TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| The Real Global Warming Disaster by Christopher Booker Considerable effort has gone into Christopher Booker's definitive manual for sceptics. Shame he's talking bunk, says Philip BallChristopher Booker, Sunday Telegraph columnist and bete noir of climate campaigners, has here produced the definitive climate sceptics' manual. That's to say, he has rounded up just about every criticism ever made of the majority scientific view that global warming, most probably caused by human activity, is under way, and presented them unchallenged. If you share his convictions, you'll love it, and will dismiss the rest of this review as part of the cover-up.Me, I was moved to a queer kind of admiration for the skill and energy with which Booker has assembled his polemic. Unlike other climate-sceptic diatribes such as the Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle or the writings of Nigel Lawson, this one cannot be dismissed with off-the-shelf knowledge. And some of it is true. But much, including the central claim, is bunk.Some of Booker's stratagems are transparent enough. One is to introduce all climate sceptics with a little eulogy to their credentials, while their opponents receive only a perfunctory, if not disparaging, preamble. This reaches its apotheosis on the back cover with a quote from "the world's leading atmospheric physicist and 'climate scientist''', MIT professor Richard Lindzen. Unusually for sceptics, Lindzen does have significant academic status, but probably only his mother would endorse this description.Another of Booker's techniques is to latch on to genuine flaws in the science or its dissemination with the tenacity of a bulldog. Predictably, he attacks the infamous "hockey stick" graph, a plot of global mean temperatures over the past 1,000 years produced by two scientists in 1998 which shows little change for the entire period until suddenly soaring in the 20th century.It is now mostly accepted that the analysis that produced these data was wrong. The question, still unresolved, is "how wrong?" – have we experienced comparable warming in the historical past, in which case the argument that it is a natural fluctuation seems plausible, or is the current trend truly unusual? But Booker's implication that the entire edifice of the global-warming consensus rested on the shaky hockey stick is absurd: it was one strand among many. For a balanced critique of this episode, look instead to Richard Muller's Physics for Future Presidents (Norton).In the end, the devil is in the detail. And therein lies the problem, for to dismantle Booker's case would require an equally long and citation-encrusted book. You are going to get nothing more (here at least) than my word for it that, say, the first of Booker's accusations about faulty science and procedural misdemeanour that I chose at random to investigate further – the resignation of hurricane specialist Chris Landsea from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2005, and the UK chief scientific adviser David King's trip to a bizarre climate meeting in Moscow the same year – proved to have a rather different complexion from the one presented here.Yet some of the cracks become evident just from paying attention. When Booker commits the cardinal sin, for which climate scientists have often castigated alarmists, of making a swallow into a summer (or, here, winter) by using the cold snap of 2008 as a reason to doubt the warming trend, it's game over. And by claiming that the slight cooling trend since around 2003 undermines the IPCC's climate models, he fails to understand that different timescales demand different models: the projections for 2100 are hardly meant to predict whether next summer will be a scorcher. Don't even get me started about the graph on page 328 that shows this cooling; just take a look at http://tiny.cc/mpjJB and then tell me what you feel about it.Besides, Booker admits that a climate model in which medium-term ocean circulation was included was able in 2009 to rationalise the current cooling (which may last until 2015). We are supposed to regard this result as suspiciously convenient, but even Booker can come up with no scientific reasons to discard it. Indeed, he later criticises the IPCC models for failing to simulate shifts in ocean currents. His aim is simply to sling enough mud and to hell with consistency.Suppose you are genuinely undecided on climate change and determined not to be guided simply by what you'd like to believe. If unpicking the real story demands so much effort and insider knowledge, how can you possibly make up your mind? Here's an unscientific suggestion. 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.There's a third option: the world's climate system is hugely complex, hard to predict and constantly surprising; yet in the long term the world is getting warmer, for reasons we basically understand, and there is good reason to believe that humans are mostly responsible for it.Science and natureClimate changeClimate change scepticismClimate changeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Breakfast briefing: Online Christmas sales boom, NYC's Twittering gangs and Kindle problems • As December lubes itself up in the calendar's birth canal, the world and its dog is gearing up for Christmas: not least online retailers, who are looking forward to record sales despite the recession. November 30th is what they call (rather anachronistically) "Cyber Monday" in the United States, but the positive signs are already around - last Friday was a record-breaker for PayPal, while Activision said that the Call of Duty franchise had surpassed $3bn in sales.