Customer Reviews: Read 14 more reviews...
 Complacent and Irresponsible - a non-scientists response to the scientific evidence of climate change June 29, 2008
Bryn Higgs (UK)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
If you are looking for a hard-headed critique from the other side of the climate change debate you will not find it here. A few points that Nigel and his editors should consider:
1. The fact that the warmest years of the last decade or more have not happened in strictly ascending order is not a rational argument that climate change is not happening, any more than a snow flurry in spring means that summer will not happen after all.
2. When plants take in Carbon Dioxide and release Oxygen to the atmosphere it is not called 'breathing', as any moderately able GCSE student will be able to confirm.
3. When the political and scientific realities do not match up, however difficult it may be, it will be easier to change the politics.
In summary, if you are looking for reassurance that your children and grandchildren will not suffer from the consequences of our current actions, you will find none here. I suggest all readers stick to the science of the IPCC reports and their interpretation, and take appropriate action.
 Buy this book - you wont regret it. June 29, 2008
Prime-Buyer (UK)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Buy this book - you wont regret it, in fact - buy for your friends and family as well. Buy in duplicate for the ever existent family member who bores us all to distraction with predications regarding the end of the world should we fail to get energy saving lightbulbs. Buy in triplicate for your local councillor who is trying to get your vote for a 'green' scheme that will cost you time and money.
An Appeal to Reason. A Cool Look At Global Warming. June 28, 2008
Mr. P. sammut (United Kingdom)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a very good book. It follows a number of books written about the " great climate change" swindle.
Of course the various rat-bags, idiots,ex flower people,toad lickers and mushroom eaters, will always decry and will continue to debunk the real scientists who show up these luddites and their hysterical pseudo science.
He shouldn't bothered, and neither should you June 24, 2008
Robert Macmillan (Windsor, UK)
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
This is a dreadful book. Lawson misrepresents the science and he insults anyone who might disagree with him. In the first chapter I am accused of being alarmist and/or a leftwing environmentalist nutcase, simply because I accept the IPCC science. In the last chapter this has become I have religious needs that haven't been satisfied.
Sadly there is not much in between - this is a very short book. He does tell us that the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation (bringing warm water from the Gulf to the UK) will never switch off "as long as the sun heats the Earth and the Earth spins". So when it stopped in the past had the Earth stopped spinning or was the sun on holiday? He also thinks that civilisation will come to an end if we stop using dishwashers as we'll all die of food poisoning.
It really is that poor. This is not "an appeal to reason", it is not "a cool look at global warming", he does not as is claimed believe the IPCC or treat it objectively. And he does not think through his conclusions. He is happy that the earth should warm by two degrees. (After all, he points out that mankind lives everywhere from tropical Africa to Alaska, as if this proved anything.) But in pushing the business as usual case he doesn't consider that two degrees will be just a stepping stone to something hotter. What then? Is four degrees okay too? Eight degrees? Is he okay for the world just to continually heat up?
If this is the best book that sceptics can come up with, they really have lost the argument. If there is a better book, go read that instead. Either way, don't bother with this one.
(By the way, I think he was the best Chancellor of the 20th century.)
 Fascinating, but still not an "easy read". June 13, 2008
R. A. WELFORD (uk)
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
This is a welcome addition to the growing body of books questioning the accepted wisdom that pertains to man-made global warming, but you'll still need your wits about you to follow the arguments. It's not that it's badly-written (Lawson is a decent - if occasionally wordy - writer); it's just a difficult subject.
And therein lies the whole problem, really. "Anthropogenic" global warming (AGW) is, on the one hand, a simplistic, even biblical, moral fable: we consume far too much, therefore we'll be engulfed by fire. That's easy to understand, and a highly-appealing parable to all who feel uncomfortable with modernity and its implications. The counter-argument is complex, riddled with uncertainties and interdependent factors, difficult economics, baffling statistics and ever-changing science. The very fact that deniers are prepared to say "we don't really know" is often all the ammunition the "warmists" need.
This book will, unfortunately, never change the minds of those who have decided that AGW is the greatest threat to mankind. Look at the other reviews here: they are happy to dismiss Lawson's careful arguments as "tosh" for example, or to suggest that sceptics are a tiny cabal of rapacious right-wingers. True sceptics, on the other hand, call for a cool, reasoned appraisal of the available facts. THis book is such an appraisal, and it leaves the apocalyptic AGW predictions looking somewaht hysterical.
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