by Rafe Champion
And how much do you really need to read if you are short of time and shelf-space?
Everyone will have favourite books and people who read a lot will have a lot of favourites but you might be unwilling nominate any, in the way that you are not supposed to express favouritism among your offspring.
To get the ball rolling I nominate two books that could in principle substitute for most of the climate books on my shelf, at least to get a thorough overview of the field before deep diving into selected topics.
This question came to mind because I am reading Michael Hart’s Hubris: The Troubling Science, Economics and Politics of Climate Change and I nominate this book alongside Ian Plimer’s Climate Change Delusion and the Great Electricity Rip-Off. It runs to 600 pages but it treats practically the whole range of issues in the field. Ian’s book provides some scientific depth that goes beyond Hart and it also covers the power situation in Australia. I see the impact of climate policies on the power supply as one Achilles heel of alarmism. The other is the impact of those policies on the environment.
To explain how Hart substitutes for other books, consider the two volumes that Rupert Darwall wrote on the history of alarmism and the role of Maurice Strong and colleagues in the UN. People who want to write substantial contributions of their own have to master the amount of detail that Rupert provides but others who just need an overview of that process to understand how we got to COP26 will be well served by a few chapters in Hart – Chapter 5 on the science and politics of the IPCC, 10 on Baptists, bootleggers and opportunists, chapter 11 on building global consciousness and 12 National Interest vs Global Norms.
The book was published on the eve of the Paris COP so it could be regarded as dated but the background information on the various factors and influences that coalesced to create our current situation is all there. Hart has provided a foundation and a framework to understand Paris and after.
He is a Canadian with a long career in international relations and trade policy. He has written a dozen books and some of them did well for a publisher who refused to print this one! The book was ten years in preparation based on a series of seminars with postgraduate students and other interested academics so it covers a lot of territory ranging from the science itself, to the history of alarmism and the way the media managed to suck in the general public.
You can get the book here
Step up and say what you would recommend for different categories of readers!
Sorry, I should have signalled at the beginning, this is a guest post.
Rafe Champion. Check out the site of the Energy Realists of Australia.
This will probably get a reaction.
My favourite climate book is “Slaying the Sky Dragon”.
It has so many controversial ideqas.
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2 standouts for me – 1) The Delinquent Teenager by Donna Laframboise- a short book which provides an expose on the IPCC. 2) State of Fear by Michael Crichton – a book of fiction, but still a good read with pertinent points about the Green blob. Should have been made into a film but MC was a devout climate skeptic, so Hollywood wouldn’t have touched it even though his previous books made good films.
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G’day Ross and Jo,
I was also going to nominate “The Delinquent Teenager” as the one that was the biggest eye opener for me. Donna’s approach to getting the data she needed, and her use of footnotes enabled me to understand the nasty, but rather skilful way in which the UN was manipulated to control the world wide dissemination of false “science”.
Prior to reading her book I was convinced that science would correct the errors. Reading it revealed the extent of the political manipulation of the messages, and MSM suppression of any challenges.
I now see similar manipulation of media and messages with the covid scam. Much sooner than with the earlier one.
Thanks Donna.
Cheers
Dave B
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Ross
I’m glad you mentioned State of Fear which I read in about 2008 and that single book got me started on this fascinating quest to find the truth about climate change and even though it was fiction it introduced to me the concept of environmental terrorism. I was pretty naive before that.
Since then other books like Apocalypse Never and the Moral case for Fossil fuels were good to read but merely confirmed what I already knew.
I am forever grateful for Michael Crichton for igniting my curiosity to search for the truth.
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Michael Crichton is best known as the author of Jurassic Park.
As I understand he started out, like many, as sympathetic to the climate sob stories. On investigation, he reversed and wrote State of Fear. This is a great science fiction story, and the science has been well researched.
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Re State of Fear …. the best thing about Crichton’s book is the appendix in the back where Michael notes sources and discusses what is in those source materials … one man’s journey to the truth about what is going on.
