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Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, Updated and Expanded Edition
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| Item Number |
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Item Description...
Overview
Argues that global warming is a natural, cyclical phenomenon that has not been caused by human activities and that its negative consequences have been greatly overestimated. |
Item Specifications...
Pages 278
Dimensions: Length: 0.5" Width: 5.75" Height: 9"
Weight: 0.88 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Release Date Jan 25, 2008
ISBN 0742551245
EAN 9780742551244
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Availability 2 units.
Availability accurate as of May 30, 2012 04:37.
Usually ships within one to two business days from Momence, IL.
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More About S. Fred Singer & Dennis T. Avery
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | the debate is not over Dec 4, 2009 |
After reading Dr. Singer's book I read the reviews and rebuttals to the reviewers posted on this site. I think it is easy to summarize all by saying that the debate is not over.
Like religion, there are true believers who attack non-believers on faith alone. It's also possible one should follow the money because there are more than a few converts who've figured out how to milk the system.
In the end, the taxpayer is the dead end kid who gets to fund all the new laws, restrictions and requirements passed into law by politicians and bureaucrats who might not be operating on good information. Dr. Singer's efforts show that there is another theory that fits the data, so right or wrong, it at least throws doubt on the CO2 theory as the only one. | | | | Do the Least Evil Nov 27, 2009 |
This is a "rare",much needed,though rather convoluted,book length counter argument to the many books emphasizing global warming as human caused.
This book already has plenty of fine reviews. I agree with most of the comments. Among the best laudatory reviews I recommend,for critical input which has also been well appreciated by most this site readers,the Dec.30,2006 Steve Jason review [186/273 readers found it helpful] which notes a "grave central flaw" in the book, which Steve believes is the lack of respect for the possible "piling on" of the industrial revolution's pollutants onto what may very well be a natural period of global warming. Garbage in the air or anywhere should not be unloaded in cavalier fashion. I note one other,somewhat critical review by Michael Lapietan[Mar 23,2008; 35/54 "helpful"]:The best guess available as to the Medieval Warm Period is that it was NOT warmer than c.2000 A.D.
I myself am trained in high altitude and desert ecology;having been a principal investigator within an international research program in the western US. There are nearly always glaring lapses of reasoning about broad aspects of evecology [evolutionary ecology] in books as wide ranging as this one is; on page 181 of the 2008 edition for example,the highly specialized[needing cool boulders and alpine forbs] little relatives of rodents--pikas--living at very high[c.10,000 feet] elevations on the Great Basin Desert's widely scattered mountains--are misunderstood as "tough enough" to be able to somehow survive in much warmer, drier conditions despite the abundance of myriads of desert rodents and their many millions of years of "knowing how"[evecologically speaking] to live/eat,etc. in these conditions.
Maybe humans won't destroy much of the earth by changing the climate. My main concern is not only for polar bears and other Arctic endemics,but also for equatorial endemics and species having to endure warmer tropical summers to the north and south of the equatorial belt. Phytoplankton,for example,might be able to go deeper/cooler to balance photosynthesis and respiration,but it's dark down there and that may not work,or plant productivity may be greatly reduced. And evolution does take time,even for the faster evolving microscopic beings. The larger pelagic forms[able to swim against currents] may be able to move to higher latitudes but this looks like ecological impoverishment to me. Large creatures are the most vulnerable to [natural]extinction--via climate change--as the fossil record seems to show. If humans were unicellular then maybe we would have time to evolve into a species able to "do without" many species of large plants, scavengers,etc.,if that's all that we humans actually care about.
This book also points out that Australia's massive loss of large land vertebrates [95% of the species over 100 pounds]tens of thousands of years ago was probably caused by humans,not climate change[p.166]. Folks, we just seem to be hard on places and other creatures,not to mention ourselves; we probably used arson in Australia and elsewhere and hunted down the starving beasts[even harassing them at water holes,reducing their birth rate by a critical 1% per year which in these slow breeders may result in extinction in a few hundred years]. We have had,and continue to have,"our ways",not always very nice. Darwin,actually a kind man very much opposed to slavery,thought that "primitive" races were "just doomed" by the,to him,amoral process of natural selection. So, does that mean that it's OK to make any species or local evecology "walk the plank" of our modern version of Noah's ark?
You know the old saying about being careful what you wish or pray for. The old Roman proverb which Cicero quotes:"Do the Least Evil", is always the best choice when the purely good is not available. I will add: "When in doubt do something else which you guess will have better chance of actually being a least evil",but doubt should not be a place to hide from what may very well be possibly dire happenings. Be responsible and look before you leap but don't be one who hesitates until much or all is lost. We can,and should,I believe,try to change our course more quickly; our present state can be likened to that of a mile+ long ocean liner which looks like it might be heading for a big mountain of rock--Can we or are we changing course,as fast as as we should[the least evil being in mind],and in order to avoid the rock? Can we also,in a more general overall way,get this ark of wayward humans back to the really real world?
