The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with "Climate Change" Turning Out to Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History?

by Christopher Booker

This original book considers one of the most extraordinary scientific and political stories of our how in the 1980s a handful of scientists came to believe that mankind faced catastrophe from runaway global warming, and how today this has persuaded politicians to land us with what promises to be the biggest bill in history. Christopher Booker interweaves the science of global warming with that of its growing political consequences, showing how just when the politicians are threatening to change our Western way of life beyond recognition, the scientific evidence behind the global warming theory is being challenged like never before. The book exposes the myth that the global warming theory is supported by a 'consensus of the world's top climate scientists'. It shows how the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is run by a small group of 'global warming' zealots, who have repeatedly rigged evidence to support their theory. But the politicians, pushed by the media, have so fallen for its propaganda that, short of dramatic change, our Western world now faces an unprecedented disaster.

Genres: Climate Change, Science, Politics, Nonfiction

368 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2009

About the author

Christopher John Penrice Booker is an English journalist and author.

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over the last year, I've heard a surprising number of people tell me that they don't believe in climate change, and I thought I should check out the other side of the argument more carefully. This book is written by a leading skeptic, who was also one of the founders of Private Eye, my favourite satirical magazine; if nothing else, I was pretty sure I'd find it entertaining. Although I am, in the terminology of the book, a "warmist", I tried to put aside my preconceptions and read it as objectively as I could.

If you don't want to wade through the whole review, which is quite long, here's a summary. On the positive side, Booker presents a good overview of the skeptical case against the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis. As I'd expected, it's also fun to read; the author is a fine journalist, who writes with passion and humour. He makes some telling points, which deserve careful thought even if you're another warmist. In particular, his criticisms of the large industry that has grown up around renewable energy seem well thought out. But, on the negative side, I am unconvinced by his central claim: increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are not causing global warming. I thought his arguments here were weak and superficial.

While reading the book, I tried to keep three general principles in mind:

- Just because you don't like someone, it doesn't mean they're wrong. Three of the most prominent global warming skeptics in recent years have been George W. Bush, Sarah Palin and Vladimir Putin. I can't stand any of them, and it would be galling to admit they'd got it right. But, on the other hand, Hitler was a hundred times worse than any of these people, and he was right about the dangers of smoking when most of the world was wrong. So personal feelings should be disregarded.

- Just because scientific results are arrived at in dubious ways, it doesn't mean they're necessarily incorrect. What matters is whether they stand up to more careful examination. For example, it turns out that Millikan's oil drop experiment, one of the most famous in the history of science, was fudged. Millikan threw out a lot of anomalous data for no very good reason, and didn't immediately tell his colleagues. But other people were later able to fix the problems and do the experiment cleanly, so really he was right.

- Just because you disagree with someone, you don't need to be rude. In the end, global warming comes down to facts, not opinions. We'll arrive at the truth faster if we argue in a cool and professional way, and I completely agree with Booker that the discussion has become unpleasantly polarized.

So, on to the book itself, which is making the following key claims:

1) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), responsible for providing most of the arguments for the existence of global warming, is primarily a political and not a scientific body, which conducts its business in a dishonest fashion. It has created a climate of hysteria, in which it is no longer possible to question its authority.

2) The scientific evidence for global warming is unconvincing when you examine it closely. It's mainly based on faulty statistical analysis.

3) The political response to the claimed global warming phenomenon has been poorly thought out, and will cause more problems than it solves.

I'll look at these one at a time.

1. The IPCC is dishonest

Booker spins a hair-raising story, which describes how the IPCC is run by a small clique of insiders. He says that they systematically manipulate the evidence, browbeat their collaborators into signing off on dubious science, and in some cases even edit the reports after they have been approved by their supposed authors. I have no way of judging to what extent this is true. Since it is very important that the IPCC avoids even the appearance of impropriety, they would do well to respond to these criticisms, and, if necessary, tighten up their procedures accordingly. In particular, if it is true that reports have been edited after contributing authors have signed them, this procedure should obviously be discontinued.

2. Global warming isn't really happening, or isn't being caused by CO2 buildup

So, it's possible that the IPCC have been manipulating the data, but, if they are just guilty of using sloppy methods to reach an essentially correct conclusion, then it doesn't matter much. The key question is whether the global warming hypothesis is correct. I am afraid that I do not find Booker's arguments at all convincing. He makes three particularly important factual claims:

a. The "hockey stick graph" is incorrect.

b. The overall global warming trend reversed in 1999, and the world has actually been getting colder since then.

c. What global warming we have seen has been caused, not by excess levels of CO2, but by the solar sunspot cycle.