Donna’s book is good but is a sore point with me as I got it as an e-book and it is lost on an old dead hewlett packard computer …. my one and only hard drive to die with no easy fix 🙁 … all the others gave a warning of imminent death. Now I only buy paper books like a true fossil / geezer 😉
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If you bought it from Amazon, they will send it to you for free to any other device you register with them. There should be a section there called “My Kindle books” or somethinng like it.
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A good article by Crichton is linked below:
https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf
John
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“The Greenhouse Trap” John Daly. Thinking people have been warned before the stupidity became so widespread. I think John was too anti nuclear.
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I am a big fan of John Daly. He totally exposed Dr John Hunter and all the CAGW alarmists.
I read articles on his web site. I did not know that he had written a book.
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1989. john’s website was so informative that emails at e anglia uni climategate celebrated his death.
john featured the high tide mark in Tas. It prompted universities to spend a fortune to prove him wrong as high tide was still current.
Their explanation became ‘proof’ that Ross got the time of day wrong and their was a 15 cm increase.
John showed that the surveyor general checked Ross marks in 1890 therefore if the 15cm supposed increase was correct it must have happened in 50 years between 1840 and 1890. CSIRO published the tidal mark with the 15 cm increase. There is a disclaimer in their publication. It is the work of the authors. ???
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Daly’s website What the Stations Say is still up almost 20 years after his death …. I loved this site especially the New York city to West Point comparison ie urban to rural http://www.john-daly.com/stations/stations.htm#Canadian%20Arctic
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Franz Josef glacier NZ. A channel 9 journlist visited about 2000 when ths was receeding considerably and commented,”Anybody who sees this and denies Global Warming has to be crazy!”.
John did not comment for months about the uninformed comment and then simply posted photo of Franz Josef area in 1950s when it had receeded completely. No comments, just the photo. He was billiant.
Note the Franz Josef glacier has often been the world’s fastest growing glacier this century.
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The book that started my path to sanity would be ‘State of Fear’ by Michael Creighton. My niece loaned me her copy after we had a discussion about global warming. This was right after I had seen ‘An Inconvenient Truth’…I mean ‘Lie’. Even though it’s a novel the author has a bibliography at the end that takes up like 1/3 of the book listing his sources for all the facts he included in the book.
Heck, when reading today’s headlines I get the feeling Creighton’s book is coming true!
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I love Michael. Michael was writing ‘fiction’ with so many footnotes and references I wonder who the characters actually were. Definitely the best science fiction researcher ever. ER was based on his experiences as an MD in ER. Michael was very popular in HOLYWOOD and a legend. Then he wrote “State of Fear” and became hated. The consensus nonsense started and Michael was invited to deliver the Caltech address. He made the topic ,” Consensus is not science and science is not consensus!”.
I loan my copy to my grandchildren and explain the importance of the theme, if you want to control people frighten them. We then discuss how fear has been used througout all history.
Michael’s death is a bit mysterious but I think his cancer was terminal and that is the cause rather than AGW alarmists.
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Here is another one for folks to read:
“Scared to Death”, by Christopher Booker and Richard North.
https://www.kogan.com/au/buy/the-nile-scared-to-death-9781472984661/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Bing+PLAs&utm_term=1101400107879&utm_content=Ad+group+%231
From the “review” blurb:
“Description
Newly revised and updated in the light of COVID-19 For most of the latter part of the last century, and the early part of this, Britain has been assailed by a succession of ‘scares’, from salmonella and eggs to BSE, from the Millennium Bug to bird flu, from DDT to passive smoking, from asbestos to global warming. These scares have become one of the most conspicuous and damaging features of our modern world, so much so that as we entered the third decade of the new century, our senses had become so blunted that we scarcely recognised the real thing for what it was, until it arrived – COVID-19, for which we were almost completely unprepared. The authors analyse the crucial roles of the different factions who perpetrated the scares: from the scientists who misread or manipulated the evidence to the media and lobbyists who eagerly promoted scares without regard to the consequences, and the politicians and officials who came up with absurdly disproportionate responses, leaving us to pay a colossal price. In this updated edition, Scared to Death not only presents a detailed account of the scares that have dominated our society for the past 50 years – through all of which the authors lived – but also examines the background to the COVID-19 pandemic, tracing our lack of preparedness to its roots and then assessing, by way of contrast, why this is the real thing, as opposed to the succession of scares that we have experienced”.
