In this eye-opening book on global warming issues, the author presents some of the scientific arguments of those scientists who are known as "deniers" of global warming. However, what becomes very clear in short order is that they are not deniers at all. In fact they freely admit that the earth has indeed warmed over the past decades/centuries. Their main point of contention, as clearly elaborated upon in this book, is that the science is not that simple and not at all settled, as many of their adversaries in this matter profess. The author's approach is to give a brief resume of the selected scientists and quote their respective scientific views. From their resumes, it is clear that these scientists are world class in their scientific fields with extremely impressive credentials and numerous peer-reviewed research publications to their names. They are scientific specialists in disciplines that are directly related to the environmental concerns under debate. Based on their extensive work, they believe that it is much too early to sound the alarm on climate change and that, most likely, the observed warming is mainly natural - possibly the continuation of a process that began at the end of the last ice age. The writing style is clear, friendly, engaging and very accessible. The many quotes from the scientists are very clear and authoritative yet free of unnecessary scientific jargon; they express their views in a plain English that any reader can understand, whatever his/her background. Consequently, this is a book that can be enjoyed by anyone. If anything, this book makes clear that scientists on both sides of this issue should get together to objectively discuss the scientific evidence and their respective interpretations with the ultimate objective of, hopefully, reaching some sort of consensus that world leaders can more reliably work with, as deemed necessary.

I have never thought that being "alarmist" over global warming is a good idea, and see no reason to begin that trend now. And, some dissent among scientists is reasonable on any subject, especially one that could have implications for the entire world population. However, to properly show that there is dissent within the scientific community, it is essential to compare apples to apples, which was done well in some places in the book, but which failed to happen in others.

I agree that the hockey stick is gone as a useful tool, but questioned it all along. I am always very leery of any sort of graph that uses statistics as a measurement...they are just too easy to adjust. Lengthen the time frame and you get one picture, shorten it and you get another. It is also easy to dismiss the work of Stern, who is an extremist and has few followers in the climate change debate that I am aware of.

There are places in the book where I noted problems. To contradict current glacier science, the author produced a nuclear physicist who has worked on some glacier issues. The key is, however, that he is not a specialist in glacier science. That is roughly equivalent to going to your internist when you are having heart attack. He may know some of the science, but is hardly the expert that you would want.

Finally, I think it is important to look at the author's biases. As a foe of nuclear energy, it is in his best interests to deny the problem exists. If global warming does exists, it will require, almost certainly, the use of nuclear power to bring an end to coal and oil usage. Overall, the book was a good read despite some problems and I think it has a place on the shelf of anyone who is concerned about the problem of global warming, be it man made or natural.

The Deniers was an excellent review of another or hidden side of the global warming or climate change issue. It highlights the research being done by others in field that we would otherwise not hear from. This outstanding climate change understanding has been relegated as irrelavent by the IPCC "managed information" community for political reasons. "The Deniers" are asking and answering questions that need to be raised and deserve answers, with the intent of understanding the cause and effect of the broad range climate change influencers or phenomena. Solomon's work suggests that it is not as simple as the IPCC/others wants us to believe. Duh!

More importantly, what is frightening about all of this is that the IPCC, sanctioned and supported by global liberal media and political interests, is successfully driving their "human caused global warming with dire consequences" program and weeding out the other qualified thinkers that are developing a more complete picture of what is happening to our climate. The latter provides future options with more reasonable and balanced strategies. The IPCC and Democratic platform's purpose of control/allocation of energy, would likely cripple our national development and economy.

A well researched study of some of the renowned scientists who do not support Gore's hysterical propaganda, and why.The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so

This is an objective and very informative review of salient global warming issues. While the book stands alone on it's own merits, the various specific topics covered are easily verifiable by the interested reader who wants to understand on a deeper level. Each issue is honestly discussed without the emotional drive so often found in global warming advocates.

The Deniers is an example of how the global warming debate should proceed: data based and without ideological agenda. I recommend this book to anyone who actually wants to know what the issues are and who desires to make their own conclusions regarding climate change.

