Scientific books

Book Review: Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming

Dire Predictions: Understanding Global Warming
By Michael E. Mann and Lee R. Kump
DK Publishing, $ 25.00 US or less, Available Now

Let's say you're a preeminent paleo-climate researcher who's been widely recognized for groundbreaking, dramatic work. Your reward from the usual suspects is to be attacked, shamelessly misrepresented, dragged through several legislative circuses with decidedly mixed receptions. At times openly harressed by world class industry whores, forced to appear beside Michael Crichton of all people, while antiscience ideologues eagerly take turns metaphorically beating you in public with the political equivalent of soap bars in a sock. What to do? One way out would be to lower your profile.

But if you're my courageous colleague Michael Mann, Associate Professor in the Department of Meteorology and Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, founding member of the premier climate change blog Real Climate, and one of the original producers of the now famous Hockey Stick graph, you team up with like-minded fellow PSU Geoscientist Lee R. Kump to set the record straight. In Dire Predictions, Mann and Kump do exactly that, producing along the way a unique resource for any champion of science and the environment.

Here in one book is the skinny on past climate change, current observations, future predictions, economic and geopolitical considerations; on and on the science marches; three decades worth of research compressed into 207 colorful pages. Virtually every antiscience claim is debunked. Whether rw talking points come your way from friends or family parroting energy propaganda, or wind up in your inbox from the friendly community troll working pro bono on behalf of Exxon-Mobil, this book has the accessible, scientifically based response you're going to want close at hand.

Read more...