Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming |  | Author: James Hoggan
Creator: Richard Littlemore
Publisher: Greystone Books
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $10.20
as of 11/24/2009 12:15 CST details
You Save: $4.80 (32%)
New (6) Used (4) from $10.20
Seller: Amazon.com
Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 13884
Media: Paperback
Pages: 240
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 1553654854
Dewey Decimal Number: 577
EAN: 9781553654858
ASIN: 1553654854
Publication Date: September 29, 2009
Shipping: Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 12 to 13 days
| |
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Talk of global warming is nearly inescapable these days â but there are some who believe the concept of climate change is an elaborate hoax. Despite the input of the worldâs leading climate scientists, the urgings of politicians, and the outcry of many grassroots activists, many Americans continue to ignore the warning signs of severe climate shifts. How did this happen? Climate Cover-up seeks to answer this question, describing the pollsters and public faces who have crafted careful language to refute the findings of environmental scientists. Exploring the PR techniques, phony "think tanks," and funding used to pervert scientific fact, this book serves as a wake-up call to those who still wish to deny the inconvenient truth.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 26
 A Devastating Expose November 23, 2009
Hrafnkell Haraldsson (Indiana)
Climate Cover-Up by James Hoggan (with Richard Littlemore) is a powerful expose about the cover-up orchestrated by big oil and coal to convince the public that Global Warming is at worst a hoax, at best, open to question.
Make no mistake: this is a very difficult book to read. Not because Mr. Hoggan's writing skills are in question. They are not. The prose is clear and concise. What makes this book difficult to read is the anger and frustration that builds inside you seeing the extent to which the polluters control public discourse on the subject of Global Warming.
Yes, this book will make you angry. It will also, I hope, make you want to do something about it. I only hope that some of those who have denied anthropogenic global warming will read this book, and learn how misled they've been, why, and by whom.
The most important thing to know about this book going in is that it is NOT about the science of anthropogenic global warming. There are many books on that subject. Climate Cover-Up is about the effort to deny, reject, and to cast doubt on the science by the oil and coal industries. James Hoggan does so relentlessly, fearlessly, and without the drama (and inaccuracies) of television investigative journalism.
The casual reader need not worry about mountains of graphs and science and mathematics. You won't find that here. What you will find is a veritable Nuremburg gallery of the guilty - lobbyists, geologists, physicists, journalists, think-tanks, etc, who either work for or on behalf of the polluters to deny that their pollution is warming our planet.
What is striking, as you read through this book, is that those who lead the charge in denying global warming are not climatologists. Climatologists overwhelmingly argue that anthropogenic global warming is taking place. Their certainty is 90%.
As James Hoggan asks, if someone told you the plane you were going to fly on had a 90% chance of crashing, wouldn't you decide not to take it? Yet we have a 90% certainty that we are destroying our environment, and we do nothing.
Deniers often claim that you need only follow the money trail to see how self-interest motivates the scientists who have repeatedly demonstrated that our planet is warming. This, James Hoggan does, but where the money trail leads is to the deniers themselves, to people who have vested interest in denying the consumption, mining, and drilling of fossil fuels on the environment.
The frightening thing is, as James Hoggan warns here, the deniers need not disprove the science to win. All they have to do to win is to cast doubt. And this they have successfully done.
That is why this book is so important. It exposes the spin machine that has created this doubt. It exposes their methods and their motivation, and it names names and lists the dollars. It should come as no surprise that it is the polluters themselves who are paying and offering to pay scientists to reject anthropogenic global warming.
Deniers like to claim that scientists endorse anthropogenic global warming because they would lose their funding if they told the truth. That fallacy is exposed here. These scientists do reject money, large amounts of it, from the polluting industries, so that they CAN tell the truth. They could make far more working for Exxon-Mobil or some other polluting giant than working as a legitimate scientist committed not to spin, but to the scientific method and to facts.
When you are finished reading this book, if not before, you will want to go to [...] and bookmark it. Here you will find a useful database that expands upon the information contained in this book, and provides further insight into the scope of the cover-up.
 Why Skepticism Flourishes November 20, 2009
Brian Allen (Manistee, MI USA)
This is a great little book to show you why there is more skepticism about global warming now than just a few years ago. Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence of damage to the climate and oceans from anthropogenic CO2 emissions the denial industry has not died. In fact it seems more effective than ever. This book does quite a good job of showing how this has happened and why scientists have not been effective communicators of the results of their studies in the mainstream media.
An interesting example from the book explained google searches (you can check this yourself). Type in "global warming" and the first page or even two of hits will be global warming denial websites.
This book continues where the excellent book by Jeremy Leggett "The Carbon War, Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era" left off after its publication in 2001.
The only reason I did not give 5 stars to this is that I wish this book would have included at least a short highlight chapter of recent findings of global warming/climate change and ocean acidification. This would have added to the book and perhaps satisfied more readers (as reviewed above). Without this it is still an excellent chronicle and explanation of the significant effect of those that have a financial interest in preventing recognition and action on global warming.