Mr. Solomon has presented a large number of very credentialed and dsitinguished scientists who dispute all or part of the anthropogenic global warming theory. Mr. Solomon devotes a single chapter to an aspect or claim of the global warming hypothesis and describes how one or more leading scientists have demolished it. Mr. Solomon thus continues for eleven chapters and thus effectively refutes most if not all of the human caused global warming hoax.

It should be mentioned that Mr. Solomon writes very clearly so any layman can understand the position and critique of each scientist refuting anthropogenic global warming. Mr. Solomon also provides detailed descriptions of the background of the scientists whose work and position is described by the book.

Mr. Solomon's book is a must read.

If you are a "believer" or "denier" in humankind causing global changes in
temperature, "The Deniers" by Lawrence Solomon will compare and contrast both sides of the argument. The "natural" processes continually evolving on Earth and within the solar system are explained. Ask yourself if you feel warmer on a sunny day or a cloudy day; what can this question have to do with global change?

At a time when many media figures speak of man-made global warming as an indisputable fact, this book is refreshing. As an economist, I can speak to the fact that professional opinion rarely reaches a consensus. The same is true of any other science (though perhaps not as true as in economics).

Solomon demonstrates serious problems with the popular view of global warming. Contrary to what some would have us believe, there are legitimate reasons to doubt the proposition that modern industry is causing climate change, to the extent that it exists. There is a reasonable counter hypothesis regarding solar activity.

Given the actual lack of certainty on climate change, one has to wonder why so many people are so thoroughly convinced about greenhouse gases. Worse still, you have to wonder what will break the current trend in popular opinion. I have heard reasons to doubt the greenhouse effect for decades, and I do not really study these matters. Global temps fell last year. If last year's trend in temps continues, the trend in public opinion will reverse course. Otherwise we will have to depend on books like this one, and I'm afraid that too few people will actually read it...

Recently, I started to wonder where I could learn more about "Global Warming" and the temperature rises that were predicted. There must surely be books or magazine articles that explained the observations and the models. How had the models been tested and verified? What were the formulas and equations the models were based on? What were the confidence limits on the predictions?

From my own experience more than twenty years ago, in making and using computer models of automatic control systems, I know only too well that a model that has not been validated is worth very little. Only when a model has been shown to make accurate predictions, for example, by comparing its predictions with physical measurements under a variety of conditions, can it be used with confidence. Even then, its predictions can never be taken as certainty.

My search for information made me feel disquieted. I came across statements about how there is "a concensus" among climate scientists that man-made global warming exists. OK, there is "a concensus" - but where are the details of the physical models used? What assumptions are they based on? If the assumptions turn out to be invalid, does this invalidate the predicitions?

More and more, I began to feel that "man made global warming" had the appearance of a new and intolerant religion. Man-made Global Warming will lead to the Destruction of The Planet. And it is YOUR FAULT.

This book confirms my impression. It does not use these words but, in effect, belief in Man Made Global Warming is a new religion, with its own Priesthood, who tolerate no dissent. A scientist who questions it is deranged, incompetent, senile - or has simply been corrupted.

Eventually, truth will out. The Global Warming Religion will merit a chapter in a future edition of the book "Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds". "The Deniers" will have been one of the first steps on the road back to sanity. I recommend it to anyone who wants to form a blanced view.

This is a book that was needed several years ago to counter the "Global Warming Culture" that is not based on good science. It is a thorough, compelling read that documents scientists and thinkers from various academic areas to "weigh-in" on the debate. They ALL dispute strongly the Al Gore's of the world. They have all had their voices "silenced" by the politics of this debate.

Unfortunately, the author is still not revealing the full truth about what the energy needs are going to be of a World that is growing and rapidly requiring ALL types of energy to keep the World more healthy and more financially secure. A good follow-up might be What are WE Going to do?? The truth, lots of everything!!

