An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming | 
 enlarge | Author: Nigel Lawson
Publisher: Overlook Hardcover
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 56979
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7 x 4.8 x 0.8
ISBN: 1590200845
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.73874
EAN: 9781590200841
ASIN: 1590200845
Publication Date: May 29, 2008
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Book Description
In the 1960s we were warned that the population explosion would lead to mass global starvation. In the 1970s we were warned that the planet was running out of natural resources and that world economic growth would grind to a halt within our lifetimes. When the planet's temperature, which had been gently rising for some 400 years, appeared to be falling again, scientists warned us that we were facing the disaster of a new ice age. In the past year, sensational warnings about climate change have dominated the headlines as we are told that global warming will have disastrous consequences in the very near future unless we take drastic measures now. In this cautious and reasoned treatise on an issue that effects each and every one of us, former Energy Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Margaret Thatcher government years, Nigel Lawson, argues that it is time to take a cooler look at global warming. Lawson, father of famed cookbook author, looks at the facts behind the headlines and explains that science is only part of the story. For governments to make informed decisions about the path ahead they must listen to economists as well as scientists, utilizing economic forecasting to assess the likely evolution of the world economy, and even more urgently, economic analysis: what is the most cost-effective way of tackling this issue? We also need an understanding of exactly what measures are politically realistic on a global scale. At a time when politicians and the media are stirring up public and political hysteria on the subject of climate change, Lawson has written a timely disquisition urging us to take into account all the facts in order to deal with the threat of global warming.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 A book that should be read by all. September 6, 2008
A brilliant expose` of the truth about Climate Change,from a wealth of well researched and documented information.Should be read by all who believe(or doubt)the hype about global warming.
 A thought-provoking contribution August 19, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
In this thought-provoking book, Nigel Lawson asks key questions about global warming. Is the world warming and if so, why? How much warmer will it get? What will be the consequences? What can and should we do about it? What is the most cost-effective way to tackle it?
He looks at the temperature record. Surprisingly, temperatures have not risen since 2001, even though global CO2 emissions have been rising faster than ever. There was a 0.7oC rise over the last century while the CO2 in the atmosphere rose by 30%, largely caused by industrialisation driven by the rapid worldwide growth of carbon-based energy consumption (burning coal, oil and gas). Some, possibly most, of the warming is due to this growth of CO2 emissions and so of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007 report predicted a sea-level rise of between 18 and 59 centimetres by 2100. (Its 1990 report predicted a 3.67 metre rise.) The IPCC predicted a 1.8o-4oC temperature rise by 2100, a mean of less than 3oC. (At 3oC, it says, "Globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase.") 3oC is 0.03oC a year, compared to 1975-2000's 0.02oC a year.
The IPCC says the one `virtually certain' impact of global warming is `reduced human mortality from decreased cold exposure'. A 2003 Department of Health study confirmed this, predicting a decrease in cold-related mortality of 20,000 and an increase in heat-related mortality of 2,000 by the 2050s.
On the IPCC's worst case scenario, of 1% growth a year in the developed countries and 2.3% in the developing countries, global warming could cost us 5% of world GDP by 2100. This would make developed countries' GDP 2.6 times today's rather than 2.7 and developing countries' GDP 8.5 times today's rather than 9.5.
Lawson argues that we should drop the precautionary principle because it is wrong to take decisions on the basis of worst-case possibilities: probabilities, not possibilities, should be our guide.
He looks at the prospects of some specific disasters. He notes that Antarctic ice-sheets are growing, that the IPCC's 2007 report said that an `abrupt transition' of the Gulf Stream is `very unlikely' and that the World Meteorological Organization said of climate change's effects on hurricanes, "no firm conclusion can be made on this point."
The EU's Emissions Trading Scheme has increased profits for selected emitters and not cut emissions. Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism has done no better. The EU promotes growing biofuels, yet the Chinese government has suspended the production of the biofuel ethanol because it has raised food prices.
The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform said that meeting the EU's agreed target of 20% of energy from renewables by 2020 would raise our electricity costs by 18-22 billion a year.
In June 2007 Merkel and Blair tried to get the G8 to agree to cut emissions by 50% by 2050. The rest rejected the idea. Six months later, Britain and Germany lost again when they proposed a mandatory global emissions cut of 25-40% by 2020.
We could control the world's temperature by severely limiting carbon dioxide emissions through raising prices of carbon-based energy, to make non-carbon-based energy more competitive. But this would force our energy-intensive industries out to China and other countries. (Although China's, and India's, emissions per head are still far less than the West's.) 1990s Russia showed that the only way to meet the Kyoto targets is to destroy your industries.
Lawson argues for an across-the-board carbon tax, even if it forces our remaining energy-intensive industries abroad, and for ending subsidies to all carbon-based energy. Instead, we need to keep our industries, se we need new carbon-based power stations and new gas storage facilities, which the market has not provided and will not provide.
Cogent and illuminating August 4, 2008
Nigel Lawson has long had a reputation as a razor sharp intellect. In this book he does not disappoint, offering up a succinct yet thorough analysis of the economics, science and politics of climate change. Lawson draws on his experience as Great Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer and Energy Secretary to produce a careful examination of the dangers we face and the options available to us. Lawson's discussion of the costs of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions is particularly valuable, as is his summary of the ethical issues raised by discounting future costs and benefits. Highly recommended.
A breath of fresh air July 7, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
Here in California, everybody's gone nuts over global warming hysteria. It's become like the Inquisition of the middle ages, where dissent against orthodoxy is not tolerated. Fortunately, Nigel Lawson wrote this book, which in its 100 pages manages to debunk some of this psuedo-religion. The book comes with pages of endnotes, so that readers with more interest in the subject matter can follow up with Lawson's sources. If you only read one book this decade, make it this one.
