The Deniers

The Deniers

First edition cover
Author	Lawrence Solomon
Original title	The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud**And those who are fearful to do so
Cover artist	Charles Bork
Language	English
Genre	Non-fiction
Publisher	Richard Vigilante Books
Publication date	2008-04-01
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	239
ISBN	ISBN 9780980076318

The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud is a book by Lawrence Solomon, a Canadian writer and columnist for the National Post, a newspaper based in Ontario. In this book, Solomon draws attention to a number of scientists and other individuals whom he considers to have advanced arguments against what he defines as the "alarmist" view of global warming, as presented by Al Gore, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the mainstream media and other organizations and individuals.

Overview

The book is based on a series of articles which Solomon wrote in the National Post beginning in November 2006. In it, Solomon questions the assertion that the “science is settled”, which he believes is claimed by advocates of the "consensus theory" and attacks the "alarmist" view on global warming. Among the issues raised and alleged flaws presented are the Hockey stick controversy; the Stern Review; hurricane frequency and intensity; the lack of signs of global warming in Antarctica's climate; reservations on the predictability of climate models and its lack of falsifiability; the Singer-Revelle-Gore controversy; and the alternate solar variation theory, regarding the hypotheses of the warming being driven by the interaction of the solar wind with cosmic rays affecting cloud formation. Each chapter includes end notes with references and website addresses.

The scientists mentioned in the book are, in order of appearance in the book’s chapters: Edward Wegman, Richard Tol, Christopher Landsea, Duncan Wingham, Robert M. Carter, Richard Lindzen, Vincent R. Gray, Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Tom Segalstad, Nir Shaviv, Zbigniew Jaworowski, Hendrik Tennekes, Freeman Dyson, Antonino Zichichi, David Bromwich, Eigil Friis-Christensen, Henrik Svensmark, Sami Solanki, Jasper Kirkby, Habibullo Abdussamatov, George Kukla, the late Rhodes Fairbridge, William M. Gray, Cliff Ollier, Paul Reiter, Claude Allègre, the late Reid Bryson, David Bellamy, and the cautious position of the late Roger Revelle. A brief curriculum vitae for each scientist is presented. In the final chapter, Mr. Solomon presents his personal point of view on this controversy. At least five of the scientists profiled in the book also appeared in the polemic British documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, namely Lindzen, Reiter, Akasofu, Shaviv, and Friis-Christensen.

As of July 22, 2008, the American Amazon store ranks "The Deniers" sales as 712 overall, 4th in both Scientists and Public Policy, and as 6th in Environmental Science books; the Amazon.ca store ranks the book sales as 145 overall, and as first in Environmental Science books; and the Amazon.co.uk store ranks the book overall sales as 9,743, and as 4th in Science books.

Why The Deniers?

The term "The Deniers" is controversial even among some of those profiled in the book, which often raises the question of why Solomon would choose it as the title for both his book and its related newspaper series. The following two quotes provide some insight into Solomon's thinking in that respect.

”More important, I am a layman trying to understand, and help other laymen to understand, how we should think about the global warming debate. For us, the answer cannot be to settle the science directly. For the most part, the layman must rely on the argument from authority, including a careful sifting of the credibility of the authorities and the relevance of their expertise to their particular claims for which they are advanced as witnesses.

[...]

I have been asked many times why I titled my series and now this book The Deniers, in effect adopting their enemies’ terminology. Many of the scientists in this book hate the term and deny it applies to them.

I could give several reasons, but here is the most important. The scientists are not alone in having their credibility on trial in the global warming debate. They are not the only “authorities” in the argument, and not even the most important “authorities.” Most laymen, most citizens, owe most of what we think we know about global warming not to science directly, but to science as mediated by the media and by political bodies, especially the UN and our governments. We citizens, trying to discern what to do about global warming, must judge not only the credibility of the scientists but of those who claim to tell us what the scientists say. To that end, as you read through this book, judge for yourself the credibility of those who dismiss these scientists as cranks or crooks, and call them The Deniers.”

— Lawrence Solomon, pp.7-8 , in "The Deniers"

"As these rather dramatic reversals for the doomsday view mounted, however, I also noticed something striking about my growing cast of deniers.

None of them were deniers."

— Lawrence Solomon, pp.45 , in "The Deniers"

Book Reviews

In a review in the The Washington Times, Shawn Macomber, a staff writer at The American Spectator, described The Denier as "a timely, necessary antidote to a political and scientific discussion poisoned by hubristic groupthink and...scorched earth (mis)behavior

In the The Vancouver Sun, a book review by Mark Milke, a lecturer in Political Science at the University of Calgary, said The Deniers "is about the search for scientific explanations for a complex phenomenon by eminent scientists in a better position than most to judge whether a consensus exists on global warming. Their collective verdict, much varied in the particulars, is "No."}} A rebuttal was published a week later, by science journalist Richard Littlemore saying that Solomon himself had described the dissident scientists as "quibblers" and he was right: "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there's only a 90-plus-per-cent likelihood that global warming endangers the world as we know it.}}

In Forbes, George Gilder, Republican Party activist, and co-founder of the Discovery Institute, wrote: "For investors who know that human-caused global warming is hokum, as proved by the new book The Deniers by Lawrence Solomon, this is a supreme moment of contrarian upside promise."

Newspaper Series

In its own words, the National Post's newspaper series, The Deniers, profiles "the ideas and the scientists who do not share the “consensus” United Nations’ theories on climate change and global warming." The series began on November 28, 2006 with its debut article, Statistics needed. That article described the events wherein Edward Wegman and an "expert panel of statisticians" in a report before the energy and commerce committee of the U.S. House of Representatives concluded that "the assessments that the decade of the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium and that 1998 was the hottest year in a millennium cannot be supported." This was in reference to the original hockey stick graph produced by Michael E. Mann and prominently featured within the 2001 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Assessment Report (TAR).

Within about a year the series had grown to 38 separate articles, which discussed a wide range of inconvenient topics for those who accept the IPCC view of climate change and global warming. These include topics such as the science is not settled, there is evidence of warming on Mars, Jupiter's orbit has a significant effect on the Earth's climate, the warming may actually be beneficial rather than catastrophic, the role of CO₂ has been exaggerated, the predictions of computer models depend on a lifetime for CO₂ in the atmosphere which far exceeds that which is observed by actual measurements, and this is only a small sample of the topics covered in the full series.

Some of the those profiled by Solomon in the newspaper series have complained. Through a press release, Nigel Weiss "rebutted claims that a fall in solar activity could somehow compensate for the man-made causes of global warming." The National Post published an apology and withdrew any allegation that Dr. Weiss is a global warming "denier". Similarly, Sami Solanki complains on his website that

A misleading account of my views was published in the Toronto National Post in March, 2007 (and is to be found at different places on the web). In contrast to what is written there I am not a denier of global warming produced by an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases. Already at present the overwhelming source of global warming is due to manmade greenhouse gases and their influence will continue to grow in the future as their concentration increases. The same newspaper already misquoted other scientists on this topic.

External links

National Post’s Series “The Deniers” by Lawrence Solomon.