I am all for conservation and reducing the pollution we contribute to our planet, however, I cannot stand people who are ignorant to the fact that the science of climate change and global warming has in no way been settled. Solomon's book does a great job of not refuting global warming or calling it a hoax, but he did a great job of raising valid, SCIENTIFICALLY BACKED points to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the science behind climate change is nowhere near settled. I beg every one who is sure climate change is a crisis to read this book with an open mind. If nothing else it will only educate you further and that is never a bad thing.

There once was a time when the scientists' consensus was that Earth was flat....how did that one turn out?

Excellent oversight on the observations, data, and credentials of renown scientists in different fields and areas of expertise on the data being used by those promoting man caused global warming. Does not deny global warming but rather exposes information that appears to be either irrevalant or wrong. Excellent book.

talk about a bubble.....

well compared to the substance of this work, a bubble looks pretty heavy.

especially heart rendering is the terrible pressure on denialists to stay silent, lest their careers be damaged.

the fact that postulation by scientists commenting outside their expertise has never been popular or respected, seems to not to justly apply when it comes to AGW.

in the author's view, the true "concensus" is skeptical of AGW.

if specious cherry picking is to your taste, you will love this work.

The review of politics of global warming science is excellent, as could be expected from a book that focuses on interviews with various scientists who have questioned certain conclusions in the global warming orthodoxy. The author admits that "The Deniers" is a rather provocative title. Indeed, on page 45, after a a review of four "deniers", we are told "None of them are deniers". This is one of the most fascinating aspects of this book: these experts, with exceptional credentials, find serious faults in the orthodoxy that is within their own area of expertise. But they are quite willing to accept the "consensus" conclusions that are not within their area.

The misrepresentations of global warming by the media, which then encourages distorted statements by politicians and Nobel Prize winners, is familiar to some of us. The more noteworthy presentation in the book is the review of the shifting, and now diminishing, IPCC alarmism about hurricanes, malaria and sea-level rise.

The weakness of the book is that the author is not a climate physicist. For example, a verbatim quote from a paper by Prof. Robert Carter is given on page 92, where the quote references Prof. Richard Lindzen to support a claim that the current CO2 concentration of 380 ppm is "75%" on the logarithmic scale in doubling from 280 ppm to 560 ppm. The article by Lindzen is available on the web, and Lindzen makes no such blunder. The Carter quote also includes a statement about "arbitrary adjustments to the lambda value in the Stefan-Boltzmann equation" A more savvy author might not have passed on this incorrect attribution to the Stefan-Boltzmann equation.

On page 111 we read "Clearly, the prospects of success for a model that claims to predict the next hundred years are nothing close to the prospects of a model predicting the next 48 hours". This is not clear, and is not true. The skill in predicting a time-average quantity (climate) in far future can exceed the skill in forecasting an instantaneous value (weather) in the near future, even with the same model. Weather forecasting itself provides an example: a forecast for instantaneous wind at certain anemometer 2 minutes hence may be less skillful than the a forecast for the hour-averaged wind two days hence. (Skill meaning skill beyond a mere persistence forecast). An extreme example: if the sun were to instantaneously turn off, a model can make a prediction for average weather 1000 years hence (relative to current conditions), with more skill than a forecast for instantaneous weather 1 hour hence.

On page 143 we read "There are clouds that on balance capture more of the Sun's radiation than they reflect...Clouds can enhance the greenhouse effect and they can reduce it." All clouds enhance the greenhouse effect (a warming effect) and all clouds reflect solar radiation back to space (a cooling effect). The author appears to be attempting an explanation about the difficulty in predicting how the residual in these two large opposing effects could change as the climate changes.

Despite a few shortcoming, I found parts of the book to be exceptionally and uniquely valuable, and so give it 5 stars. The book is extensively referenced. With a little effort, a reader can track down authoritative references in peer-reviewed journals and IPCC reports. By the way, the author is an eminent and knowledgeable environmentalist, and managing director of the Energy Probe Research Foundation, which you may google.

Earlier this year I came across Solomon's "The Deniers" series of columns in Canada's "National Post" and was interested to see that there really is a debate on the science behind Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) and that there are credible scientists that question various aspects of AGW theory. Those columns have been compiled and expanded in this book.

