Every year I go through all of the books I have listed at www.greenhomebuilding.com to update and cull through the listings. This is a time-consuming process, but one that I feel is warranted by wanting to keep abreast of any new developments or pertinent media. Today I have been going through the listings of books available at Amazon.com on the topic of “global warming,” assuming that with the recent new public awareness of this critical issue, there would be scores of newly published books detailing the science, consequences and public action related to this.
Indeed there are many new books written by people who are well-positioned to know how real the threat is and what sort of action we should all be taking to counter this trend. I have been under the impression that the balance has definitely shifted toward popular acceptance of the reality of what scientists have been warning us against for at least the last decade, and that the nay-sayers were finally having to withdraw from the folly of their assertions.
So when I reviewed the top listings at Amazon of books on this topic, I was astonished when I noticed that fully half of the books listed on the first page were intended to dissuade the reader that global warming was really caused by human activities…or even if it were, the consequences should not be particularly alarming! Their titles are particularly revealing:
* Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media
* Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years
* Shattered Consensus:
* The True State of Global Warming
* Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death
* Global Warming in a Politically Correct Climate: How Truth Became Controversial
* Global Warming - Myth or Reality?: The Erring Ways of Climatology
So who is writing and publishing all of this disinformation, and why are they so intent on doing so? Here are the publishers (in the same order as the books listed above):
* The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank supported primarily by big business, including oil.
* Dennis T. Avery (has written many publications for the Hudson Institute, another conservative think tank) and S. Fred Singer (a research Fellow with the Independent Institute, also funded by big business, especially oil)
* Patrick J. Michaels is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and The George C. Marshall Institute (also funded by ExxonMobile, among others)
* The Competitive Enterprise Institute, another “neoliberal” think tank funded by large corporations.
* Mihkel M. Mathiesen both wrote and published this as an on-demand book.
* Marcel Leroux is a French climatologist, and director of the Laboratory of Climatology, Risk, and Environment.
So it is obvious to me that, by and large, the motivation to publish this material comes from the concern of big business that their “business as usual” is threatened by actions that might take place to mitigate the onset of global
Indeed there are many new books written by people who are well-positioned to know how real the threat is and what sort of action we should all be taking to counter this trend. I have been under the impression that the balance has definitely shifted toward popular acceptance of the reality of what scientists have been warning us against for at least the last decade, and that the nay-sayers were finally having to withdraw from the folly of their assertions.
So when I reviewed the top listings at Amazon of books on this topic, I was astonished when I noticed that fully half of the books listed on the first page were intended to dissuade the reader that global warming was really caused by human activities…or even if it were, the consequences should not be particularly alarming! Their titles are particularly revealing:
* Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media
* Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years
* Shattered Consensus:
* The True State of Global Warming
* Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death
* Global Warming in a Politically Correct Climate: How Truth Became Controversial
* Global Warming - Myth or Reality?: The Erring Ways of Climatology
So who is writing and publishing all of this disinformation, and why are they so intent on doing so? Here are the publishers (in the same order as the books listed above):
* The Cato Institute, a conservative think tank supported primarily by big business, including oil.
* Dennis T. Avery (has written many publications for the Hudson Institute, another conservative think tank) and S. Fred Singer (a research Fellow with the Independent Institute, also funded by big business, especially oil)
* Patrick J. Michaels is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and The George C. Marshall Institute (also funded by ExxonMobile, among others)
* The Competitive Enterprise Institute, another “neoliberal” think tank funded by large corporations.
* Mihkel M. Mathiesen both wrote and published this as an on-demand book.
* Marcel Leroux is a French climatologist, and director of the Laboratory of Climatology, Risk, and Environment.
So it is obvious to me that, by and large, the motivation to publish this material comes from the concern of big business that their “business as usual” is threatened by actions that might take place to mitigate the onset of global