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An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming

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Author: Nigel Lawson
Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
Category: Book

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Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars

21 reviews
Sales Rank: 643

Media: Hardcover
Pages: 144
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 1

ISBN: 071563786X
EAN: 9780715637869
ASIN: 071563786X

Publication Date: April 10, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 6-10 of 21

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He shouldn't bothered, and neither should you June 24, 2008
5 out of 17 found this review helpful

This is a dreadful book. Lawson misrepresents the science and he insults anyone who might disagree with him. In the first chapter I am accused of being alarmist and/or a leftwing environmentalist nutcase, simply because I accept the IPCC science. In the last chapter this has become I have religious needs that haven't been satisfied.

Sadly there is not much in between - this is a very short book. He does tell us that the North Atlantic thermohaline circulation (bringing warm water from the Gulf to the UK) will never switch off "as long as the sun heats the Earth and the Earth spins". So when it stopped in the past had the Earth stopped spinning or was the sun on holiday? He also thinks that civilisation will come to an end if we stop using dishwashers as we'll all die of food poisoning.

It really is that poor. This is not "an appeal to reason", it is not "a cool look at global warming", he does not as is claimed believe the IPCC or treat it objectively. And he does not think through his conclusions. He is happy that the earth should warm by two degrees. (After all, he points out that mankind lives everywhere from tropical Africa to Alaska, as if this proved anything.) But in pushing the business as usual case he doesn't consider that two degrees will be just a stepping stone to something hotter. What then? Is four degrees okay too? Eight degrees? Is he okay for the world just to continually heat up?

If this is the best book that sceptics can come up with, they really have lost the argument. If there is a better book, go read that instead. Either way, don't bother with this one.

(By the way, I think he was the best Chancellor of the 20th century.)

4 out of 5 stars

Fascinating, but still not an "easy read". June 13, 2008
8 out of 12 found this review helpful

This is a welcome addition to the growing body of books questioning the accepted wisdom that pertains to man-made global warming, but you'll still need your wits about you to follow the arguments. It's not that it's badly-written (Lawson is a decent - if occasionally wordy - writer); it's just a difficult subject.

And therein lies the whole problem, really. "Anthropogenic" global warming (AGW) is, on the one hand, a simplistic, even biblical, moral fable: we consume far too much, therefore we'll be engulfed by fire. That's easy to understand, and a highly-appealing parable to all who feel uncomfortable with modernity and its implications. The counter-argument is complex, riddled with uncertainties and interdependent factors, difficult economics, baffling statistics and ever-changing science. The very fact that deniers are prepared to say "we don't really know" is often all the ammunition the "warmists" need.

This book will, unfortunately, never change the minds of those who have decided that AGW is the greatest threat to mankind. Look at the other reviews here: they are happy to dismiss Lawson's careful arguments as "tosh" for example, or to suggest that sceptics are a tiny cabal of rapacious right-wingers. True sceptics, on the other hand, call for a cool, reasoned appraisal of the available facts. THis book is such an appraisal, and it leaves the apocalyptic AGW predictions looking somewaht hysterical.

2 out of 5 stars

Don't bother June 7, 2008
4 out of 18 found this review helpful

The Stern Review assumes a much lower discount rate than Lawson is comfortable with, and some of the science is still being developed. That's about it! Thanks Nigel.

1 out of 5 stars

Why bother with a book by an ignorant politician? June 4, 2008
8 out of 28 found this review helpful

There's nothing in this book that suggests Lawson has any grasp on the science of climate issues. It's a politician's book - happier on the attack (mainly against Stern) than in putting forward any thoughtful agenda.
I would strongly advise anyone interested in the suject of climate science to read, instead, Robert Kunzig and Wallace Broecker's "Fixing Climate". Broecker knows more about climate science than anyone else on the planet and his conclusion is that it's a problem we need urgently to address - but one that we can fix. His proposal is that we invest in carbon scrubbers to remove the CO2 we emit from the atmosphere (Broecker's colleague, Klaus Lackner, has developed a prototype for this); and that we store the CO2, in old oil wells, undersea, in saline aquifers, in basalt deposits. Broecker doesn't think it's realistic, or moral, to put a bar on use of fossil fuels, especially in the developing world. But he considers we'd be wise to remove the CO2 we emit and return global CO2 levels (which Broecker believes will hit 650 parts per million) to something approaching pre-industrial concentrations (280 ppm).
I can't imagine that anyone - Lawson included - could disagree with either Broecker's proposals, nor his science.

5 out of 5 stars

Good balanced overview May 30, 2008
16 out of 25 found this review helpful

What Nigel Lawson presents here is a good, balanced overview of BOTH sides of the question, plus his comments on the economic issues raised. He basically sums up the current thinking of many experts in a concise, digestible form, and then invites the reader to think hard about their conclusions.
How sad that Britain has become such a prejudiced, ignorant country that such a level-headed contribution to the debate was not "allowed" to be be published here.
Some of us were taking an interest in climate cycles in Britain's universities more than thirty years ago, so we have seen how the subject developed before it was hijacked by special interest groups.
Time was when scientists would look at all the data, formulate a working hypothesis, then continuously test and modify it it against the fresh data that was always coming in - rather than starting with a theory and cherry-picking the facts to fit.
Shame.