Solomon points out that not all of the scientists he covers in this book question the overall theory behind AGW, but they do question some of the published accounts AGW in their area of expertise. Overall the book points out that for every area of science involved in AGW theory, there are credible scientists who question the "consensus" view.

Some of the scientists appearing in this book would prefer not to be included because they do not deny the overall AGW theories or because they fear damage to their careers because of the science has become so politicized. How can scientists discover the truth when only one point of view is acceptable? The fact that scientists can feel pressure to suppress their views and that funding is directed to only one point of view raises warning flags about the legitimacy of the science.

The intention of the book is not to prove or disprove a theory, but rather to show that there are dissenting views and that those dissenting scientists are not kooks or flat-earthers as Al Gore would have us believe.

Anyone who is remotely interested in having an informed opinion about Man-made Global Warming needs to read this book. Written by a journalist with strong credentials as an outspoken Environmental Activist, one might expect the book to be a scathing review of the lack of credibility of those who disagree that Man-Made Global Warming is the most significant environmental issue currently facing us. What one instead finds is a compedium of emminent scientists who, within their area of expertise, demolish one major piece of the Man-Made Global Warming case after another. I cannot imagine a true seeker of truth being firmly convinced of the validity of the case for Man-Made Global Warming after reading this book. Actually, in my case, I became incensed with the blatent misuse of statistics and scientific method evidenced by the Man-Made Global Warming adherents.

A fact based look at global warming, not a repeat of the political mantra of the day.

Lawrence Solomon is one of Canada's leading environmental activists, for my money a solid base to stand and question global warming alarmism. Not that Solomon argues a coherent case for rejecting global warming. Far from it.

Solomon recounts, often in their own words, the testimony of 30 or so eminent scientists who say, in effect: in the field I know best, there is no cause for alarm. This approach allows Solomon to set out the main issues in plain terms while avoiding arguments about obscure points that only a PhD in the field would appreciate.

Does he conclude there is no global warming or that mankind is not responsible? Nope. He tells us he doesn't know for sure, but he is confident there are many scientifically valid viewpoints. He stresses that science is not the product of consensus and that we will just have to wait a while before we decide to spend trillions of dollars trying to stop what may not need to be stopped or what might be impossible to stop because it is driven by natural forces.

I recommend this book as an antidote to Al Gore's one-sided tract.

So glad to have seen author on Book-tv. Ordered the book right away and just finished it. I love it and am so happy that I've read it and I wish I could afford to buy a copy for everybody I know. I think I'll buy a copy to give to my daughter's Science/homeroom teacher to read over the summer. When I saw Al Gore's "Documentary" , I couldn't believe it! I am a "layman" but his graphs were so obviously biased and him riding up in that whatchamacallit to the top of the graph, and his intermingling his whispering voice between global warming 'points' about how he lost the election, etc., really disgusted me. Then he wins the Nobel for his 'work'. Oh golly. Anyway, buy this book and read it, you'll love it and you'll be smarter when done. An easy read.

Interesting opinions of top scientists. Many still support Global Warming, but say the information being given out in their own specialties (where they are experts) is all wrong.

I enjoyed reading the author's column in the National Post, and am pleased that he has released this book, presenting reasonable voices countering the endemic global warming hysteria.

The most important chapter is actually the last, where he points out the danger of placing price tags on carbon credits.

When in doubt, follow the money. The IPCC is a creature of politicians and bureaucrats, who milk the catastrophic view of climate change to justify "tax and spend" policies and legislation. That's what governments do, and it's no surprise that any opportunity to extend government influence will be exploited by those in governments.

The surprising thing is how many people are willing to park their brains and climb onto the apocalyptic bandwagon, demanding that their governments destroy the world's economies, when the source of their misinformation is those who should be trusted least - politicians and bureaucrats. I'm flabbergasted at the thought that anyone would believe Al Gore's propaganda - have we lost our ability to use reason and common sense?