I have some reservation of the “review” statement about COVID. The BIGGEST issue with KUNG FLU is that it has, right from the first rumours, been a POLITICAL DISEASE. It has provided an instant “justification” for an endless expansion of statism globally, And, right on cue, the eco-nazis are ramping up the climate fear-porn.
Quelle surprise!!
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“Climate, the Counter Consensus” by Robert M. Carter. He totally debunks the climate scam with the evidence. From 2010 but the facts remain the facts.
“Watermelons” by James Delingpole. Exposing the scamsters.
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Hi Art – Robert Carter was a gentleman and scholar and it was a privilege to meet him. He also writes a very clear and honest appraisal of the evidence behind the AGW scam. A good man, a truthful man. We need more like him.
Cheers,
Speedy
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The Greening by Larry H. Abraham
The skeptics handbook 1 and 2
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The only book I’ve read on this topic has been Ian Plimer’s original effort.
Liked it.
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I found these to be very good back in the day. Since then, your blog, Judith Curry, Jennifer Marohasey etc. & links to be found in them are more useful than books.
Sustainable Energy — without the hot air.
by David Mackay
The Hockey Stick Illusion; Climategate and the Corruption of Science
by Andrew Mountford
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John Daly wrote the instruction book on climate as far as I was concerned.
This is a book of knowledge distilled to the essence. John understood and could therefore communicate this knowledge in plain language.
For fiction I enjoyed? ( keep the razor away from your wrists) Ben Elton.
Ben Elton is an Author who has narrated us through the destruction of our freedoms. His books are dark with Blind Faith taking this darkness into a biblical event.
Personally I enjoyed ‘This Other Eden’. This novel ends with hope for those who do not fall for the narrative.
As a time line based on his novels we are currently within the bindings of ‘Two Brothers’ where the community is about to be set upon each other. The vaxxed against the un-vaxxed even though they know something is wrong they chose what appears to be the easiest way for them.
So Fascism is covered from birth masked as a righteous cause in ‘Stark’ through to the destruction of knowledge and personal liberty in ‘Blind Faith’
[ These aren’t Climate related books, which was the Host’s request. – LVA]
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I beg to differ.
Worth reading ‘Stark’ and ‘This Other Eden’. All very climate based apocalyptic novels with the super rich either fleeing the impending doom or selling their solution to the detriment of the environment.
‘Blind faith’ is post-apocalyptic and very much a warning about the path we have chosen.
May have been my choice of reviews that has caused this confusion.
Not so with ‘Two Brothers’. This book explores human nature not the climate. I feel Elton looks at division that can be cultivated by a tyrant. To me this book explores how the populace can be manipulated through the use of fear, coercion and deprivation such as many are now experiencing. So in the footsteps of Aynn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’, not exactly the climate as a central topic just exploring how Totalitarians control the narrative to bring the population to the current foggy state of desperation and despair.
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The real global warming disaster,by Christopher Booker,
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My favourite also, as I think this was the book that documented the history of the entire mess, from Bert Bolin and Maurice Strong right through to fairly recently.
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My favourite climate related book is a specialist publication that should be of interest to real climate scientists with some knowledge of mathematical models. It is “Climate change: Identification and Projections” by Philippe de Larminat, published by Wiley in 2014.
de Larminat applies system identification theory to determine the main factors influencing global temperature using 4 publicly available temperature reconstructions assuming that the main drivers are CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, solar irradiance and volcanic activity. System identification theory derives from identification of industrial systems so that control systems can be designed to optimise their performance. An example would be the performance of a steel blast furnace say to temperature in the hot zone, air flow through the furnace, oxygen content of air flow, composition of the feed etc.