Remember:Freedom without order is as bad as order without freedom;we must try to keep these different freedom/order faces of the multiunity constantly in mind. There may very well be a "hidden hand" in healthy nature which "guides" events,but humans largely opted out of healthy ways tens of thousands of years ago. "Providence" does not run the world of man,we humans tend to "rig" our markets as much as we "rig" our governments,but as in the case of police corruption and incompetence,we still need police and rules that lead to healing[including safety/security] and to better health overall.
Perhaps an illustration may help: Sometimes we find ourselves in situations like that of a hypothetical policeman walking into a MacDonald's and seeing many people fearfully crowded into one side of the building;and the cop sees from behind a black Uzi-looking machine gun in the hands of a tall thin man with a small boy,a little brother[?],in hand. The man-and-Uzi[?] are turning, perhaps about to mow down a lot of people and maybe the cop too. The cop draws and fires, killing the Uzi-carrier and hitting the little boy too. Then the cop looks at the dead man,but MAYBE it turns out to be a 14 year old girl who had been thinking bad thoughts about her parents who won't let her see her boyfriend; and maybe the "Uzi" turns out to be her little brother's water gun. Was the cop "right" in doing what he did--regardless or not whether the Uzi was real--believing as he does in this scenario that he is doing the least evil so that a greater evil might be avoided?
When in doubt as to whether you might make things worse,do something that is more likely to be helpful or healing,but do not shirk your responsibility to act in a timely way even if you risk mistakes,merely because least evils are not wholly pleasant to do,nor error/risk-free. There are sins of both commission and omission. Let's try to hate all sins,but,like Jesus,try to love all sinners--for we are sinners too.
We humans are in so much trouble that we often just don't have the option of doing a purely right or good thing. We should then,in this case of the possibility of an,at least partially human-caused catastrophic global warming,try to "Do the Least Evil".
| | |  | appears scientific but is one-sided and misleading Oct 14, 2009 |
This is a provocative and interesting, but ultimately misleading book.
It is good for students and professionals in climate-related sciences
who want to test their own knowledge of some of the technical
controversies within the subject of anthropogenic (human-caused)
global warming (AGW). It is a bad book for those who don't have the
time or expertise to check the authors' claims by reading the
scientific literature, because it gives the incorrect impression that
straightforward scientific arguments disprove all evidence that humans
are causing the Earth to warm.
The book's main problem is how one-sided it is. Whenever there is a
choice between long-standing bodies of knowledge and unproved
hypotheses created specifically to contest global warming, you can
tell in advance which way the book will argue. The book concentrates
on a handful of objections to AGW while ignoring other evidence for
AGW or scientific problems with anti-AGW claims. I'll give examples
below. It insinuates that scientists are letting their supposedly
green politics dictate their evidence for AGW. But Singer, Avery, and
some others who argue against global warming are not themselves
impartial--their other writings and associations imply they are
advancing their own political agendas in favor of unfettered
technology.
People who really want to think about these issues should also look at
the RealClimate website, the comprehensive IPCC report by scientists
(available on line), and some of ther other books available such as
Houghton. However, it may be comforting to some to believe that the
IPCC, heavily-reviewed and comprehensively citing all relevant
research, is a more biased source than the work of an activist
scientist and an activist agricultural economist.
Unstoppable Global Warming also suffers from poor organization.
Evidence is brought up briefly several times before being discussed in
greater detail. The chapter on climate models is mostly not about
models but about temperature observations. Chapters alternate between
the scientific basis of global warming and "baseless fears" about its
consequences. It would have been more logical to give the whole
argument against global warming and then talk about the consequences.
I suspect the book's scattered structure is a rhetorical device in
which the reader can be assaulted with doubt about every single aspect
of global warming.
There is genuine uncertainty about possible global warming
consequences such as stronger hurricanes, water shortages in China and
the southeastern US, and flooding due to sea level rise. But Singer
and Avery uniformly minimize any difficulties society may have from
AGW and exaggerate the difficulty of reducing AGW. Bangladesh is
sinking into the sea? No problem, build a really, really, big dike!
Develop solar power more? Oh no, we'll all have to live in caves!