A Ph.D in Global Warming June 28, 2008
8 out of 13 found this review helpful
This book is an extremely rational look at global warming that ultimately asks the reader, although not explicitly, to consider why human-kind still has a pronounced, if not suicidal, collectivist, and socialistic instinct when in all of human history only freedom has produced salutatory results. As the world socialistically unites around global warming here is the heart of Nigel Lawson's thoroughly footnoted and brilliant argument. It should encourage you to read the book, and then go on to read more about this incredible issue that so threatens the capacity for reason which we have so painstakingly developed over the centuries.
1) "The 21st century standstill [ 8 years of temperature decline], which has occurred at a time when global CO2 emissions have been rising faster than ever, is something that the conventional wisdom, and the computer models on which it relies, completely failed to predict." (page 6)
2) "They [The Hadley Centre] now forecast that, after an unpredicted, almost decade-long lull global warming will resume in 2009 or thereabouts". ( page 7)
3) "For the United States, only three of the last twelve years emerge as among the warmest since records began; and the warmest year of all was 1934." (page 9)
4) "two thirds of the Green house effect.... is water vapor....Rather a long way behind is carbon dioxide the second most important greenhouse gas." (Page 10)
5) "....the science of clouds, which is clearly critical (not the least because water vapor [the major component], as we have seen, is far and away the most important contributor to greenhouse gases is one of the least understood aspects of climate science." (page 12)
6) ...the mediaeval warm period, a benign time when temperatures were probably at least as high, if not higher than they are today ....during the Roman period, it was probably even warmer....vineyards existed as far north as Northeastern England." [where they do not exist today] (page 16)
7) "........the Greenland ice sheet appears to be melting, while at its centre, the ice is thickening. ...all to easy for Al Gore to cherry-pick local phenomena which best illustrate their [his] predetermined alarmist global narrative". ( page 19)
8) " .....making a total increase of some 1.3 F [a prediction that is hardly alarming] over the [entire] 20th century as a whole. (page 10).
9) "...is it really plausible that there is an ideal average world temperature, which by some small departures in either direction would spell disaster? The average annual temperature is...41 degrees F in Helsinki... in Singapore.... 81 degrees F. Man can successfully live with that [ a 40 degree F difference]."
10) ".....polar bears, which have been around for millennia, during which there is ample evidence that polar temperatures have varied considerably" (page 30).
11) "Sea levels have, in fact been rising very gradually for as long as records exist, and there is little sign of any acceleration so far. .....may have been less in second half of 20th century than first." (page 31)
12) "to assess the cost of climate change [assuming climate change] in the absence of adaptation is about as sensible as assessing the risk of catching pneumonia in London on the assumption that we all go out and about in the cold and the rain in our bathing costumes. Yet to a considerable extent that is just what the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change) does." (page 39)
13) "The Dutch managed [sea level rise] even with the technology of the 16th century."( page 42)
14) Seven out of 10 [of the worst hurricanes] occurred before 1975." (Page 50)
15) "...the overwhelming land-borne mass of polar ice [that could effect sea levels] ..is over Antarctica, not Greenland in the North....where the ice sheet is growing" (page 51).
16) "the Gulf Stream [ the ocean conveyer of warm water that Al Gore says may freeze England if interrupted by warming]...is largely a surface current, and thus a wind driven phenomena..[not related to warming]." (page 52)
17) "China's....annual increase [in emission will] .... far exceed the UK's total annual emissions." [China will] increase its power-generating capacity each year by roughly the equivalent of Britain's total capacity." (page 55)
18) "On the one hand you [the world] increase the production in China, and on the other you criticize China on the emission reduction issue, so it is unfair."......"targets should be in terms not of greenhouse gas production but in terms of gas consumption." (page 56)
19) "It was calculated at the time that if every signatory ratified Kyoto and subsequently met its emission target, [none of the signatories actually did meet their targets] the world's temperature by 2100 would be 0.1C/0.2F less than would otherwise be the case - a trivial amount". ( Page 59)
20) "According to the Hadley Center, only by a reduction of about 70% [nearly impossible] in [global] carbon dioxide emissions would we be able to stabilize its concentration in the atmosphere," ( page 65)
21) "...indeed in 2007 China suspended its production of ethanol for this reason..[ higher food costs, consumes more energy than produces, uses land and rain forests]. ( page 68)
22) "....cap and trade is arbitrary and distortionary covering some admissions and not others....anti competitive, since permits are issued to existing emitters, and not new entrants...scores badly on transparency.. lends itself to lobbying, corruption and abuse." ( page 74)
23) "...India and China have made billions by building factories whose primary purpose is to produce greenhouse gases, so that carbon traders in the rich world will pay to clean them up." ( page 76).
24 ".. [A largely gov't and bureaucracy free carbon tax such as an increase in the gasoline tax, not cap and trade] ..is the only practical means of discovering how expensive carbon needs to be in order to stimulate the changed behavior necessary to stabilize emissions...if that is the objective."
25) ..." saviors of the planet [climate warriors] are, in practice, the enemies of poverty reduction in the developing world. [due to the tremendous costs] (Page 106)
26) "With the collapse of Marxism, those who dislike capitalism..and the United States... have been obliged to find a new creed. For many of them, green is the new red." ( page 101)
27) "In primitive societies it was customary for extreme weather events to be explained as punishment from the gods for the sins of the people," ( page 102)
26) "Capitalist rationality does not do away with sub-or super-rational impulses. It merely makes them get out of hand by removing the restraint of sacred or semi-sacred tradition." (Page 104). also printed to TheIntellectual Republican, www.thedumbdemocrat.blogspot.com, Ted Baiamonte
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