The Real Global Warming Disaster (Is the Obsession with 'Climate Change' Turning Out to Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History?) is a 2009 book by English journalist and author Christopher Booker in which he asserts that global warming cannot be attributed to humans, and then alleges how the scientific opinion on climate change was formulated.
From a standpoint of environmental scepticism, Booker seeks to combine an analysis of the science of global warming with the consequences of political decisions to reduce CO 2 emissions and claims that, as governments prepare to make radical changes in energy policies, the scientific evidence for global warming is becoming increasingly challenged. He asserts that global warming is not supported by a significant number of climate scientists, and criticises how the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents evidence and data, in particular citing its reliance on potentially inaccurate global climate models to make temperature projections. Booker concludes, "it begins to look very possible that the nightmare vision of our planet being doomed"[1] may be imaginary, and that, if so, "it will turn out to be one of the most expensive, destructive, and foolish mistakes the human race has ever made".[1]
The book's claims were strongly criticised by science writerPhilip Ball,[2] but the book was praised by several columnists. The book opens with an erroneous quotation,[3] which Booker subsequently acknowledged and promised to correct in future editions.[4]
The book was Amazon UK's fourth bestselling environment book of the decade 2000–10.[5]
In the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear
Booker contends that in this quote Shakespeare is identifying that "when we are not presented with enough information for our minds to resolve something into certainty, they may be teased into exaggerating it into something quite different from what it really is".[6] The first chapter of the book is the introduction, where Booker warns us of the risk posed by 'those measures being proposed by the world's politicians in the hope that they can avert' climate change. It talks about the ineffectiveness of wind turbines, and how they produce the same amount of energy per year as one coal-fired power station (3.9 gigawatts). In the prologue, Booker claims that many people, including the former U.S President Barack Obama, were 'seriously misinformed' about the evidence surrounding Global Warming and the effects it might have on the world. Part I of the book tells how Climate Change has risen to 'the top of the World's political agenda' so quickly, and the methods he thinks the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change used to convince politicians that the issue was genuine, including James Hansen's famous hearing before the American Senate, where he allegedly turned the room temperature up in order the strengthen his point. Part II of the book is entitled 'Gore and the EU unite to Save the Planet'. It depicts how, panic-stricken, the world's politicians took action to encourage more renewable forms of energy, and the closure of the world's non-renewable power stations. Finally, Part III speaks of how the Global Warming 'consensus begins (began) to crumble.' It claims that the evidence behind Climate Change and its causes is coming under increased scrutiny, and that by no means is the science "settled".
Reception
The book received a positive reception from non-scientists in the media: In The Spectator, Rodney Leach said it was one of the best of its type, remarking that Booker "narrates this story with the journalist's pace and eye for telling detail and the historian's forensic thoroughness which have made him a formidable opponent of humbug".[7] Columnist James Delingpole, himself the author of a denialist book, described the book as "another of those classics which any even vaguely intelligent person who wants to know what's really going on needs to read".[8] Writing in The Herald, Brian Morton was largely sympathetic to the position taken by Booker in the book, attributing global warming to natural causes.[9] A positive review by Henry Kelly in The Irish Times, referring to the book as "meticulously researched, provocative and challenging",[10] was criticised by Irish environmental campaigner and climatechange.ie website founder John Gibbons, who said that the decision by The Irish Times to allow Kelly to review The Real Global Warming Disaster was part of a recent trend of "the media giving too much coverage to 'anti-science' climate change deniers and failing to convey the gravity of the threat, making readers and viewers apathetic".[11] In The Scotsman, writer and environmentalist Sir John Lister-Kaye chose The Real Global Warming Disaster as one of his books of the year, writing that "though barely credible in places" this was an "important, brave book making and explaining many valid points".[12]
Scientist Philip Ball, on the other hand, wrote in his review in The Observer that the book was "the definitive climate sceptics’ manual" in that it makes an uncritical presentation of "just about every criticism ever made of the majority scientific view" on global warming. Though expressing "a queer kind of admiration for the skill and energy with which Booker has assembled his polemic", Ball called the claims made by the author "bunk". Ball also criticised Booker's tactic of introducing global warming deniers "with a little eulogy to their credentials, while their opponents receive only a perfunctory, if not disparaging, preamble".[13]
Houghton misquotation
The book opens with an incorrect quotation which wrongly attributes to John T. Houghton the words "Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen".[14] The publishers apologised for this misquotation, confirmed that it would not be repeated, and agreed to place a corrigendum in any further copies of the book. In an article which appeared in The Sunday Telegraph on 20 February 2010, Booker wrote "we shall all in due course take steps to correct the record, as I shall do in the next edition of my book".[4] Houghton felt that Booker continued to misstate his position regarding the role of disasters in policy making, and he referred the matter to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC Reference 101959), following whose involvement The Sunday Telegraph published on 15 August a letter of correction by Houghton stating his actual position, that adverse events shock people and thereby bring about change.[15] An article supportive of Houghton appeared in the New Scientist magazine.[16]
↑ Connor, Steve (10 February 2010). "Fabricated quote used to discredit climate scientist". The Independent. Retrieved 10 February 2010. The quotation has since become the iconic smoking gun of the climate sceptic community. The words are the very first to appear in the "manual" of climate denialism written by the journalist and arch-sceptic Christopher Booker. They get more than a 100,000 hits on Google, and are wheeled out almost every time a climate sceptic has a point to make [...]
↑ Ball, Philip (15 November 2009). "The Real Global Warming Disaster by Christopher Booker". The Observer. Retrieved 4 February 2010. But much, including the central claim, is bunk. [...] Booker's position would require that you accept something like the following: 1) Most of the world's climate scientists, for reasons unspecified, decided to create a myth about human-induced global warming and have managed to twist endless measurements and computer models to fit their case, without the rest of the scientific community noticing. George W Bush and certain oil companies have, however, seen through the deception. 2) Most of the world's climate scientists are incompetent and have grossly misinterpreted their data and models, yet their faulty conclusions are not, as you might imagine, a random chaos of assertions, but all point in the same direction.
Christopher John Penrice Booker was an English journalist and author. He was a founder and first editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye in 1961. From 1990 onward he was a columnist for The Sunday Telegraph. In 2009, he published The Real Global Warming Disaster. He also disputed the link between passive smoking and cancer, and the dangers posed by asbestos. In his Sunday Telegraph section he frequently commented on the UK Family Courts and Social Services.
Sir John Theodore Houghton was a Welsh atmospheric physicist who was the co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) scientific assessment working group which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with Al Gore. He was the lead editor of first three IPCC reports. He was professor in atmospheric physics at the University of Oxford, former Director General at the Met Office and founder of the Hadley Centre.
Piers Akerman is an Australian columnist and conservative commentator for the Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph.
Ian Rutherford Plimer is an Australian geologist and professor emeritus at the University of Melbourne. He rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He has been criticised by climate scientists for misinterpreting data and spreading misinformation.
Christopher Walter Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley is a British public speaker and hereditary peer. He is known for his work as a journalist, Conservative political advisor, UKIP political candidate, and for his invention of the mathematical puzzle Eternity.
The Great Global Warming Swindle is a 2007 British polemical documentary film directed by Martin Durkin. The film denies the scientific consensus about the reality and causes of climate change, justifying this by suggesting that climatology is influenced by funding and political factors. The program was formally criticised by Ofcom, the UK broadcasting regulatory agency, which ruled the film failed to uphold due impartiality and upheld complaints of misrepresentation made by David King, who appeared in the film.
Climate change conspiracy theories assert that the scientific consensus on global warming is based on conspiracies to produce manipulated data or suppress dissent. It is one of a number of tactics used in climate change denial to attempt to manufacture political and public controversy disputing this consensus. Conspiracy theorists typically allege that, through worldwide acts of professional and criminal misconduct, the science behind global warming and climate change has been invented or distorted for ideological or financial reasons.
James Mark Court Delingpole is an English writer, journalist, and columnist who has written for a number of publications, including the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and The Spectator. He is a former executive editor for Breitbart London, and has published several novels and four political books. He describes himself as a libertarian conservative. He has frequently published articles promoting climate change denial and expressing opposition to wind power.
Climate change denial or global warming denial is dismissal or unwarranted doubt that contradicts the scientific consensus on climate change.
The Deniers is a 2008 book by Lawrence Solomon, a Canadian environmentalist and writer. Subtitled "The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud," the book draws attention to a number of scientists and others who, according to Solomon, have advanced arguments against what he calls the "alarmist" view of global warming, as presented by Al Gore, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the mainstream media, and others. The book is based on a series of columns Solomon wrote for Canada's National Post. It has been criticized for misquoting the scientists it featured.
An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming is a 2008 book by Nigel Lawson. In it, Lawson claims that, although global warming is happening, the science is far from settled. He opposes the scientific consensus as summarized by the IPCC. He also argues that warming will bring both benefits and negative consequences, and that the impact of these changes will be relatively moderate rather than apocalyptic. The book has been rejected by climatologists, including IPCC authors Jean Palutikof and Robert Watson as unscientific.
Heaven and Earth: Global Warming – The Missing Science is a popular science book published in 2009 and written by Australian geologist, professor of mining geology at Adelaide University, and mining company director Ian Plimer. It disputes the scientific consensus on climate change, including the view that global warming is "very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas concentrations" and asserts that the debate is being driven by what the author regards as irrational and unscientific elements.
The Climatic Research Unit email controversy began in November 2009 with the hacking of a server at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA) by an external attacker, copying thousands of emails and computer files to various internet locations several weeks before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change.
Climatic Research Unit documents including thousands of e-mails and other computer files were stolen from a server at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in a hacking incident in November 2009. The documents were redistributed first through several blogs of global warming deniers, who alleged that the documents indicated misconduct by leading climate scientists. A series of investigations rejected these allegations, while concluding that CRU scientists should have been more open with distributing data and methods on request. Precisely six committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. The scientific consensus that global warming is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged by the end of the investigations.
Watts Up With That? (WUWT) is a blog promoting climate change denial that was created by Anthony Watts in 2006.
Andrew William Montford is a British writer and editor who is the owner of the Bishop Hill blog. He is the author of The Hockey Stick Illusion (2010).
Skeptical Science is a climate science blog and information resource created in 2007 by Australian former cartoonist and web developer, John Cook, who received a PhD degree in cognitive science in 2016. In addition to publishing articles on current events relating to climate science and climate policy, the site maintains a database of articles analyzing the merit of arguments put forth by those who oppose the mainstream scientific opinion on climate change.
Marc Morano is a former Republican political aide who founded and runs the website ClimateDepot.com. ClimateDepot is a project of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), a US non-profit organisation that promotes climate change denial.
Peter Hadfield is a British freelance journalist and author, trained as a geologist, who runs the YouTube channel Potholer54, which has over 226,000 subscribers. He has previously lived in Japan, and now lives in Australia.
Timothy Francis Ball was a British-born Canadian public speaker and writer who was a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Winnipeg from 1971 until his retirement in 1996. Subsequently Ball became active in promoting rejection of the scientific consensus on global warming, giving public talks and writing opinion pieces and letters to the editor for Canadian newspapers.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