Using this method he identified that the doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere corresponds to a 1.28C temperature rise (equivalent to solar irradiance of 1.6216 C/W/m2) while the sensitivity of temperature to solar irradiance is 17.7 C/W/m2. As you can see sensitivity to solar irradiance completely overwhelms any influence of CO2 and goes a long way to explain the fact that the current climate models that ignore solar irradiance do not predict global temperature as reflected in the observations.
The weakness of this approach is that it does not show the mechanism of the various effects and this must be found elsewhere. Nevertheless it points to the need for further investigation into the actual science and to the need for better understanding of how climate is controlled.
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“A Disgrace to the Profession” compiled and edited by Mark Steyn
The world’s scientists – in their own words – on someone and his hockey stick.
I enjoyed the book when it first came out and it is still a damning inditement on the field of climate science.
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Climate change- the facts (IPA),
Reef Heresy. Peter Ridd (IPA).
False Alarm. Bjorn Lomborg. (2021 edition).
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False Alarm is my current “Go To” book, full of facts and data, clearly explaining why the approaches of Paris and COP26 clearly won’t achieve anything.
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Koonin’s Unsettled. It’s up to date and you MUST start with the science and then move on to the politics, not vice-versa. Koonin does.
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Full marks to Koonin and I think he showed that we don’t have to go very far into the science to take down the fraud.
In a friendly way I want to challenge the idea that we have to start with the science, certainly not serious physics, if we want to take down the fraud in the eyes of the public. We can’t go to the public with de Larminat’s system identification work or Happer and Lindzen on the greenhouse effect and the spectroscopic performance of the various gases in the atmosphere.
We can use the geological record to show the lack of alignment of temperature and CO2 levels. And there was no runaway warming with elevated CO2 and life flourished with warmer temperatures.
We can explain that the cold weather of the Little Ice Age was lethal, civilization and farming flourished when it was warm, and the petrochemical revolution based on fossil fuels has produced the most comfortable, well-fed, long-lived, healthy and prosperous world population that we have ever seen. And CO2 is greening the planet. Shit holes remain but we know that nothing the climate alarmists or the left want to do will help them.
I am suggesting a kind of flanking attack with two fronts, one is the environmental impact of climate policies and the other is the threat to the source of power that are the very foundation of our primary and secondary industries and our whole way of life.
We can explain what is happening on those fronts without much in the way of science, certainly nothing that to bewilder a literate school leaver. I don’t know what to do about the illiterate school leavers but that is another story. When people are in touch with those stories we can take the next step and invite them to think about the motivation of the people who are driving us along those tracks.
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I have the impression that people generally trust scientists. According to the publicity, scientists are saying our CO2 emissions are responsible for the warming and that if we let it continue we’re all going to die next week.
A good number of people will therefore say a risk to power supply and the climate policy impacts are secondary to the impending disaster.
Showing people the science is the best means to counteract that or the threat to humanity argument can never go away.
People don’t understand the science behind CO2 trapping heat. But enough scientists have said that happens and more than enough publicity has said it happens. Literate and illiterate believe it.
You debunk the science and have the publicity to go with that debunking and the power reliability issue suddenly has the weight that makes it worth discussing.
There is of course ideology. No amount of science or power concerns will change the opinion of those who see fossil fuels as the epitome of capitalism, which they want to destroy.
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Yes and No, Rafe. It won’t do to tell the people: “We can’t afford this” if the earth really is burning up. We must first convince them that they don’t *have* to give up their lifestyles. That means starting with the science.