• Here's one you can expect to get picked up by as an example of How the Internet is Destroying Society: a report from the New York Daily News detailing how some of the city's gangs are using Twitter. A variety of groups are throwing out taunts and exchanging insults online, which (of course) is the sort of thing that will raise the hackles of anti-net doomers who don't realise that kids will use whatever tools are at hand to give each other grief. The article quotes local police as saying it's actually handy, since they're able to sift through the site for records and evidence.• After plenty of talk about Amazon's Kindle over recent months, here's an interesting post from John Battelle, who says that he got one as a gift but doesn't want to read books on it. His reasoning, basically, is that Amazon has turned books into a piece of data, not a social object that can be shared and enjoyed with others. Having ploughed through a succession of books - and then given most of them away - while on holiday over the past couple of weeks, I think he's onto something.You can follow our links and commentary each day through Twitter (@guardiantech, or our personal accounts) or by watching our Delicious feed.GamesInternetRetail industryTwitterAmazon.comEbooksBobbie Johnsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Book Buzz: What's new on the list and in publishing Julia Child is still stirring up sales; award winner Colum McCann is on a roll; and a debut author is out with a new twist on ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
New in paperback: 'Lark & Termite' "Throbs with sound and fury" is how USA TODAY's Olivia Barker describes the prose in this National Book Award finalist by Jayne ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Ursula Le Guin leads revolt against Google digital book settlement As opt-out deadline approaches, writer launches petition asking for US to be exempt from controversial agreementThe family of John Steinbeck has reversed its decision to oppose Google's controversial plans to digitise millions of books, but a growing chorus of authors led by acclaimed science fiction writer Ursula K Le Guin have registered their resistance to the scheme.As the deadline of 28 January for writers to opt out of the Google book settlement approaches, Le Guin has launched a petition, signed by almost 300 authors, asking that the US "be exempted from the settlement", and that "the principle of copyright, which is directly threatened by the settlement, be honoured and upheld in the United States". Signatories to the petition include Kamila Shamsie, author of the Orange prize-shortlisted Burnt Shadows, respected science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson and Nick Harkaway, author of the hit debut novel The Gone-Away World."The free and open dissemination of information and of literature, as it exists in our public libraries, can and should exist in the electronic media. All authors hope for that," wrote Le Guin in her petition, having previously resigned from the Authors Guild over its support of the Google settlement, calling it a "deal with the devil"."But we cannot have free and open dissemination of information and literature unless the use of written material continues to be controlled by those who write it or own legitimate right in it," her petition continued. "We urge our government and our courts to allow no corporation to circumvent copyright law or dictate the terms of that control."The Google book settlement followed legal action by US authors and publishers against Google over its digitisation of works without consent. The search giant reached a deal with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in 2008, but following objections from groups including the US Department of Justice it amended the $125m (£77.5m) deal, presenting a revised version of the settlement to a New York federal court in November. A final hearing is scheduled for 18 February, but authors have until 28 January to decide whether to opt out of the settlement or to raise objections to it.Harkaway and Shamsie, both signatories to Le Guin's petition, have taken different approaches, Harkaway opting out and Shamsie deciding to opt in despite her opposition, as she believes it will give her greater control over what happens to her books. "It comes down to this: are you willing to legitimise the Google book settlement by opting in in order to exercise greater control over your work, while recognising there's no absolute guarantee of control, or would you prefer to opt out, have no part in the Google book settlement, and hold on to your rights to sue, even if this means your control over what happens with your books is vastly diminished?" she said.She "very reluctantly" decided to opt in and instruct Google that she doesn't want her books used if they've already digitised them, and doesn't want them to be digitised if they haven't already done so. "I think like a lot of authors I woke up to the situation fairly late. I was always dimly aware of it but I wasn't paying it enough attention," she said. "When the deadline started approaching I realised I would have to look more closely [and realised] there were too many grey areas, too much which can go horribly wrong for writers."The Steinbeck family, however, has reversed the opposition to the deal it aired last year, and decided to opt in."While we continue in our belief that what Google did was an imperious act of copyright infringement, it is time to step off the battlefield and evaluate our losses and our gains. When we look at the new conditions of the revised settlement, it meets our standards of control over the intellectual properties that would otherwise remain at risk were we to stay out of the settlement," wrote Gail Steinbeck, wife of Thomas Steinbeck, the author's son, in a statement yesterday.Le Guin said she would be sending her petition, for which she is still gathering support, to the judge overseeing the case by 28 January.Ursula K Le GuinPublishingGoogleAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |