The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Don't Actually Deny Global Warming

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Solomon’s New Book Full of Hysteria, (Imagined) Persecution, andย Fraud

Despite the uncertainties, there is general agreement that the observed warming is real and particularly strong within the past 20ย years.

Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Keyย Questions

National Academy of Sciences,ย 2001

I am afraid you won’t find that quote in within the pages of Lawrence Solomon’s new book, The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud (and those who are too fearful to doย so).

Nope, as the world’s longest book title suggests, Solomon is not the least interested in considering a climate consensus – and if that means that he has to cherry-pick quotes, misrepresent data, cut off graphs before their curves become inconvenient and blithely ignore the logical inconsistencies in his own arguments, well, Solomon seems not toย mind.

In fairness, though, he comes clean very early in the book (on Page 6, actually) and admits that the whole exercise is a parlor game, a work of sophistry. It all began because he was trying to impress some visiting Chinese environmentalists with the vigor of the environmental debate in North America. So he challenged a friend to โ€œname three climate-change areas that he felt were settled. โ€ฆ I told him if he identified the areas of expertise, I would find a credible dissenting scientist inย each.โ€

Though I can’t believe anyone would have set up some of the silly points Solomon examines as the most settled in climate science, Solomon set off nevertheless to find any dissent and to write about his findings in a periodic column in the National Post. He later parlayed that series into thisย book.

The problem is that Solomon’s โ€œdeniersโ€ don’t actually deny climate change. They quibble about the details. They criticize Michael Mann’s now entirely dated hockey stick graph. They argue about snow temperatures in Antarctica, but they all still allow – what’s the phrase? – that observed warming is real and particularly strong in the last 20ย years.

Solomon even says so. He says that while reflecting on his own research, โ€œI โ€ฆ noticed something striking about my growing cast of deniers. None of them wereย deniers.โ€

If you ask me how someone could make that concession on page 45 and then string the book out to page 213 (not counting footnotes), I have to say that I am still suffering some confusion. And all of it intentional, I amย convinced.

Solomon has rounded up the usual suspects and reveled in the usual arguments. He has cherry-picked quotes like this, from the above-reference National Academy of Sciencesย report:

โ€œBecause there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current estimates of the magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward orย downward).โ€

Fair enough, the magnitude (if not the inevitability) of future warming is debatable. But Solomon follows that quote with this hystericalย analysis:

โ€œThe press’s spin? CNN, in language typical of other reportage, stated that it (the National Academy of Sciences report) represented ‘a unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse, and is due to man. There is no wiggleย room.’โ€

Click on the link at the top and I think you’ll find that CNNโ€™s reporting was accurate. โ€œReal and getting worseโ€ was the conclusion that was reported to President George W. Bush at the time, and while the White House was officially unhappy, they didn’t challenge theย finding.

But Solomon does. Using graphs that tend to end between 1980 and 2000, and throwing his lot in with the likes of Bob (Global-Warming-Ended-in-1998) Carter, Solomon adds brick upon brick to what remains a very low wall separating the purveyors of doubt from an overwhelming tide ofย agreement.

But, again, Solomon doesnโ€™t make excuses for creating a phony balance between his handful of quibblers and the overwhelming scientific concern about climate change. He says: โ€œโ€ฆ our job is not to settle which side is right but simply to demonstrate that there is a debate, a vigorous and seriousย one.โ€

So, he quotes Carter saying this: โ€œThere is almost universal agreement (my emphasis) that significant carbon dioxide increases โ€“ human caused or otherwise โ€“ will cause gentle* planetaryย warming.โ€

And, then later, Solomon concludes, โ€œโ€ฆ our mission is accomplished. Knowing what we know now it is not possible to believe that the science is settled or that there is a scientific โ€œconsensusโ€ for the doomsayer view of globalย warming.โ€

The best part of Solomonโ€™s book is the last chapter, in which he suddenly starts to make sense (not counting a bizarre analogy between economics andย science).

First, Solomon explains his motive for clinging so desperately to some notion of doubt about climate change: he has spent most of his adult life as a self-styled environmentalist, campaigning against nuclear energy and against the ravages of big hydro electric projects. Once he brought it up, I started to remember the incredibly good work that his organization, Energy Probe, did in the 1990s on the Three Gorges dam** inย China.

Now, with fossil-fuel-sourced carbon dioxide identified as the overarching environmental threat, nuclear and mega-hydro projects are back on the front burner. Even people who consider themselves ardent environmentalists โ€“ frontrunners in the vegan Birkenstock crowd โ€“ are looking at those alternatives with a more open mind. And Solomonโ€™s life work seems to be slippingย away.

You have to beย sympathetic.

Solomon also makes some very good points about the fresh batch of stupid decisions that are being made or justified on the basis of climate change. His attack on bio-fuels seems entirely reasonable. His condemnation of carbon credit trading scams is equally defensible. And his oddly contrarian call for the removal of โ€œall the overt and hidden subsidies to road users, industries, and energy producersโ€ is downrightย laudable.

That said, this book is nothing more than a gift to the denial industry, a clumsy favor to the oil-entrenched lobbyists who will do anything to slow our response to an issue that has given rise to a very convincingย consensus.

Solomon says there are quibblers. Heโ€™s right. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there is a 90+ per cent possibility that global warming endangers the world as we know it. And on the central question, even Solomonโ€™s selection of contrarian scientists wonโ€™t denyย it.

If there is evidence of โ€œfraudโ€ in this book, itโ€™s all in the title. Solomon should be a little embarrassed for having brought itย up.

*Doesnโ€™t Bob Carterโ€™s use of the word โ€œgentle planetary warmingโ€ make you feel better? And isnโ€™t it creepy to think that a more honest sentence would have read, โ€œgentle and cumulative planetaryย warmingโ€?

** Solomonโ€™s report of โ€œfifty-meter-high wavesโ€ in the Three Gorges reservoir is, I have to assume, aย typo.

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