There is a valid question of how to start with the science, of course. For a year or two I told people in bars that we have for about 100 years known how to calculate the greenhouse effect of given increments of CO2 in a dry atmosphere, but for a wet planet like ours the water makes the calculation so much harder that it’s still basically guesswork and the IPCC always quotes the worst case scenario. Despite having given many lectures in popular science I saw people’s eyes glaze over. Then I changed strategy to telling them that the temperatures for the past were being altered downwards before being fed into the models for parameter estimation, with the effect of exaggerating the subsequent warming. That did the trick. to those who wanted to hear more I then explained that there was a rationale to it, to correct for UHI effects at Stevenson screens that had later been built round, but that the corrections were not calculated properly and that often webpages of historic temperature data for the past had simply been changed with no explanation. I’d have had a serious telling-off from my school physics teacher for that.
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“Twilight of Abundance” by David Archibald provides a good coverage of what could happen if global cooling lowers the temperature a bit too much.
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Yes. I also liked his ideas on the use of coal to produce liquid transport fuels and energy in general.
A cold world is a hungry world.
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Any non leftist edited history book(the number of such shrinks every day..try 2nd hand booksellers) which details geologically, the periods of glaciation and vulcanism that affected the planet long before that chimp first held fast onto that sow and well before the resulting produce even knew fire.
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Message to Yonnie and anyone else who might attend the Melbourne protest on Saturday.
I will try to be near the statue of Adam Lindsay Gordon on the Gordon Lawn (Spring St next to Parliament) at 14:30 with a Eureka flag.
If the crowd is very dense there I will move down to the statute of General Charles Gordon.
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Rupert Darwall’s pair of books : “The Age Of Global Warming: A History”, a recounting of the political shenanigans that implanted “Climate Change” as the lead modern disaster, and its successor “Green Tyranny: Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex”.
Anything by Andrew Montford, with special reference to “Hide The Decline”
and Geoffrey Parker’s magnum opus on the devastation the LIA caused all over the planet, “Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the 17th Century”.
And folks, I haven’t provided Amazon links because Amazon are filth. Yes they make life easier, but they are as vile a company as the big tech platforms. Read “Surveillance Capitalism” by Shohona Zuboff and do what I did – delete your Amazon account and all your social media accounts.
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Aloha! Maybe read the SBA Guide Book To Government Loans. Why? Because it covers the main ingredient that none of the climate books or the tv political hype covers which is the “climate ROI”. To qualify for an SBA loan you need a business plan that shows a “Return On Investment”(ROI). Someone tell me what the “climate ROI” is? Why are politicians and activists exempt from ROI when We The People are not?
Biden has a $50bil investment into climate in this latest bill. What do we get for that $50bil? Since we all know man-made climate is producing extreme climate events like hurricanes and fires then what do we get? Do we get three less cat5 hurricanes in 2022? Do we get five less California fires in 2023? Maybe we get 10% more Arctic ice by 2023? There has to be some sort of tangible return on that $50bil. Bidens bill wouldn’t even qualify for an SBA loan. The SBA will turn you down if your business plan shows no return until 2030. Promises don’t count for a business plan. Nobody pays for a Tesla S today who will wait until 2030 to drive it. Not even biden would wait until 2030 for his CCP bribe money? No ROI no science … no loan … NO VOTE!!
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Perhaps I haven’t been paying enough attention, but a few good books seems to have missed the list.
Patrick Moore, Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout;
Patrick Moore, Fake Catastrophies and Prophesies of Doom;
Michael Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never;
Jim Steele, Landscapes and Cycles.
Importantly all three authors are life-long environmentalists. And all have the experience and intelligence to have fought their way through a tsunami of CAGW eco-hype.
Essential reading in my view, if you wish to lance the boil at its source.
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I second that. I scrolled down to nominate your first three; you just beat me to it.
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Rudi
As a companion book to Shellenbergers work, can I add to that Lomborgs “False Alarm “
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Apocalypse Never… blaming a victim- re Climate Change and Covid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLxZF_EWaLE&ab_channel=JordanBPeterson
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All of the above plus Wilfred Beckerman’s “A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth”. Beckerman was an economics professor at Oxford & UCL and this 2002 book is a succinct analysis of the vagueness of the concept of sustainable growth, the stupidity of both resource depletion scares – prices goes up when things are scarce & substitution takes place – and of the precautionary principle.
