Meltdown : The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media

Buy now from Amazon.com for $24.95
Amazon rating of 3.5 out of 5, Amazon sales rank: 15392

An eminently readable and often humorous critique, Meltdown documents hundreds of exaggerations from scientists, politicians and the media, and ties them together with the common thread of rational self-interest.

Reader Reviews:

This book is very eye opening. Michaels uses easily accesible studies to disprove many of the most popular scare stories regarding global warming. This is most effective when he discredits articles in Nature magazine, the NY Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, etc. with readily verifiable facts. The book points out many times when these publications had to print retractions (often buried) based on Michaels' research. He also makes a lot of politicians look foolish by printing their quotes contrasted with reality. I highly recommend this book.Patrick Michaels is a college professor, and if he's a good one he would flunk any student who wrote something as condescending, hypocritical, and unsupported as this. I don't necessarily disagree with all of Michaels' positions here, but this book fails because he has brought the culture wars strategy – attacking the other side's supposed bias while refusing to admit that you are biased in the opposite direction – to the interpretation of scientific evidence. I do not think Michaels is too conservative – in fact he's relatively moderate overall and usually avoids the obligatory "liberal!" label for everything he disdains, and he doesn't seem to be against environmentalism in general. When it comes to global warming, Michaels knows that it really exists but does not believe that it is caused by human actions. This is somewhat plausible in terms of basic scientific reasoning, but here his writing style mostly ruins any appearances of moderation on the issue.

Through most of this book, Michaels debunks inaccurate or exaggerated scientific reports that point toward human-caused global warming. Fair enough, but there are two problems with his analytical strategy. First, he is prone to smarter-than-thou sarcasm that is unprofessional and unacceptable for a supposedly "impartial" scientist or professor, with statements like "There are so many fish in this barrel that it is almost a shame to waste ammunition!" Second, simply nitpicking other people's reports, even if they are inaccurate, only results in repetitive and selective criticism. Obsessing over minor technical errors, in specific papers within a competing theory, doesn't come anywhere close to either disproving that theory or proving Michaels' theory by default. And while he doesn't say it in so many words, Michaels might as well join the Liberal Media Conspiracy Theory society. If someone wishes to find systemic flaws in the general media, as Michaels keeps claiming to do here, he would have to do a wide-ranging analysis of all media – far beyond the traditional conservative whipping boys at the New York Times and Washington Post, not to mention the U.N.

Michaels' underlying high-level contentions also damage his arguments beyond repair. He constantly criticizes the supposedly ineffective peer reviewing process for the scientific papers he analyzes, but this book is not peer reviewed itself. It's just that simple. And most tellingly, Michaels pontificates that researchers who receive public funds are prone to politicized research results. That's a legitimate concern (even though the Republicans have controlled that money for most of the time period covered here, somehow still resulting in research that proves human-caused global warming, with which most Republicans would disagree) – but once again Michaels has condemned scientists on that side of the coin, while forgetting to mention that the exact same problem exists for researchers like himself, who are primarily funded by corporate sources that have a stake in obstructing any mandated changes to industrial behavior that is believed to contribute to global warming. One could argue that such researchers, of whom Michaels is one, are under even more pressure to tell the bosses what they want to hear. Michaels sure has. [~doomsdayer520~]
Just as poorly or misinformed politicians and journalists eagerly spread the mythology about significant anthropogenic global warming, those whose mind is closed to real climate history choose to attack Michaels rather than his science. They often do this by citing funding he's received from the coal and oil industries. One wonders what those who attack Michaels would expect the misaligned coal and oil industries to do, given the unrelenting attack from the purveyors of junk science? Any rational victim of misinformation would do whatever they can to correct the record. It is hardly surprising and certainly not discrediting that carbon-based industries should be funding well-regarded climate scientists to refute the distortions promoted by those who seek government grants to further their own agenda.

This book is the very medicine needed by those who have swallowed the poison pill of human-induced global warming. Yet their blind devotion to this "cause" seems to make them blind to the mountain of scientific evidence mustered by Michaels.

This book is essential to those who wish to put a rational perspective on the anthropogenic global warming issue."Dr." Patrick Michaels makes claims in his book which are bald distortions of the facts. A very cursory glance at his affiliations shows quite clearly that his entire body of work was produced while he accepts funding from the energy sector... those companies which have a great deal to lose if a massive response to the Fact of Global Warming takes place. None of his studies cited in this book are peer-reviewed outside of the energy coalitions that pay him.

Sorry folks, but he really is a schill. If you don't believe it, just do a little research. Of course it's more comfortable believing 'everything will work out on it's own'... isn't it?Meltdown, by Patrick Michaels, is a rational, sane look at the distortions of anthropogenic global warming that are so prevalent in the headlines. Our human impacts on global warming are only one set of factors in a vast array of factors, largely natural, that drive climate; it has always changed, is always changing, and will always change. Michaels provides the facts, backed with ample data, which refute the hysteria presented by many politicians and in the media. I liked Michaels bluntness and his sense of humor as he attacked the dubious science in the global warming debate. Most of the media presents global warming from the viewpoint of ideologically driven environmentalists, not from science and facts. This is true science, not emotionally charged junk so commonly published today. Michaels explains why this paradigm of exaggerated man-caused doom perpetuates in certain academic circles, and suggests what would lead to a more balanced approach. This is one of the best books I have read on the topic, it should be required reading for all our political leaders.
Learn more...

The Discovery of Global Warming : , (New Histories of Science, Technology, and Medicine)

The Worst Hard Time : The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl