Christopher C. Horner

The cliché warns against judging books based upon their cover’s appearance; this book definitely benefits from that maxim. One would expect a work destroying “global warming” or “global climate change” alarmism to be science-based and provide facts and reasoning. Part of a series boasting its political incorrectness, this book’s cover art is misleading. The edition I read features a tipsy penguin, complete with lei, looking like he is leaving a Spuds McKenzie after party. To further detract from any imposition of seriousness, there is a cute little cartoon pig peering from a circle – the mascot for the Politically Incorrect Guide (P.I.G.) series.

While nothing on its cover does anything to purport a decidedly scientific work, possibly aside from the author’s name, a casual flip through the pages continues to belie Mr. Horner's thorough dismantling of “catastrophic, only ten-years to stop the extinction of man, colder regions actually signify warming, global warming” hysteria at the detriment to science. The book is filled with shaded boxes with quotes, graphs and news article excerpts, again adorned with whimsical icons.

While not a scientist himself, Christopher C. Horner is a political junkie looking in on the circular logic, political aspirations of the global warming alarmists (i.e. higher taxes, global governance, Kyoto Protocol), and selective use of the facts. A favorite target in the book is the most outspoken alarmist, who also is not a scientist, Vice President Al Gore. Via his prolific work, all kinds of alarms (and money) are made; be it books, live interviews, a movie based on a PowerPoint presentation, the former Vice President has a lot to offer, making it all the easier for Mr. Horner to dissect climate changes suspect history, leading all the way up to, and including, Al Gore’s efforts in 2006 (the last year before the book was published).

Like mile-long ice core samples, or more contemporary temperature records, and even increasingly (yet, however, brief of record) high-tech satellite imagery, the global warming “Truthers” have left a record of their claims which date back about a century. Just as reliable as the coming-and-goings of ice ages, the climate change alarmists have vacillated from warming to cooling at least twice. Not only does Mr. Horner construct timelines of their claims regarding either global cooling or warming and associated doom to the planet, he illustrates how, as he puts it, facts have been “airbrushed” from the record. Charts and graphs have been constructed with selective data and baselines ignored; once hyperbolic claims, later proven wildly inaccurate or unnecessarily alarmist have been removed from United Nations reports or retractions buried in newspapers; and self-congratulatory affirmations of alarmists by vaunted scientists have been reported with the utmost glee, only to have refutation of said scientists upset that an atta-boy was taken out of context or the impetus of a scathing report was completely turned upside down and inside-out to falsely support something like an 80 foot rise in the sea level will happen next week.

Similar to an Iraqi government official under Saddam Hussein providing tour of power plants to prove to UN nuclear inspectors they are not dabbling in uranium enrichment, the Man-made Global Warming “Chicken Littles” are directing our collective attention to highly emotional occurrences. Driving our attention to the shrinking Upsala glacier, emotions trump skepticism. If the Upsala glacier is the steam generator for Iraqi power proudly evinced by the tour guide as proof of no nuclear ambition, the Moreno glacier is the nuclear centrifuges behind the door across the hall. The Moreno glacier is growing and a mere 50 kilometers away. It really takes a suspension of disbelief to believe it is so hot to melt a mountain top glacier but be so cold another glacier is enlarging.

Global warming proponents have successfully admonished large sections of the world to not listen to the doubters. Nothing screams science like quashing doubt and stifling questions; offering alternative theories or hypothesis just has no place in sound science! Several times in the book, Mr. Horner writes of once-honored scientists at the table of global warming are now shunned and discredited after they publish unflattering or skeptical opinions.

In short, this book is a measured and thorough dissection of claims to instill fear that if not in the customary ten-year mark of irreversible destruction, we should make sacrifices now for our grandchildren. He illustrates the fluctuating viewpoints, often contradictory to assertions made decades earlier. Mr. Horner ties in “Big Business” – specifically those dirty, evil energy companies and their work with government to subsidize green energy. Green’s favorite company, Enron, was at the center of pushing for the Kyoto Protocol, after all. No harm, no foul.… (more)

I really wanted to like this book. I really did. And let me say this, I AGREE with EVERYTHING in it.

I saw Horner discussing the book on C-SPAN 2 and thought I'd like the book. But here are its problems: (1) Horner thinks that he's Ann Coulter. Problem is, he's not that funny and he's lacks her concision. Which brings us to (2), the book is a disorganized, overlong, sloppy mess. This is in the top ten list of books in dire need of an EDITOR! I think Horner took every story he could find on Google, copied it, and shotgun blasted it into Microsoft Word. A typical chapter has little tying it together, a hundred names are tossed out, often without elucidation and often accompanied by a snide joke, and two dozen stories that get the point across that something is fishy, but you don't quite know what the point is. Then there are a few pictures, charts, and side-panels, the last of which are incongruous with the text, and more akin to the little side-panels in the Politically Incorrect Guide series that publisher Regnery puts out. Since I do not have Horner's PIG guide to Global Warming, I wonder if any of these chapters are merely cut and pasted from that book.

That said, many things are cited, if you can find where anything is through the disorganized mess and unhelpful index. Many of the citations, however, are to websites. This book was written before the recent "ClimateGate" scandal and the general destruction of the IPCC's latest report. This would have made fine material for the book.

To sum up, Wikipedia and the afterword to Crichton's State of Fear provide a clearer, better, and more concise overview of the anti-Warming school of thought. It took me over a year to slowly slog through this book it was so muddled and unfunny. A perfect model of how a good idea and facts doesn't equal a great book when a great author and competent editor are missing.

Here is a similar review from Amazon that I found to be so on point that I am linking to it: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1SDKPE59SW3Y1/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm… (more)

A devastating look at the green movement. Lots of numbers and data to back up the thesis that the earth is used to fluctuations in the environment and that the political melodrama is getting in the way of this fact. His main contention is that the greens are simply using environmentalism as a tool to bring about world government. Based on the included quotes of some of the movement's leaders, it's hard to disagree.

It is funny that all the defenders of Stalinism gave way to the defenders of Goreism on the political Left, isn't it? Whatever the flavor of the decade I suppose.… (more)