Also a tip for Nigel Lawson’s “An Appeal to Reason”
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As far as books, I learned of Tim Ball’s books from following Climate Audit. Human Caused Global Warming: The Biggest Deception in History.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24690821-human-caused-global-warming
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A rather obscure read is this:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/reprint/climategate_analysis.pdf
It exposes and puts into context the Climate Gate scandal. And the Climate Gate Scandal was about protecting the Hockey Stick from scrutiny, and promoting the so called consensus. The Hockey Stick underpins the entire thing.
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The underlying assumption of the “climate crisis” is that our CO2 emissions are causing it.
Read Ed Berry’s “Climate Miracle”
https://edberry.com/blog/climate/climate-physics/we-build-our-lives-on-our-assumptions/
See that this assumption is false and all the rest topples.A short and eye opening read.
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Even when narrowing the topic to exposing the globalling heating scam there are so many good books.
There is one not mentioned here so far which I highly recommend:
Climate Change: A Politicised Storm in a Teacup.
Author, John Happs
Dr John Happs has qualifications and experience in consulting and education in all the areas relating to climate, though would self-describe primarily as a geo-scientist.
An outline of the book, and how to get it, is given here:
https://saltbushclub.com/2020/09/06/climate-change-a-politicised-storm-in-a-teacup/
The book is very well referenced, as you would expect, but the references are web addresses, a bit difficult for slow typists.
The various claims of the alarmists are dealt with but the focus is on exposing the corruption of science for the furtherance of political objectives, wealth and power of certain well known notorious big names.
Many quotes are given to justify that claim. It can be said that such quotes can be misleading if taken out of context. Well yes, but the sources are given and the full context is clear.
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This time last year I wrote an article on this subject and gave my recommendations
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/11/27/books-on-the-climate-emergency-suggested-christmas-reading-for-sceptics/
Its worth reading the comments as some people were angry that I suggested a book by Greta Thunberg but if we want to understand the ways our adversaries think we can’t close our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears.
I would also recommend any book by Hubert Lamb plus History of climate’ by Phil jones ‘Climate and weather’ by John Kington (all the latter 3 worked together at the University Of East Anglia.) Plus ‘The little Ice age’ by Brian Fagan
Also add in ‘Times of feast times of Famine’ by E Le Roy Ladurie ‘A cultural history of climate’ by Wolfgang Behringer and last but not least ‘Outrageous waves’ by Basil Cracknell subtitled ‘Global warming and coastal change in Britain through 2000 years”
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This is my favorite proxy climate book which is a summary of the Greenland Ice Sheet 2 project. The discovery of the D-O warming events in the Greenland Ice sheet analysis and in Gerald Bond’s analysis of the sea floor sediment cores in the North Atlantic (23 cycles) disproves AGW. i.e. High latitude warming has happened before and the past warming has the same signature (same regions warmed and cooled) as recent warming.
The general public is not aware the Antarctic Ice sheet cools cyclically during the cyclic Dansgaard-Oschger warming periods which are also called Bond events. The past warming events is in the same regions as the most recent warming. The warming events have a periodicity of 1400 years with a beat (plus or minus) of 400 years. As Gerald Bond noted in peer reviewed papers, the warming correlates with changes in cosmogenic isotopes which are caused by solar changes and changes to the geomagnetic field.
The phenomena where the Antarctic ice sheet cools when the Greenland ice sheet warms is called the polar see-saw.
The Ice Chronicles: The Quest to Understand Global Climate Change, by Paul Mayewski
https://www.amazon.com/Ice-Chronicles-Understand-Global-Climate/dp/161168384X
The Climate proxy specialists did not believe the first Greenland Ice core analysis as it showed that the Greenland ice sheet cyclically warms for a period of about 150 years. Mayewski speculates in the book that the sun is causing the cyclic temperature changes on the earth because there is no internal earth system that is/can be cyclic and that can change the climate in both interglacial and glaciation climates.