A Few Examples of Technical Gaps and Inconsistencies
Observations show that the Earth's mean surface temperature has risen
by .7 to .9 C since the late 1970s (see Figure 3.1, chapter 3,
Contribution of Working Group 1 to the Fourth Assessment Report of the
IPCC; available online). Unstoppable Global Warming instead shows a
plot of satellite data from John Christy showing a smaller trend in
the lower troposphere. Singer and Avery don't give a source for this
data, and they don't mention other relevant papers, including Mears
and Wentz (2005 in the journal Science) which argues that Christy et
al (2003, Journal of Atmospheric and Ocean Technology) underestimate
the trend implied by the satellite data.
Singer and Avery think that the apparent surface warming trend is too
high because it was not properly corrected for increases in the "urban
heat island effect". However, this warming is apparent in ocean
temperature as well (IPCC chapter 3)--no cities at sea!
Interestingly, the book's discussion on this topic occurs in a chapter
about how bad numerical models are, but it's key reference (Kalnay and
Cai, 2003, Nature) uses a model to calculate surface temperature. The
book does not mention observed stratospheric cooling, which is
consistent with the hypothesis of global warming and not with theories
based on natural solar variations.
The discussion of GCM's, or General Circulation Models ("Global
Circulation Models" in the book) is extremely superficial. The book
innacurately faults GCM' for not being able to reproduce past
climates, but neglects the numerous features of the observed 20th
century climate that models do reproduce (see Chapters 8 and 9 of the
IPCC report, especially Fig 9.12). In a typical inconsistency, Singer
and Avery do trust such GCM's which indicate (probably correctly) that
an ice age like in "The Day AFter Tomorrow" is unlikely, because in
that case the GCM agrees with the point they want to make.
All of the book's major scientific points have similar problems.
Large natural climate variations before the twentieth century? Cosmic
rays driving changes in climate? Changes in high-level clouds
counteracting greenhouse gases? These are all easy to accept if you
ignore papers with contrary evidence and have already concluded that
AGW doesn't exist.
| | | | Excellent Overview Aug 31, 2009 |
| This book is an excellent review of climate science. It focuses on the real science and how the patterns were discovered which led to its conclusion that global warming is a natural event, and not something caused by man. Many footnotes of sources of information to check on the information being presented. No hysterical claims to get people excited, but solid scientific research used to reach conclusions. | | |  | An Alternative Theory Aug 25, 2009 |
The media drumbeat of human-caused global warming causing great potential damage continues unabated, along with editorial demands that something be done right now to curb CO2 emissions. Contrary views are given little attention; after all, newspapers and network news shows are in the business of selling information, and if it's not sensational they can't sell as much.
But contrary views do exist, and this book does a very good job of presenting not only an alternative theory to explain current temperature variations, but backs it up with hard data gained from a very large number of sources, all of which are carefully documented in bibliographies at the end of each article.
The prime theory advanced in this book is that most of what we are currently observing is due to a 1500 year variation in the sun's output. In support of this theory they present data from ice cores, tree rings, sea-floor sedimentation analysis, written histories, satellite measurements, archeological interpretations of early human habitats, and a host of other data points, some of it stretching back a million years, and tracking what they believe to be at least 600 cycles of this 1500 year variation. At the same time they raise doubts about some of the data that has been used to support the human-caused global warming theory, showing the flaws that produced the famous `hockey stick' graph, indicating that many ground-based measurements have been influenced by the heat-island effect of cities that has not been fully discounted by current modeling techniques, bringing to the fore current measurements that do not fit the man-made theory model, and showing that current computer models do not (and probably cannot) take all factors into consideration nor do their predictive results match the real world when `back-tested' on historical data.
They also examine the `scare' headlines of large sea-level rises, more and more violent storms, species extinction, and famines, plagues, and wars caused by great droughts. They conclude that none of these are likely even if current temperatures continue to rise to the level last seen around 900 AD, showing that these warm portions of the cycle have less, not more, violent storms, larger areas where farming can be productive, more, not less, biodiversity during such warm periods, etc.
There are a few places where I think they have gone a little overboard, such as where they practically accuse some scientists of deliberately falsifying data to fit the man-made theory (though they do support some of the published political papers having been 'edited'), and there is a general adversarial tone to this book that perhaps shouldn't be there. Also, many of the points they raise are repeated multiple times throughout this book, which becomes a little wearisome, and I would have liked to see a little more detailed explanation of how the known 87 and 210 year cycles in the sun's output end up producing the 1500 year temperature cycle. But these are comparative quibbles to the prime points that this book presents, that CO2 emissions may not be the prime driver of the current warming trend and the effects of such warming will not be either immediately or totally disastrous, while for the world economies to actually implement severe curtailment strategies to limit CO2 emissions would almost certainly cause great hardship and economic distress around the globe.
--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
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