There are many serious, real, and immediate environmental problems with causes and cures that are well proven - we need not be chasing straw men.

Excellent book - well worth reading!

Don't waste your money on this right wing nonsense. The publisher is something called, "Richard Vigilante Books". They publish far right extremist authors, like Laura Ingraham and Mark Steyn. If you're reading this, and you're actually interested in learning something about global warming, read The Weather Makers, by Tim Flannery.

I just saw Solomon's presentation on C-SPAN. While he recognizes that global warming may pose a problem, he points out that there is not an absolute consensus. It's a shame that the Competitive Enterprise Institute sponsored his talk, as their positions are often dismissed as public relations efforts from the fossil fuel industry.
Solomon expressed a great deal of concern over the effects of some of the responses to global warming. He cited the "cap and trade" program which has led to the purchase of massive eucalyptus plantations which are forcing small farmers off their land and levelling forests of biodiversity. The film Refugees of the Blue Planet goes into the sad details of monoculture tree farms. Solomon is also deeply concerned about the resurgence of nuclear energy, which he sees as economically unsound; plus, there is the unresolved issue of what to do with the waste. Although, a segment of the series E2: Energy covers some of the advances in nuclear technology.
To his credit, Solomon suggests that we need to hear more from the poorer nations of the Global South as to how we should address these issues. Some poorer nations want to be able to rapidly develop their own fossil fuel economies, while others prefer that their gas and oil resources be exploited at a conservative pace, if at all. The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia

There is a great deal about the natural world that we don't understand. Hopefully, global warming won't cause a catastrophe, and it's comforting that some scientists are not concerned. It would be helpful to see more head-to-head debates between the deniers and the "alarmists." In addition to his C-SPAN appearance, I've heard Solomon on a few right-wing talk shows and would like to see him challenged by people like Ross Gelbspan, author of Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists, and Activists Have Fueled a Climate Crisis--And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster. Gelbspan regularly confronts the deniers, and he has some powerful counter-arguments, and reveals the investment in perception management campaigns by Exxon and others to protect their markets and profits. Everything's Cool

Lastly, as with terrorism, we don't know if or when climate change may bring disaster, but it would be prudent to take precautions. Developing renewable energy that emits fewer greenhouse gasses and doesn't involve the impacts of mining coal Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future and oil drilling can be seen as a "pre-emptive" strike against a potential threat. The booming field of Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution not only provides a less degraded environment, but also enhances the profits that all sorts of businesses are already realizing.
Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage

A couple other resources on the economic, technological and social transformations already taking place:
Sustainable Industries
Big Ideas for a Small Planet: Season 1 (2pc)

The Gore-ists understand consensus is a defacto establishment of reality. It matters not if the tenants of the Global Warming religion are true, the societal clergy has established it as 'the truth'.
This book is important because it attempts what true science does....It ponders reality beyond the established consensus and at least attempts to open minds to the possiblility that a different consensus is possible.
Al Gore is not a man of science by any measurement but certainly is a man trained in the power of consensus. He is, de facto, the Pope of this reality. Science is always the product of a few challenging the Pope until a consensus becomes 'reality'. Then, of course, someone else will challenge the new reality...etc, etc, etc.

DISCLOSURE: I have not read this book yet but am giving it 5 stars for the reason mentioned below.

Before I bought the book, I wanted to find out "who" these scientists were.

I did a google search on those mentioned in the publisher's note and was suitably impressed. I found a wealth of high quality information regarding each one of them. In particular I liked Dr. Edward Wegman's report to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on the statistical methods used to arrive at the "Global Warming" conclusion.

These guys are the real deal folks. I am buying this book as of today.

BTW: How do we overcome the media machine that continually hypes the "Global Warming Crisis?" This book is all well and good, but its target audience is those that are already skeptical of or actively against the GW hypothesis. This information has to somehow reach the average Joe who has drawn an opinion about GW without researching the facts.

Suggestions anyone?

Richard Vigilante has launched an eponymous publishing company--Richard Vigilante Books--that takes advantage of all the new Amazonian efficiencies to produce great books in days rather than years.

