Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know
Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know – Review
What are climate skeptics skeptical about? Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling, Jr. do not doubt that manmade global warming is naturally occurring, in fact, they are skeptical about claims that the global warming of the past 50 years is entirely or predominantly due to open cycles. Early in their recent book, Climate of Extremes, they counter these claims with evidence that the directly observed warming, while not entirely manmade, has the fingerprints of manmade global warming. But, they are very clear that there are natural cycles–local, regional and global–and that the hysterical calculations of impending climate catastrophe are based on either the disorder of environmental variability with anthropogenic causes, or are based on faulty and biased computer models. Following the subject of Michaels’ earlier book, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media, they examine the history of the climate and of climatologists. Both records say for much more calm than many media, politicians and scientists show. Michaels and Balling debunk the warnings of climate doom. The cold ice cap slowly melting is not unprecedented. The much-hyped rapidly melting of Greenland’s ice sheet is eight per cents per year, which would lead to a sea-level development of two inches per century–not the 20 feet projected in An Inconvenient Truth–and even that is directly overlooking the actual net deposit of ice that occurs inland. Increasing and increasingly deadly hurricanes, receding glaciers, droughts, floods, killing heat waves and more are shown to be misrepresented, misdiagnosed, or wildly exaggerated. If global warming is not such a significant problem, then why are we constantly being repeatedly warned of (scared by) predictions of climate Armageddon? Asserting that non-problems lead to non-funding could be viewed as bitter grapes if Michaels and Bolling eventually stopped at assertion. They don’t. In the arranging chapters they look at the data on publication patterns to back up the powerful accusation of hypothetical bias in favor of deliberately exaggerating the case for impending and extreme climate changes. Actual climatologists with Ph.D.s and originally published research, Michaels and Balling examine the data and make a clear case for non-hysteria on the climate front. While the data, detail, charts and figures produce the widely read a mostly bit wonkish at times, it is very interesting and well worth the effort if you are at all interested in the climate debate.