So let's look at each of these.

2a. The "hockey stick graph" is incorrect

Booker shows us the famous hockey stick graph, "MBH99", which purports to show that the world was warmer in 1998 than it had been for the previous thousand years.

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He quotes people, particularly the statisticians McIntyre and McKitrick, who claim that the methods used to produce the hockey stick are suspect. The problem here is that the arguments on both sides are extremely technical, and the book is not able to present them in enough detail that I can decide for myself who I believe. The problem is a difficult one: consider that we are trying to reconstruct what the average temperature was hundreds of years ago, all over the world, to an accuracy of a tenth of a degree. It is impressive that people agree as well as they do.

There were two high-profile reviews of the hockey stick, one by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and one led by another statistician, Edward Wegman. Both reviews pointed out technical flaws in MBH99. The NAS review concluded that, despite these flaws, the conclusions of MBH99 were substantially correct. Wegman thought that the conclusions were incorrect. Unfortunately, each side accused the other of taking a partisan standpoint.

It seems to me that, even if there are methodological question marks over MBH99, the important thing is that other researchers are roughly in agreement. I've spent some time looking around on the Web. Although the exact shapes of the historical curves vary a lot, they all turn up sharply at the end. There is a nice graphic here, which compares ten such studies.



I can't say I'm 100% convinced, but it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the skeptics. What do they think is the correct graph, and why?

2b. The overall global warming trend reversed in 1999

This part of the argument seemed completely wrong to me. Booker cherry-picks his data, and claims that "global warming" was a short-lived phenomenon that only happened between 1970 and 1998. There was, indeed a smooth rise between these two dates, and declines on both sides. However, world temperature varies in an uneven way. If you look at the curve for the whole period where we have recorded data, from 1880 to the present, there is a clear warming trend over a much longer span. I find it significant that Booker does not present a graph of this kind.



His treatment of the melting Arctic ice also seems superficial to me. He makes a great deal out of the fact that there was more ice in 2006 and 2007 than there was in 2005. Small-scale variations like this don't mean anything. Again, if you look at the curve for the whole period where we have data, there is a clear downward trend, even though the curve has many locally uneven portions. And again, Booker doesn't present any curve, just verbal descriptions.



2c. It's not CO2, it's sunspots

Everyone agrees that the world was rapidly getting warmer for at least the period 1970-1998 (as noted above, I would say for much longer than that). If it wasn't CO2 causing it, then what was going on? Booker's favoured theory is that it was due to sunspots. The story is interesting, and, looking around, most people seem to agree that it isn't nonsense. High sunspot activity does appear to cause warming on Earth, in part because the Sun is more active then. The big question is how much warming. Again, I notice that Booker doesn't give us a curve. It wasn't at all hard to find one:



Although there is a remarkably good correlation up to about 1975, after that the two curves go their own ways: sunspots went down, but global temperatures went up. The suggested interpretation is that CO2 levels have now become high enough that they override sunspot activity.

In general, I was unconvinced by Booker's case on the scientific part. He is a journalist, and not a scientist, and he talks when he should be showing us numbers. Maybe he just prefers words, but I felt he was also doing it because the numbers weren't the ones he wanted.

3. The political response to global warming doesn't make sense

I thought this was the strongest part of the argument. Booker talks sensibly about the way in which politicians have responded to the crisis. He seems to be quite correct in saying that they have not thought through their proposals about renewable energy in a responsible and quantitative way. Variants on "Windfarms good, nuclear bad" are not helping at all, and I liked the way Booker described how unscrupulous entrepreneurs are cashing in on the general confusion. In particular, biofuels seem to have been an embarrassing disaster, and it's less than clear how the sums add up for wind power. I recommend David MacKay's excellent book, Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air, which presents the numbers in a neutral and informative way.

I'm sorry the review is so long, but I feel very strongly about these issues. It's dismaying that the debate has become so polarized, and that everyone is wasting time calling each other names. We shouldn't do that. Where there is doubt about the facts, we should identify the areas of agreement and disagreement, and work to resolve disagreements. All the people involved in the debate have a responsibility to present their view of the situation in as clear and objective a manner as possible.