A different approach to Global Warming books November 19, 2009
Michael Smith (Mountain View, CA USA)
This book piqued my interest the moment I saw the subtitle - "The Crusade to Deny Global Warming". I have to admit that I'm from the center-left of the political spectrum so I know the facts (I have an environmental studies minor in my BA) but was interested in what the author (James Hoggan) had to say about the "cover-up" that's occurring in today's polarized political (and mass media) climate.
Though I don't have a journalistic background, I've grown up learning to inquire and investigate. The author wants to make one point clear -- and it's apparent in all seventeen chapters -- "check [the] credentials" of anyone who's trying to promote a point. PR spin is everywhere and we must learn to identify fact from fiction (something perhaps much of the public today can't do). Critics of global warming implant doubt into the vulnerable.
I found the first half of the book very intriguing, though the second half seem to ramble a tad. Some of the same "skeptics" points seemed to get repeated over several chapters (I think too much time was spent on "clean" coal.) At times I felt the book would be better as an online journal rather than an book -- it's certainly not an academic monograph, but somewhere in between that and casual non-fiction. The author is a blogger and that writing style is apparent in this title. I was expecting more references and bibliography, yet there are only a few endnotes. It's not that the author isn't convincing, but from time to time I wanted to check our more of his sources. Nonetheless, his exposés of "courts and cash", "balance vs. accuracy", media consumption, and politics are still convincing. You'll clearly learn names interviewed in the media you'll want to avoid -- there's plenty of name calling.
As with any polemic topic, I agree that the key to debunking the myth is vigilance, leadership, and information gathering by the public. A worthwhile read -- no matter what side of the fence you're on with global warming. I already knew it was common sense that we need to do something to prevent significant climate change; hopefully some deniers are brought over to the other side of the fence after reading.
Old news to those of us who follow such things, but still nice to get more November 16, 2009
Brian Connors (Cape Cod, MA)
During the 1970s and 1980s Martin Gardner and James Randi spent a great deal of effort on debunking the Human Potential movement, both the "psychics" and other assorted con artists themselves and the overly credulous scientists who attempted to validate them. The overarching theme to their work was that when dealing with the paranormal, the obvious people to do the data collection were not scientists (who tend not to deal in intentional sneakiness) but magicians (who do it for a living and know what to look for, and which Gardner and Randi famously are). So if it takes a magician to spot a phony psychic, who but a PR guy to rat out other PR guys?
Honestly, if you've read books like Trust Us We're Experts, you already have a pretty good idea of what you're going to find in here. And indeed you do find a good number of the Usual Suspects -- Republican pollster Frank Luntz, professional bull**** artist Steven Milloy, big business (in this case, energy companies, particularly coal users), right-wing politicians and thinktanks, scientists for sale (often working outside their specialties), and the usual cast of characters involved in anti-science obfuscation ploys. It's all painfully familiar, though Hoggan gives enough background in the nuts and bolts for someone who hasn't studied it much. And chapter 6, "Mangling the Language", is one of the better introductions to the way political flacks create dog whistles and other assorted code words so people won't stop to think about what they're really talking about. Along the way, Hoggan investigates absurdities such as "clean coal", as well as the constant harrassment of climate scientists and advocates like James Hansen and Al Gore.
More important, though, is the book's evaluation of the nature of fear and confusion -- the PR teams involved in manufacturing the global warming controversy have in many cases successfully brought attempts to take action to a halt by putting relatively uneducated politicians in no-win situations -- without good information to act, politicians are afraid of criticism from big-money constituents and feel it safer to err on the side of building the economy. And that, fundamentally, is what denialism is all about -- the people pushing the controversy know that, among climatologists, there is no controversy. In their drive to protect industry's bottom line, they have to push the line that climatologists don't know what they're talking about, and with a public already trained to distrust expertise, that's rather easy. So no, Hoggan and his coauthor Littlemore aren't really scientists, but they can recognize a PR scam when they see one.
You Can Prove This Book's Point Yourself! November 15, 2009
Bumpkin Boy
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
You can prove Hoggan's thesis for yourself! It's interesting, if scary. Do a search for Interent articles on global warming (Hoggan notes this term is being re-sold as the less scary "climate change" by denier PR professionals) and look for any article claiming that actual science contridicts the warming phenomenon. Then see if you can track back what is quoted in THAT article to its original source.
When I tried this experiment, I found that the denier web site claimed the opposite of what the original scientific author had said. Hoggan uncovers the strategy of deniers: to make it appear that there is a scientific "debate" on GW. Unfortunately, this approach is insidiously effective.
There is no scientific debate - only facts on one hand and professional deniers on the other. But the illusion of "debate" lingers....and the PR professionals have done their job: putting off till the future what we need to do today.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 26
|
|
|
|