This cyclic warming occurs in both the glacial and interglacial period. The warming periods are followed by cooling periods, including the cyclic unexplained extreme cooling events which are called Heinrich events. For example, the Younger Dryas abrupt cooling event 12,900 years BP or the 8,200 years BP abrupt cooling event. Both abrupt cooling events occurred when the summer solar insolation, at 65N has maximum for this interglacial period. Solar summer insolation is now the same as it was during the coldest period of the last glacial period. The super large (up to 6C cooling) abrupt cooling events, called ‘Heinrich’ events occur every 6000 years to 8000 years and occur immediately after the D-O warming event. These super large unexplained abrupt cooling ‘events’ terminate interglacial periods.
The duration of the Heinrich abrupt cooling events correlates with the amount of cooling. The 6C YD abrupt cooing event lasted for 1200 years. The 8200 yr BP abrupt cooling event which was a cooling event of about 2C and lasted for about 400 years.
Oddly/ironically the book did not include a graph showing the warming periods as when the book was published, is the start of Climate science intimidation in the universities.
The past warming events had the same ‘signature’ as the most recent warming event. Based on solar observations (the mechanism that creates sunspots has been interrupted) is now over. There is warming for about 100 to 150 years and there is short term warming for either 20 years or 30 years correlating with a change in the sun, that is followed by a Maunder minimum. This recent warming period started in 1996, which is 25 years ago.
Greenland ice temperature, last 11,000 years determined from ice core analysis, Richard Alley’s paper.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif
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The most influential book dealing with climate change that i have read is Aynsley Kellow’s:
“Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science and Negotiating Climate Change”
Kellow is an emeritus Professor at the University of Tasmania .
I am not sure what inspired me to read it shortly after it was published in 2007, it was very expensive at over $100, but it was so logical, well written and revealing that i bought a second copy so i could lend it to friends without the risk of losing it altogether (i still have both copies)
The other most influential climate change book for me is Bjorn Lomborg’s “The Skeptical Environmentalist.” (2001) While not focussed exclusively on climate change, it exposed the dishonesty and fake statistics used by environmentalists to promote their causes. This book led to my deep skepticism of the so called climate change science. I also have two copies of this book.
I have a bookcase full of climate change books and continue to read about and obssessively research the topic. However, these two were the most effective in establishing the base on which my skepticism is founded.
Even though they are now both difficult to obtain, i continue to strongly recommend them
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Thanks for your praise, George. I’m glad you liked it.
On small correction, however: Negotiating Climate Change is a separate book – my 2018 take on Paris. You seem to have conflated the title of the two together. That does contain some surther discussion of climate science (including Climategate) in discussing the debasement of science in a vain belief that if it is made extreme enough to cause nation states to ignore their interests.
More recently, the IPA engaged my as a Special Correspondent on COP26 in Glasgow, and you can find the daily bulletins (and some preview pieces) here:
https://climatechangethefacts.org.au/blog/
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Aynsley, apologies for my careless copying and pasting error.
I, of course, meant “Science and Public Policy …….” but will now go and read “Negotiating Climate Change.”
Posting my response, led me to go back to the book and flip a few pages – it’s as interesting and valuable as ever. It’s a pity it isn’t more accessible.
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Cheers George. I suspected a copy/paste error!
The publisher did discount Science and Public Pilicy a few years back, but their business model is to sell into the institutional market with hardback editions mostly (sometimes only). But, as Dean of mine said, we should be grateful for any publisher still willing to publish a physical book these days.
Incidentally, the recent work by W. A. van Wijngaarden and W. Happer such as “Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases” Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics is interesting. Actual measurements as opposed to computer model runs seem to suggest a modest warming of only 0.12°C per decade – which agrees with the satellite observations.\
Rather underscores the overall theme of my book – the reliance of much environmental science on models rather than observations.
