance before a sweltering Senate committee, via the successful legal challenge to Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”, on to the recent cooling and the run-up to Copenhagen. One disadvantage of a chronological approach is that events which are logically consecutive get split up between chapters. So we get Mann and the Hockey-stick and the McIntyre and McKitrick challenge in chapter 4, Gore’s use of the Hockey-stick in his book and the Wegman report on it in chapter 6 and papers to support the Hockey-stick in chapter 7.
He also demonstrates a lack of altruism in some of the major players. Gore has invested heavily in alternative energy ventures and even offset his high carbon footprint by paying money to a company in which he has an interest. Maurice Strong, who was closely involved in setting up the UNEP and the IPCC, was implicated in the Iraq ‘money-for-food’ scandal and now has a major role in the multi-billion dollars carbon credits business. (Booker has recently returned to this theme in his newspaper pointing out the many business deals of Dr Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC.)
It is commonplace to accuse “deniers” of being in cahoots with the energy industry. What this book shows is that money is also an important motivator among the ”warmists”.
In one sense the book is prophetic. It was written before the CRU emails and details the lack of independence of many of the leading climate scientists behind the IPCC reports. It was also written before COP15 in Copenhagen and identifies the problems of getting China and other developing countries on board for any binding international agreement.
If, like the author, you believe that the real “global warming disaster” is the vast amount of money being diverted to fight a chimera then this book will give you more ammunition. On the other hand, if believe that the effects of global warming are real and dangerous this book will do little to convince you otherwise.
Ron
Publisher: Continuum
ISBN: 9781441110527
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