I think Booker is making some good points here, and, even though I completely disagreed with some of his central arguments, I found his account well worth reading. I encourage people on both sides to try and look at the other side's case in as open-minded a way as possible, so that we can bridge the gap without further delay. Whoever's right, we really need to do this.

[Siddharth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book, a dissent to the CO2-Global warming link, after reading Global Warming: The Complete Briefing. I was expecting a book that was filled with non-scientific arguments and personal attacks. I got something completely different: A tightly written book with a narrative that flows naturally and is extremely well referenced. On that front, I am deeply satisfied. There was a lot to learn in this book, most importantly: don't trust graphs and cut-off points without asking WHY a graph is cut-off at that point (Why are arctic ice sheet videos cut off at Sept 2007? (That was the year with the largest ice melt) Why is the cut-off point 1930 for extreme weather events? (1928 was a very bad year with a huge amount of storms) Why is 1979 the starting point for temperature records? (That's when we started taking satellite measurements)

On the other hand, this book was tiring to read because of the unending back-and-forth between the IPCC and it's scientific critics: The flow remained surprisingly similar every single time: IPCC puts out something alarmist, the critics find an issue and ask the IPCC why they let it happen, the IPCC then fixes the issue and says that the "effects of the mistake were minor and don't affect the over-all conclusions", the critics disagree, IPCC disregards the critics as illiterate amateurs who don't know what they are talking about.

Here are my top 3 take-aways:



Global warming is a "settled, not up-for-debate anymore" issue. The skeptical scientists found a space to voice their concerns on one side of the political spectrum, this in turn has lead to the issue becoming tainted: being a skeptic is equivalent to being a denier of reality and a believer in conspiracy theories. It is now a foregone conclusion that human beings are emitting greenhouse gases, that is in-turn warming the globe beyond any historic levels. No amount of cooling or lack of data will disprove this thesis or cause it's proponents to rethink their position. As the Newsroom memorably told us, "There's only a position on this, as much as there is a position on whether water boils at 100 degrees C". When the climate does not follow IPCC's models, that's because there's a temporary lull. When it does, the IPCC is right. The house always wins.


The world's governments are sold on this issue, nothing will change that because there is a structural advantage to doing things. Democracy is about "action". Politicians get voters to vote for them by showing them what they did, and telling them what they will DO: Elections are seldom won by people who advocate for inaction. In this sense, it is nearly impossible to advocate for inaction, which is why politicians who are advocating for inaction instead start advocating for regression. Regression is universally reviled (and rightly so) and is not a strategy that will lead to winning elections in the long term, even though some incredible short term gains can be made as shown by some countries in the recent past. Hence, we will see very few politicians advocating for inaction with respect to this issue. The remaining large economy to commit to emissions targets in February 2021 is India, and all signs point to the government committing to something in the next few years.


The IPCC is a flawed unscientific, political institution; but it will continue to retain it's prestige and governments will enact policies based on it's recommendations. They know exactly what the media wants to show their viewers: alarmist findings. They know exactly what the public can never hope to comprehend: computer models. They know exactly what journalists will never look into at any level of detail: press releases. Their statements will be reported as-is, and this will allow them to control the agenda.



Booker captures all of this in an amazing paragraph towards the end of the book:

The true believers in global warming similarly exhibited a moralistic fanaticism, justified by the transcendent importance of their cause. The basic narrative by which they lived was one familiar from the history of religious sects down the ages, the conviction that the end of the world was nigh, thanks to the wickedness of mankind and could only be saved if humanity acknowledged its sins and went through a profound change of behavior.

P.S. As a UN institution, I am deeply skeptical of the IPCC. The UN is a toothless institution that has spent a whole lot of time and money passing aspirational resolutions which are blown out of the water by sovereign countries and their local political pressures. Veep and Yes Minister have scathing critiques of the UN and I mostly agree with them. As a result of reading this book, I have become pretty skeptical of the IPCC and it's handling of the "science": the IPCC chairman, Pachauri, is not a climate scientist; there are activists who write the massive reports that IPCC produces; the summary of these reports comes out before the report itself.

