Reviewed by Jay Lehr
Climate Change The Facts, Edited by Alan Moran; Stockade Books, April 21, 2015, 336 pages: ISBN-10: 0986398306, ISBN-13: 978-0986398308: $15.71 on Amazon.
While there are dozens of excellent books exploding the man caused global warming myth, I believe no more need to be written after this single volume brilliantly put together by Alan Moran. Moran, an energy and minerals economist from Australia, collected chapters from top experts covering every technical, political and economic aspect of the climate change debate.
It was quite obvious considering the length, clarity and simplicity of each brief essay the authors were all carefully directed by Alan to present their knowledge in a manner to ensure every reader would become a knowledgeable citizen when considering to this complex and often duplicitous debate.
I am sure some contributors were a breeze to work with while managing others may have been more like herding cats, still, the end result is outstanding. The book reads as though you were sitting down with each author and he or she is chatting with you about their subject, freed of any need for political correctness and able to expose the fact manmade global warming is a myth as shown by the research cited in the books 405 footnotes.
The book is divided into three parts.
Part One: Science
Part one examines the science of climate change.
Ian Plimer discusses both the science and politics surrounding the climate change debate. He says “we derive scientific evidence from measurement, observation, and experiment. The evidence must be repeatable and collected over and over again.” Plimer shows the theory of Man caused climate change fails to meet these provisions.
Patrick Michaels’ chapter examines and contrasts the predictions of the IPCC with measured outcomes. He details and demolishes the numerous excuses put forward by Obama adviser John Holdren and other IPCC faithful for why the IPCC’s predictions have failed.
Richard Lindzen demonstrates climate is relatively insensitive to increases in greenhouse gases. He says, “global warming is about politics and power rather than science. In science, there is an attempt to clarify; in global warming, language is misused in order to confuse and mislead the public.”
Willie Soon explodes the myth 97 percent of scientists regard human induced global warming as both likely and serious. John Abbot and Jennifer Marohasy show recognition of natural climate controls flagged and were written out of the history books when science funding began to be almost wholly to come from governments.
Part Two: Economics and Politics
Part two explores the politics and economics of climate change. Moran himself sets the context of economic debate by examining the costs of taking action to stop the climate from changing.
Nigel Lawson describes the dire economic implications of trying to cease the use of fossil fuels.
James Delingpole delves into the qualifications of the major promoters of the climate scare in the UK and Australia and finds, not scientists or economists, rather wall to wall English literature graduates.
Garth Partridge recaps the issues confronting meteorologists in 1970 when they first contemplated climate forecasting noting. He finds despite the fact our knowledge has hardly advanced since then, skepticism the basis of science is not allowed.
Jo Nova points out global renewable energy investment has reached $359 billion annually while the European Union says it allocated 20% of its budget to climate related spending. She says, ” … over the last decade 28 million weather balloons, 30 years of satellite recordings and 3000 robotic ocean buoys confirmed that if the carbon disaster was not dead, it was on the critical list.”
Kesten Green and J. Scott Armstrong test the predictive validity of the global warming hypothesis against established professional forecasting principles and find it wanting.
Part Three: Climate Change as a Radical Movement
Part three explores the climate change movement. Rupert Darwell reviews the farce that was the 2009 Copenhagen conference and subsequent mini-conferences.
Ross McKitrick addresses the backlash he and Steve McIntyre went through in when they punctured the myth temperatures are now higher than at any time in the past millennium.
Donna Laframboise writes of the scandalous awarding of Nobel Prize to the IPCC, detailing the qualifications of senior and lead authors of the IPCC reports. She finds they had published little if any significant research and had minimal credentials. Rather than being well-respected researchers in their respective fields, they were often activists.
Mark Steyn’s essay, “Ship of Fools,” revels in the abject failure of Chris Turneys expedition to find an ice free path through the Antarctic which had to be rescued when when the ship became stuck in the ice.
Christopher Essex’s essay points to the complexity of the scientific analysis of the climate, which has led to exaggerated claims of pseudo-experts, while Bernie Lewin traces the antecedents of the honest quest for climate knowledge showing how the quest was was hijacked by activists who became spokespersons for a politicized UN agency.
Stewart Franks examines the climate debate through Karl Popper’s theory scientific material should be subject to constant examination and should be falsifiable. He finds much of today’s popular climate science fails Popper’s test of sound science. Anthony Watts illustrates how trivial the increase in global temperature occurring over the past century is.
Andrew Bolt’s chapter closing the book is a light hearted send up of the 10 of the most egregious prevailing falsehoods about anthropogenic global warming. He explains in most fields of endeavor if one really screws up there is a price to pay. However, he says, ” … in one tiny catastrophically expensive field of human endeavor this law seems to have been suspended for a decade or two. Yes climate science. This is the science where one plus one can equal three one day and six the next – yet never may the layman question the expert at the backboard, or the shill demanding a few billion to make the sum equal no more than two.”
Moran’s book will be one of the very best non-technical books you will have read when time permits. The book begs for wide distribution to help calm the anti-science conflagration we are all witnessing. It will make a great gift for any friend with an open mind who enjoys a good read.
Jay Lehr, Ph.D. ([email protected]) is science director at the Heartland Institute.
Jay Lehr was an internationally renowned speaker, scientist, Senior Policy Advisor with the International Climate Science Coalition and Senior Science Analyst at CFACT.