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A good article by Crichton is linked below:
https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf
John
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Christopher Booker.
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Rafe,
Two useful books, sadly both long at 589 and 408 page paperbacks are:
“The Apocalyptics” by Edith Efron 1984 and “Earth in the Balance – Forging a New Common Purpose” by Al Gore 1992.
These detail many of the main starting points, the generalisations, that form a base of information available as of the early 1990s before the madness really escalated.
Edith Efron, a journalism researcher, does a tight, neutral, referenced analysis of the last big scare before global warming happened. It covers activist medical researchers, mainly from USA government positions, concerning the postulated scare that man-made chemicals were creating an epidemic of cancer. Their main forecasts were wrong, as the passing of time has shown.
You can use “The Apocalyptics” as a guide to how activism works and importantly, what the end game looks like as the fraud is exposed. It is much easier to understand climate change strategies when you are educated by “The Apocalyptics”.
You can use “Earth in the Balance” to show how a series of bad assumptions, in the hands of a dedicated evangelist with power and funds in his reach, can play a big part in creating a global scare and profiting from it. Each re-read supports the accusation that Gore and his ilk are in it for the money. Sadly, I have not done a para-by-para criticism of its many errors, because I’m too old and tired. But, as a suggestion, somebody ought to. A neutral, tight comparison of what Gore assumed back then, compared to what is better know now, would do a lot to take some of the followers of Gore to the other side. Use “The Apocalyptics methodology to write “Earth is Always in Balance – Forging a New, Common Truth.” Geoff S
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Two books that really moved me along from “I have a feeling all this is nonsense” to ” bloody hell, it really is” are:
“Greenhouse – The Biggest Rort in Christendom” by Peter Toynbee 1995 (I read this about 1999)
“The Solar Fraud – Why Solar Energy Won’t Run the World” by Howard C Hayden 2001 (I read this about 2001)
Also, but not a book, the great John Daly website “Still Waiting For Greenhouse”
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My favorite book is Watchmen.
It’s a fantasy book.
I like it because it’s interesting, mysterious and very funny.
It’s a book about a girl, Vasilisa, who was doing rhythmic gymnastics and didn’t have a mother.
But then she finds out that she has a magician father and she meets her friends and brother and sister and then everything is very anticipatory and interesting
There are 6 books in this series.
I really like this book.
And I’ve read it many times.
Like this.
Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
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My favorite book is Watchmen.
It’s a fantasy book.
I like it because it’s interesting, mysterious and very funny.
It’s a book about a girl, Vasilisa, who was doing rhythmic gymnastics and didn’t have a mother.
But then she finds out that she has a magician father and she meets her friends and brother and sister and then everything is very anticipatory and interesting
There are 6 books in this series.
I really like this book.
And I’ve read it many times.
Like this.
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Climate by Jeremy Nieboer, published by The Bruges Group, ISBN 978-1-838658-5-0
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Who reads books nowadays?? Books are a narrow, blinkered view of the world. Unfortunately, the NET is the only way all sides of a debate can be considered…that is, if people want to be pragmatic
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The Deniers – Lawrence Soloman
I pick this book because I see it as a very good one to give to anyone wanting to learn why their view might be wrong. It is not written by a sceptic but by a journalist with an open mind who was curious about those who did not subscribe to the ‘settled science’. So arising from what he thought might be a short run of weekly columns, he discovered that there were many ‘Deniers’ and that some were afraid to talk about while others were pre-eminent in their fields. In a final chapter he looks at the IPCC mob and find a base of 12 activists who have achieved nothing of note in their careers as opposed to those they denigrate. One interesting point I found was while many thought that the IPCC was bovine feces in their own sphere, they were unwilling to believe this was the case throughout.
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the biblical flood now recognized in science and geological records as the Noah event. A magnetic excursion or reversal caused it. Today the same is happening in combination with many other harmonics that reoccur on earth, but don’t worry warp speed will save us for sure.
so my favorite book on climate is the bible.
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