• 

   

   

  A new Kindle Single for $0.99. "A blistering array of data, pocked with occasional vignettes that portray the enormous suffering and damage that global climate change is kindling."--Jason Kirk, Amazon

• 

   

   

  "The most comprehensive, illuminating and searing account yet of the murky world of climate change denial and the charlatans who populate it."--Irish Times. "A winner, written in an easy, logical style. Thorough and fascinating discussions of major deniers." -- Orrin Pilkey, Duke University

• 

   

   

  "The year is 2084: a literary anniversary of sorts, but these days, Mother Nature makes Big Brother look like child's play. Depicts the late 21st-century by channeling many voices to describe the catastrophic effects of global warming."--Jason Kirk, Amazon

• 

   

   

  "Dead Pool is the best book I know about the current state of the Colorado River and the policy issues facing it."--Donald Worster, author of Rivers of Empire and A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell.

• 

   

   

  "James Powell’s exciting account of the Canyon’s development is worthy of the excitement that the canyon itself inspires."--Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel

• 

   

   

  "A concise study of scientific method in the 20th century. Enjoy Powell's lucid analysis of how theories once rejected as outright nonsense became the foundations of the modern geological establishment."--New Scientist

• 

   

   

  "An elegant masterpiece of science writing."--Peter Ward, University of Washington

• 

   

   

  "Clearly the most enlightened and helpful book on leadership in the nonprofict sector."--James Fisher, author of The Power of the Presidency and former president of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education

• 

   

   

   

A Day of Darkness to Prevent an Age of Darkness
If by going dark for a day to protest pending anti-piracy legislation, Wikipedia and other sites can cause the US Congress to flip, could they do a sequel about something even more important: global warming? Here's a piece of "future history" showing how it could work.

April 22, 2012: Earth Day
Thousands of Internet sites are taking part in a “blackout” to protest the lack of government action to prevent dangerous global warming. The most prominent social networking and communication sites went down for 24 hours starting at midnight last night, showing a dark homepage and directing users to the protest movement's central site.

Included were Facebook, Google, Twitter, Wikipedia and WordPress, which urged the owners of the 72 million sites that use its service to join. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said, “A few months ago we went dark to protest legislation that the U.S. Congress was considering that would fatally damage the free and open Internet.” He continued, “But something much more important than the Internet is at stake: the future of humanity.” Twitter CEO Dick Costelo said, "We declined to join the earlier protest because we thought it was foolish to close a global business in reaction to single-issue national politics. But global warming threatens all businesses and all peoples.” He summed up, “Twitter is in."

By the end of the day, President Barack Obama, surrounded by the senior members of his party and a surprising number of Republicans, told the press that, “Our society cannot function without the Internet and it cannot function for long with global warming. It is time for reason and scientific knowledge to direct congressional action to curb carbon emissions and put the world on track to limit global temperature rises to 2°C.” The president went on, “Everyone who has children and grandchildren should demand that their elected representatives act and act now.”

Many dark US sites urged visitors to call their Congressional Representative, most providing the name and number. Techfleece.com went further by offering to call a visitor, provide talking points, and connect the visitor with his or her member of Congress.

Congressional telephone lines and e-mail servers were jammed as millions joined the protest. Following President Obama’s press conference, Republican Leaders Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and John Boehner (R-OH) jointly pledged to take up action to curb carbon emissions as their highest priority.  

The protest site asked each member of Congress to take the following pledge: “I accept the findings of the US Academy of Sciences that ‘Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.’” By the end of the day, every Democrat and many Republicans had signed the pledge and the number was growing hourly.

Many university sites joined in the blackout, including MIT, Oxford, Stanford, and the University of Queensland. Scientific journals including Science Magazine and Nature also went dark. Shutting down for the day were the British House of Commons and the German Bundestag.

Many climate blogs joined the Day of Darkness, including ClimateProgress.org, RealClimate.org, ScienceProgress.org, and SkepticalScience.com.    

Noted climate scientist James Hansen, who has been arrested for joining protests against carbon polluters, said, “This may be humanity’s last chance.”

 

New video interview on The Big Think.

Is there a case against human-caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature? Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.

The principal conclusions of this three-part series:

70% of the global warming skeptics identified, including some of the most outspoken, have no scientific publications that deny or cast substantial doubt on global warming.
None of the papers provides the “killer argument,” the one devastating fact that would falsify human-caused global warming. Each skeptic argument has been debunked in other peer-reviewed papers.

The skeptics have no plausible theory to explain the observed global warming.

Even though the evidence for human-caused global warming and the scientific consensus have grown stronger, no skeptic who wrote in the first half of the 1990s has recanted. To be a climate skeptic is to remain a skeptic.

The answer to the question of this series is resounding no: there is no case against human-caused global warming in the peer-reviewed literature.


Science Denial is Not Free: A Three Part Series on the Columbia University Press Blog. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.

Major Hurricane Devastates New York City. What if Hurricane Irene had struck when sea level is 5 feet higher?
An Excerpt from 2084