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| Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies That Hurt the Poor |  | Author: Roy W. Spencer
Publisher: Encounter Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  111 reviews
Sales Rank: 33,777
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 215
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.6
ISBN: 1594033455
Dewey Decimal Number: 550
EAN: 9781594033452
ASIN: 1594033455
Publication Date: January 12, 2010
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Product Description
The current frenzy over global warming has galvanized the public and cost taxpayers billons of dollars in federal expenditures for climate research. It has spawned Hollywood blockbusters and inspired major political movements. It has given a higher calling to celebrities and built a lucrative industry for scores of eager scientists. In short, ending climate change has become a national crusade.
And yet, despite this dominant and sprawling campaign, the facts behind global warming remain as confounding as ever.
In Climate Confusion, distinguished climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer observes that our obsession with global warming has only clouded the issue. Forsaking blindingly technical statistics and doomsday scenarios, Dr. Spencer explains in simple terms how the climate system really works, why man’s role in global warming is more myth than science, and how the global warming hype has corrupted Washington and the scientific community.
The reasons, Spencer explains, are numerous: biases in governmental funding of scientific research, our misconceptions about science and basic economics, even our religious beliefs and worldviews. From Al Gore to Leonardo DiCaprio, the climate change industry has given a platform to leading figures from all walks of life, as pandering politicians, demagogues and biased scientists forge a self-interested movement whose proposed policy initiatives could ultimately devastate the economies of those developing countries they purport to aid.
Climate Confusion is a much needed wake up call for all of us on planet earth. Dr. Spencer’s clear-eyed approach, combined with his sharp wit and intellect, brings transparency and levity to the issue of global warming, as he takes on wrong-headed attitudes and misguided beliefs that have led to our state of panic. Climate Confusion lifts the shroud of mystery that has hovered here for far too long and offers an end to this frenzy of misinformation in our lives.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 111
 The best popular account of global warming science March 22, 2008
Lubos Motl (Cambridge, MA United States)
168 out of 192 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.
ESSENTIAL TOOL FOR YOUR BRAIN March 31, 2008
John W. Brosnahan (Texas)
73 out of 87 found this review helpful
I read Roy Spencer's book, Climate Confusion, this weekend. I don't know Dr. Spencer personally but I have followed his work and I've had some occasional email exchanges with him. I have found him to be the kind of personable ("really nice") guy with whom I would love to have a beer and discuss a wide variety of different topics. This book just magnifies that feeling by at least two orders of magnitude. The book was an easy read but it was not exactly what I had expected. But that certainly doesn't mean bad in any way -- the book was a very pleasant surprise! It provides an excellent foundation of weather/climate in layman's terms and then it goes into the philosophy of science, economics, politics, and religion and the implications of their interrelationships not only with climate science but also with science in general.
The key to this book is the subtitle: "How Global Warming Hysteria leads to bad science, pandering politicians, and misguided policies that hurt the poor."
I had anticipated that Roy might drive the nail into the coffin of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), but he did not! Rather, he gave the average guy a hammer and a lot of nails so he could decide for himself and then drive the nails into anything he wants, because the insights Roy provides are equally valid for many different government programs as well as human emotions and reactions in general. Even if your passion is NOT the global warming debate this book will help to make you think more rationally about any topic and just happens to use global warming as the example.
This is the book that poorly informed main-stream media types should read and is written at a level that anyone can understand. It is short, it is funny (at times), and it sets the stage for the reader to make his own decisions about AGW as well as many other issues in the complex climate-change SYSTEM -- where the climate-change SYSTEM also includes the politics, religion, economics, etc of climate.
The book is inexpensive enough at Amazon that everyone should buy multiple copies and pass them around to people who would never buy it themselves. After they read it, they will thank you for helping them to understand much more than just global warming. I bought two copies and one of them is getting mailed to a friend of mine who teaches climatology and is chairman of the earth science's department at a well-respected university. This book "WORKS" whether you are a student, businessman, or PhD in climatology. It is well worth the small investment in time and money. It will provide clarity to many more things than just the climate-change debate.
Sanity at last.... March 25, 2008
Robert Busko (North Carolina)
122 out of 149 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.
A Must Read if you want to understand the furor over climate change March 24, 2008
Wesley R. Smith
63 out of 76 found this review helpful
Roy Spencer gets to the heart of the debate by focusing on the human, emotional, and religious aspects of those who hold the mainstream view: that climate change is primarily man made, and that it will lead to cataclysmic climate events unless we do something NOW. Like most climatologist skeptics (and there are more out there than you think) he approaches his subject (Climate change) with an appreciation for what we don't know about the science, and a sense of humility that comes from observing the climate in action, rather than through the algorithm of a computer model. Rather than brand his opponents in the debate with some ill motive, he lays out common sense explanations of why the scientific community may have gotten the theory of anthropogenic global warming wrong in a fundamental way.
Well presented and interesting March 22, 2008
Mark Jackson (Fort Collins, CO)
54 out of 66 found this review helpful
I found this book to be a good read, and understandable for an average person. I got a chuckle out of the emotional review "Bad Science" seeming to claim that a scientist can not disagree with a "consensus" without being funded by Exxon, engaging in propaganda, etc. In a scientific search for truth shouldn't even just one person armed with new facts be able to sway a consensus? At least that's how it's supposed to work. In the book, the author presents a good description of what he believes is a strong negative feedback in the climate system - precipitation systems - that are currently unaccounted or inadequately accounted for in the current climate models. I enjoyed this book as it presented new information I hadn't read before and therefore recommend it to anyone interested in the topic. Wished it would have been available on the Kindle, it was my first paper book since January :-)
Showing reviews 1-5 of 111
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