His first book, replete with statistics and material as recent as February 2008, ends the global warming debate before Al Gore can even start his new $300M climate change panic campaign.

Entitled The Deniers and already a #3 Amazon best seller in Canada and leaping listwise in the US, it tells the story of "The World Renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud"

Gore recently declared, as I recall his words, that scientists opposing his theory are the kind of people who party together with the flat earth society, with holocaust deniers, and with cultists who claim that the Apollo moon landing was concocted on a back lot in Burbank.

But it turns out that these denier folk comprise most of the world's leading climate scientists, physicists, and statisticians, including hundreds of participants in the IPCC reports that Gore cites as an impregnable consensus. Among the scores of deniers interviewed and analyzed in the book are Freeman Dyson, the world's most eminent living physicist, Hendrik Tennekes, director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute who asserts that the global warmers cannot tell the difference between "clouds and clocks," David Bromwich, president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology who can find no global warming signal "from the mainland of Antarctica right now," and Reid Bryson, "father of scientific climatology," the world's most cited climatologist and a sainted environmentalist, who responds to a question about Gore's movie: "Don't make me throw up."

Covering the range of global warming claims, from the famed "hockey stick graph" to a predicted rise of mosquito borne diseases, the book is fascinating and even profound on the flaws of computer modelling, the irrelevance of consensus to science, the crippling effects of excessive specialization, and the mounting evidence of a coming cooling trend.

Its author is Canadian environmentalist Lawrence Solomon, who ends with a cogent explanation of how carbon taxes and offsets devastate the environment.

George Gilder

The author, Lawrence Solomon, comes from an "environmentalist" background having worked as an activist against nuclear power expansion and world rain forest protection, and as a journalist or the National Post of Toronto. This book stems from a series of newspaper articles on individual scientists that disagreed in some way with the "conventional wisdom" or "political correctness" of Global Warming, specifically, man's role in Global Warming. It is evident at the conclusion of the book that Mr. Solomon has considerable respect for the 30+ scientists which he has interviewed for the book. There is little question that in Mr. Solomon's words the question of man's role in Global Warming is not settled science.

This is really a remarkable book. The reader is able to take advantage of an author that has been able to converse with a cross section of some of the most outstanding scientists, an author who is obviously devoted to environmental ethics, and an author that can write with the clarity of a experienced journalist. Reading this book is a real education. The scientific questions broached touch on multiple topics in science, ranging from glaciers to malaria, from Antarctic to hurricanes, from low clouds to the Sun and the way the Sun and the planetary system impacts cosmic radiation, from geologic history to the way science is done, and finally to a plethora of scientific approaches to understanding the physics, chemistry, geochemical distribution and history of carbon dioxide in the earth, oceans, atmosphere.

What is important here? Public policy will be formulated on the results of science. One of Solomon's major concerns is that poor public policy stemming from poor science or misinterpreted science will have a negative impact on the world's poor. In addition to the science itself Mr. Solomon is very concerned with the way the results of science are received and acted upon in our political world.

Mr. Solomon treats each scientist with respect, giving each a mini resume. His order of treatment makes pedagogic sense and thematic sense. A real challenge of the book is to cover the scope of the science in a responsible and understandable way. In my opinion he does that admirably and concisely way.

He begins with a discussion of the word, Deniers, explaining its derogatory usage. meaning and emphasizes that most of these scientists do not consider themselves deniers. My sense is that both Solomon and the scientists discussed would have preferred the word Skeptics to Deniers. The word Deniers does set up the context of the book into the tension and edginess, that present circumstances deserve. The first scientist depicted is Edward Wegman, who along with a group of select scientists was asked by Congress to critique the famous hockey stick graph. Selected important graphs and data displays are used in the text with comparisons and unusually complete captions. Each chapter contains references and highlights available articles and their web locations or urls.

