Patrick J. Michaels (1950–2022)

This is written as a series of about forty short essays critiquing various aspects of the climate debate. The overall message is that where the situation exists at all, it's not as dire as the often extremist activists claim. Most of the essays include charts and graphs, often from the models used to claim predictions of warming. And there are plenty of source citations for anyone who wants to research more. If there's one trend that sticks with me, it's that the most extreme environmental show more pundits tend to make grand claims that are too soon proven wrong. show less

Climate of Extremes : Global Warming Science they Don’t Want you to Know by Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling Jr is the best book I’ve read on Climate Science from the skeptic’s point of view. If you want to understand global warming and want to see what climatologists who disagree with the majority then this is the book to read. It’s well written, data heavy and well worth a read for anyone who is interested in climate change.

The book goes through the science of global warming and show more says that it is extremely likely that temperatures will rise due to Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). The authors believe that warming will continue at about the same rate as the warming that has occurred since the mid 1970s, at about 0.15C per decade. They talk about the 20th Century warming and point out that the warming pre WWII was likely to have been non-anthropogenic but that the later warming is likely to have been human induced. They make the interesting and rarely reported point that methane has risen and fallen in the atmosphere and the cause is unknown. They point out that James Hansen has stated that he believes warming will be about 1.5 C / century rather than at the higher rates that many AGW proponents have proposed. They point out that the models all have a problem in that at 10km they predict more warming than has occurred and that their daily temperature range projections are wrong. They point out how remarkable it is that it is not common knowledge that the models are overestimating warming and that no model has predicted the 10 years of no warming that has occurred.

The book is the book I’ll offer to my AGW proponent friends. This book, together with Bjorn Lomborg’s Cool It, give a very good presentation of the skeptics case. Even if people disagree, the case should be heard and understood by those who believe that immediate action is vital. They probably won’t change many people’s views, but they will make people realise that skeptics are not crazed total deniers of temperature increase but rather represent a scientific and economic opinion that, whilst it may be wrong, is not a product of ignorance or lack of reason. show less

Good book about all the new global warming science today.
And about the scientists that try to call this body of information to the attention of the public. And as a result are intimidated, blacklisted, and even driven from prestigious scientific employment. Be informed! Read the Other Side.

Amazon Description:

Michaels (climatology, Univ. of Virginia) and Balling (director, Laboratory of Climatology, Arizona State Univ., Tempe) examine the role played by politics, the media, and science in the creation of our present perceptions of humanity's effect on climate, particularly global warming. Their main thesis is that politicians and the media have blown this issue out of proportion, manipulating currently known information in order to fulfill their own objectives. The authors also show more assert that the current scientific paradigm accepts as fact both global warming and humankind's contributions to its acceleration. Scientists therefore tend to ignore contradictory data. Michaels and Balling present a good discussion of the climatological factors and theories of climate change and of the human activities that could be influencing climate. They counter each currently held theory with data and theory that support their own perspective. While they offer a well-thought-out overview in language that lay readers can understand, their conservative political agenda is also very apparent. Still, their book is recommended for public, academic, and high school environmental collections as a good balance to alarmist materials that present global warming as an imminent catastrophe.DBetty Galbraith, Owen Science & Engineering Lib., Washington State Univ., Pullman
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. show less