Peter Taylor (20) (1948–)

Chill is the best book on climate change that I have come across, but does have a few deficiencies (for which it gets 4.5 stars instead of 5).

The best chapters are 3 and 4 followed by 9 and 10. Based upon observations of cloud cover changes, he presents a convincing case that the warming from 1983 to 1998 was caused by decreasing cloud cover. The subsequent cooling since that time coincides with increased cloud cover which means less radiation is absorbed by the Earth and hence it show more cools.

Chapters 9 and 10 then show that climate is not sensitive to changes in greenhouse gases and can only account for about 20% of the warming.

Other early chapters concentrate on solar influences on climate, particularly the Svensmark hypothesis. In my opinion, this hypothesis may or may not be true, but it is not relevant to the arguments about why cloud cover changes. All that one needs to know is that such changes occur in both directions (meaning that human activities cannot explain them) and that these variations are sufficient to explain all climate changes since 1983 when good observations exist. A better explanation for the cloud cover changes is that they are simply unforced internal oscillations of climate and that these unforced oscillations occur on all time scales. No policy options can control them. These oscillations are absent from climate models, presumably because they are programmed to eliminate any drift away from an assumed “equilibrium level”.

The second part of the book deals with the politics of climate.

The bottom line of this book is in Chapter 10 where he shows that the best observations lead to a climate sensitivity of less than 1 C for a doubling of carbon dioxide. show less