Booker points to how every single large scale climate event since the European heat wave of 2003 has been attributed to global warming. This was a pretty good parallel to the days that I was reading this book in when an avalanche in Uttarakhand, India killed several 100 people and a freak weather storm in the US affected Texas' power grid. Both of these were low-probability, high-impact events which could have been prevented through man-made measures that are in place in other geographies: monitoring of glaciers and avalanches and early-warning systems in Uttarakhand and a robust power-grid with natural gas lines that were appropriately weatherized for extreme temperatures in Texas. The media, true to form, was quick to attribute them to climate change.

[Jason Clay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Opened my ideas to the truth behind the global warming consensus. Yes we have to recycle and conserve energy supplies, but the west doesn't have to wear a hair shirt and pay billions to the third world in carbon credits.

[Terje Enge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly controversial but well documented and written.
If you want balance your views on the global warming debate this is a must-read.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoroughly researched and well-presented analysis of the recent climate change discourse. Highly recommended.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came to this book already with a growing scepticism to much of the narrative on global warming.

Having gone through secondary school during the 2000's and early 2010's in Britain much of the narrative on global warming was thoroughly drilled into myself and many of my peers. The fog of conventional wisdom and lazy thinking meant that I continued to believe in it wholeheartedly until a few years ago when I began to read the opposing view.

This book I would say is a great starting point for anyone who is either a) looking to have their views challenged or b) would like a general overview of the sceptics' case on which to then do further reading.

In terms of the science, there is sufficient detail to get a basic understanding of some of the variables and factors that shape our climate, in this regard it is by no means comprehensive. Mr Booker does also highlight some of the inconsistencies in the warmists claims.

Where the book really shines in on the chronicling of the environmentalist movement and the political decisions made up until the time of the publishing of the book. In this respect, I think the main and best argument against the current orthodoxy is made. In particular the fact that if you take the warmists claims to be true, current measures are little more than a plaster on a gaping wound, as well as the fact that in their current forms all renewable sources of energy (in particular wind) are in a number of ways, not sufficient. I would also recommend reading Mr Booker's columns on the Telegraph website, as he also deals with the issues of the national grid and the consequences of the current push towards electric cars.

You will most likely come away either with your current views shaken, bolstered or at the very least challenged. It's clear not only from this book but other sources that the science definitely isn't settled on the subject and whilst I would refrain from dismissing it out of hand the sceptic's case seems more and more compelling and the consequence of these policies more and more costly.

[Joseph Busa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A few years ago I read Henrik Svensmark's and Nigel Calder's The Chilling Stars in which they advocate that the world's climate is determined not by CO2 emissions but by cosmic rays.

I read Christopher Booker's book thinking that it would provide an in depth analysis of the same theory. I was more than a little surprised that its main premise is that the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created by a man named Maurice Strong because he wanted to use it as an inter-government organisation to help turn the UN into a World Government. I think Booker makes a convincing case for our being misled by the IPCC and the Western political class into accepting unnecessary draconian reductions in COs emissions, and with it a massive lowering of living standards, because it is the only way to save the planet from catastrophic global warming.

This book has changed my whole perspective on how the world works and that fake news might be much more prevalent than I had previously lead to believe. It's a bit of a tome but, in my opinion, well worth a read.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I gave this book the rating it does mostly because of the editing, which, to be fair, the writer admitted to in the closing lines of the book. With that said, Christopher Booker lays out his stance about Global Warming/Climate Change with detailed account.

[Paul Forrest · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding demolition of the climate-change superstructure. We read of deception, prejudice, ad hominem arguments and much worse in the building of a religious edifice involving scientific malpractice, journalistic disingenuity, political ignorance, corporate avarice and academic selfishness.

[Mariyan Traykov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought provoking read. Back by detailed research and good arguments

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Is the obsession with climate change turning out to be the most
costly scientific delusion in history?”

That’s the big question at the heart of Christopher Booker’s
chronicle of climate change. For Booker, the real global warming
disaster is a misreading of scientific evidence, combined with media
scare stories. Imagined fears, he says, have bulldozed governments
into disproportionate and potentially ruinous responses.

His scope is wide. From the Medieval Warming to the Little Ice
Age, Kyoto to Copenhagen, Booker sets out to show that, when
it comes to climate change, there’s nothing new under the sun.
But he’s scathing in his contempt for scientists who attempt to
airbrush earlier historical changes out of their analyses, just to
convince their audience that today’s climate change is manmade.