After you finish this book you will have a better understanding of how the temperature of the earth is measured and how the temperature history of the earth is approximated. An understanding of the cycle, sources and sinks of carbon dioxide is crucial and selected scientists that have give their life work to study of carbon dioxide in ice, in the ocean, in the earth, in the atmosphere, and in the earths history are reviewed. Does carbon dioxide drive temperature or does temperature drive carbon dioxide? This is the all important question to answer, and must be answered before we attempt to use policy to "correct" global warming. Is the earth really warming or is it beginning to cool?

This is not an easy book to read. Frankly the scope of the science covered in the book is staggering. I will definitely re-read portions if not all of the book. But, because of the clarity of Solomon's language and the importance of the content he has amassed, I will. As scientist, myself, I am very impressed with what Mr. Solomon has done here. Even though this book's mission is to elucidate the view point of the skeptics, I believe this synthesis will help scientists and the public on both sides of the issue.

The book challenges, at the core, the case for man's impact on global warming as a consequence carbon dioxide emissions. Questions are raised as to whether the earth is actually warming. It is pointed out that the temperature record stations are un-representative of the earth's surface with the ocean being under-represented, and that measurements considered to be most representative (satellite-mounted microwave sounding units -- MSU) have not shown a record of warming since initiated in 1979.

There are critical comments about the management and agenda of the IPCC. The IPCC is self described as: "... a scientific inter governmental body set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)" from the IPCC web site. In this book the IPCC stands accused of changing and dictating the conclusions of the scientists doing the work in their own organization.

One of the major problems faced by the common man (or woman) is to understand that science is not established by consensus. Certainly, once a theory has been studied and restudied over and over again, a consensus of opinion does develop and scientists will develop a common thought-process. The problem we face with Global-Warming and the possibility that Mankind's activities are responsible in some way for this phenomenon is that the theory is being driven by a group of idealistic pseudo-scientists who have convinced themselves that science can be made by observations alone - that there is no need to question anomalous results and all work should focus on removing such discrepancies. For example: there is no doubt that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is correlated with the mean temperature of the atmosphere, but what is in dispute (in my opinion) is which is the cause and which is the effect? CO2 does increase the energy absorbing ability of the atmosphere - this is also not in dispute. So one could conclude that CO2 increase is the cause and temperature increase is the effect. But there is also extremely reliable and believable evidence that the temperature of the atmosphere is correlated to the intensity of solar radiation which also fluctuates over time. If this is the true cause of global-warming, then the increase in CO2 levels is being driven by the higher transfer of CO2 from the earth's oceans as they are heated up by this inceased energy input from the sun and so the ocean's ability to dissolve CO2 declines thus releasing the gas to the atmosphere at higher rates. If this theory is correct, then CO2 increase is the effect, temperature is a sub-change(both a cause and an effect) while solar radiation is the root cause.

In any event, it appears that global-warming is a real phenomena - that it is now a given - and the effect of this trend on our lives will be significant. What to do about the trend is the focus of both scientists and politicians as we try to adjust to these new climate realities. If we find a way to quickly reduce Greenhouse Gases in the atmosphere, this could compensate for the warming trend - so the move to control carbon emissions is a good first approach to the potential problem provided the costs are tolerable in comparison to the cost of doing nothing - loss of coastal land due to flooding, increased weather extremes due to rapid short-term atmospherics pressure changes, impact of higher temperatures on changes in species diversification (pine-beetle, etc.), etc.

So, in the same way that the IPCC is using consensus to argue the issue, this book is also seeking to find consensus on the other side of the issue which is just as wrong. Instead, what is needed is a cold and calculated systems-approach to the problem of global-warming and to the formulation of possible solutions that come at the issues with totally unemotional and dispassionate viewpoints. The facts need to be examined by the experts and the pros and cons discussed in a forum of openness and collective wisdom. To judge those who oppose the theory of anthropogenic emissions of Greenhouse Gases causing Global-Warming as being charlatans or "in the pockets of big-oil" is counter-productive to the scientific approach to problem-solving. While it is good to seek out "experts", what we need to hear is their reasons for thinking the way they do - not the fact that they are experts opposed to consensus-thinking.