He’s especially hard on Al Gore’s use of emotive language
– “ticking time bomb” “catastrophe” “epic destruction”– and
shoots down each of Gore’s “inconvenient truths”. He’s equally
scornful of the Met Office forecast of a scorching 2008, just
when the Northern Hemisphere was suffering the coldest start
to a winter for decades.

But Booker’s fiercest fire is directed at the Inter-governmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of “zealots who have repeatedly
rigged the evidence to support their theory.” Far from being a crosssection of scientific opinion, says Booker, the IPCC is committed to strengthening their case for an already firmly held view.

As for the vast sums of money being spent on alternative energy sources, the author demonstrates the inadequacy of their
impact: the 10,000 turbines built in the entire United States
generate no more than the output of large coal-fired power
station, and they still need back-up from conventional power
stations. Taken together, says Booker, renewables add up to “the
most expensive economic suicide note ever written.”

Christopher Booker doesn’t deny the climate is changing. But
he does see the need for a proper debate on why it’s changing.
It should be possible, he suggests, to challenge the consensus
without being branded insane. His is a persuasive and thoughtprovoking
book that’s sure to unsettle many who thought the science of climate change was settled.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's not easy to write a review of this book, not because I didn't enjoy it, but rather because I find myself writing why I agree with Christopher Booker and disagree with all the environmentalists. So it may be best to keep this short, but I would certainly suggest that everyone, regardless of which view you agree with, read this, as this will balance out the argument that we are not being allowed to debate.

The reason I picked this book up in the first place was because I have never accepted the 'consensus' view about Global Warming that we are pummeled with by the media day and night, and it's nice to see that someone is not too scared to write a book that disagrees with that view too.

I had been thinking that there would be an awful lot of science in the book, and, there is some but, what the book really does is show us is to what extent the people that present us with the 'consensus' bully and attempt to intimidate those who disagree with their view. It also points out how those who tell us that global warming is our fault refuse to fully release their data which is needed to prove that their computer modelling is without fault. We also find out that a lot, if not most, of the statistical data is cherry picked or altered to 'prove' their argument. It's also interesting to find out that the papers that the IPCC present to the world are agreed on my scientists and proof readers, then altered without their knowledge so that they exactly match the views of the governments and IPCC.

If more books like this were out there (And trust me, as a bookseller, there aren't that many compared with the 'pro global warming' books) then maybe, the topic wouldn't be such a volatile one to discuss.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is controversial. The title alone can make people start shouting and arguing as soon as I say I have read it. The fact that I give this book four stars will probably make a lot of people very angry. But let me make this clear: I don't necessarily agree with everything this book says. However, I think it makes a very convincing argument and is extremely well written, and it certainly gave me a lot to think about. Hence, I had to give it four stars.

Books like these are not only for people who don't believe in global warming. Sure, if you don't then you will probably love this book, because it provides a million and one reasons why the issue has been blown way out of proportion (in the author's opinion). But I think even those who do believe in human-induced climate change can gain a lot from it. To fully understand an issue, you have to look at it from both sides. The government and the media shoves the 'Global Warming Is The Worst Thing To Happen Ever!' side at as every day. This book provides a refreshing look at the other side, made up of cynics and scientists who don't necessarily dispute climate change, but do think that it has been grossly overexaggerated.

Don't read this book because you want to scorn at the counter-arguments for climate change. Read this book because you are interested in looking at both sides of a topical issue, then form your own opinion. I'm not saying that you'll like what it says. I disagreed with much of it and wondered at a lot more. But nonetheless, it was nice to gain a more balanced view by appreciating the other side.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read several books on the global warming scandal (my first and favourite being "Heaven and Earth") I needed no more convincing that the 'science' behind the scares were bogus. I was hoping to learn more about the repercussions of all the scare stories, and I wasn't disappointed. I learned about the outrageous politics behind the scenes, the dreadful decisions that are being made in order to "save the planet", facts behind the costly and useless wind-farms that are sprouting up everywhere, and the money-sucking (well, for we ordinary people anyway) carbon trading schemes.

[Gerhard Peters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! I highly recommend this book to anyone skeptical of the human made global warming theory. It is astonishing the corruption in the scientific community the human global warming scandal has brought about, all in the name of doing away with industrialization we enjoy.

[Judith · Rating 1 out of 5]

1 Star = Did Not Like It