Tom Nelson reports:
I hate the idea of spending $9.99 on a climate hoax book, but I plan to get my money’s worth.
Searching Mann’s book for “denier” yielded 125 hits; “Morano” had 27 hits; “McIntyre” had 166 hits; “Watts” had 16 hits.
Mann’s book currently has 15 reviews on Amazon, all five-star, many by his warmist friends. I hope some climate realists eventually review the book as well.
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While I realize that many people don’t want to buy this book, please don’t pull a Peter Gleick and do reviews apparently in absentia. (I can’t emphasize this enough – don’t post a review if you have not read it.)
For some balance, may I also recommend Don’t Sell Your Coat by Harold Ambler.
The book is out on Kindle and doing much better, for instance competing successfully with Michael Mann’s The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. It is now number 3 just ahead of Mann’s new book.
Buy the book here, also now on Kindle here.
Rob Honeycutt says:
“I read the book weeks ago. I received a prerelease copy. I don’t find anything in the book that sounds like what clickz4 says.”
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I guess that’s how you get your book to hit the market with 15 glowing 5 star reviews.
It’s kinda like the big box bookstores buying huge quantities of a particular book and then putting that book at the top of the best seller list in order to promote and offload the product.
I’m guilty of commenting via a book review, although I stated up front that I had not read the book. I wrote that I would not read Mann’s book because i did not think someone who was involved in the production and dissemination of the hockey stick graph, and was hiding emails and data, could be considered credible.
Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa, Mea Maxima Culpa.
Didn’t take him long to tell a whopper. Sentence #2:
“… Words and phrases had been cherry-picked from the thousands of e-mail messages,removed from their original context, and strung together in ways designed to malign me, my colleagues, and climate research itself. …”
Okay, the full e-mail exchanges are there to read. Pretty much every time I saw someone quote a juicy sound bite from a climate-gate e-mail, they provided a link to the specific e-mail – because it is so easy, and they had no fear of full context negating their sound bite. There is plenty of context. Especially if you are familiar with the McIntyre / Mann dispute leading up to the first climate-gate release. It was incredible how much climate-gate emails support McIntyre’s side of the story. Somehow Mann chose not to explain that though in the opening pages. He could only whine that the release is part of the vast big oil conspiracy. QQ
Sounds like a good book. Will probably buy a copy. Thanks for putting the ad here Anthony.
Mr. Watts contacted me at 11:40 PM my time last night regarding my Amazon review. I responded this morning upon reading my email at 9:23 AM as follows “Fair enough. You are correct. My apologies.” Six minutes later I informed him that I had updated the comment. Further exchanges led to another amendment.
The call to review the book appeared on the front page. The call to read it before reviewing it appeared in the body of the article, “below the fold” as blogger parlance has it. I am not interested in misrepresenting anything or anybody. I think this is yet another case of you guys making a molehill into a mountain, but at least in this case there actually was a molehill to start with.
While there is much to be gained from Mann’s book, it is far from polished.
I have to admit that I found the Serengetti thing a bit stretched and not really that effectively presented. Don’t y’all be getting big heads about you being lions and us being zebras.
mt
[Thank you for the reply. Robt]
Anthony, please note the following: I have no idea if this is true, but a comment over on Scott Mandia’s “minion” blog post article claims that Amazon has DELETED a number of one star reviews. The guy making the claim, no surprise, seems to think that censorship is a good thing (why am I not surprised). Actually, if pressure was brought to bear against Amazon to force them to remove a number of negative reviews (a la’ typical Mann & “CRU Team” tactics), it’s worse than censorship and moves into the realm of turning the comments into a highly biased propaganda tool. The comment was as follows:
from: http://profmandia.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/anthony-watts-minions-attack-mike-mann-and-make-mockery-of-amazon-review-process/
p.s., heh, never been a “minion” before, but I suppose since I read WUWT regularly, now apparently I am! :0)
“dorlomin says:
February 9, 2012 at 2:48 am
What a great thread. Has inspired me to buy this book.2
I guess you’ve found the Guardian comments page a little dull lately given the ongoing reverses in the CAGW scare, so you’ve come here to ply your trade in snide remarks. Go ahead, unless you address the substance here you’ll be ignored, as you generally are in the Guardian.
Michael Tobis, well said, no doubt some people here may be rubbishing the book out of malice, but no one has recommended it. I have to ask you though Michael, that Serengeti bit, y’know where we, well organised, well funded, denying bastards separate the zebra from the herd and hunt it down as a pack. Does Michael really understand who we are? I appreciate it that as part of the life of a climate scientist activist it is de rigeur to visit the most exotic places on the planet so Michael will probably have been to the Serengeti and seen the lions at work. But I wonder did he see any of them chasing zebras on zimmers, because he should be aware that his enemies are mostly old retired mathematicians, scientists and engineers, and I doubt any of us could could hunt anything down as a pack without a portable toilet.
Mann probably ought to be thanking Anthony – with this one post on WUWT, I’d be willing to bet Mann got far more sales than he would have otherwise (even if many were by folks who know enough of the issues involved to be poorly disposed towards the content and claims).
I’m also intrigued by the folks who are clearly omnipotent, and know that any negative reviews of Mann’s book are made by Anthony’s eeee-vil minion horde, or by folks who didn’t bother to read the book. While, of course, all the five star reviews are by folks who thoroughly read and comprehended the book, or couldn’t possibly have heard about and purchased the book after first hearing about it on WUWT. /sarc
Good on Michael Tobis for saying he’s corrected the errors in his Amazon review once they were pointed out to him.
But oh the irony that he would post such a review with grossly incorrect claims, ostensibly about how Anthony extolled folks to post reviews without actually reading the book, when clearly he never bothered to read Anthony’s full post, or Mann’s book either!!!
Pot, meet mirror.
re post by: John from CA says: February 8, 2012 at 4:05 pm
John, on reading your post it occurred to me that Jo Nova’s skeptic’s handbook (http://tinyurl.com/nocc9j), and the summary of peer reviewed science by the petition project (http://petitionproject.org/review_article.php) would both be ideal for this sort of treatment. If they were amenable, of course. Probably other excellent similar online documents also, but those two came to mind right off the bat as ones that would, I’d think, be relatively easy to turn into an ibook as you’ve suggested, if you had any interest in working with those…
Rational Db8 (used to post as Rational Debate) says:
February 10, 2012 at 12:28 am
John, on reading your post it occurred to me that Jo Nova’s skeptic’s handbook (http://tinyurl.com/nocc9j), and the summary of peer reviewed science by the petition project (http://petitionproject.org/review_article.php) would both be ideal for this sort of treatment.
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Great idea Rational Db8
There’s only one sticking point for authors. The iBooks, which can be exported to PDF versions and auto-formatted for iPad etc. using iBooks Author, can be distributed freely as long as they are free. If the application is used for books for sale, the iBooks must be distributed on the Apple Bookshelf and a contract negotiated with Apple for distribution.
I’m eager to design a few to test the limits of the application. The application allows for live links and embedded media which could extend interactivity but complicates rights and permissions for art etc.
I’ll check with JoNova and see if she’s interested in trying it out and I’ll check the petition project out; thanks.
A few years ago there was a rather controversial book about presidential candidate John Kerry and his exploits in Viet Nam. (BTW: Did you know John Kerry served two tours in Viet Nam?) At that time, Amazon affirmed its policy of not requiring reviewers to have actually read that book, or any other book, before publishing a review.
That has always seemed to be a questionable policy to me. However, how would enforce a requirement that a reviewer reads the book first? Add a “I certify I have read this book” button?
re post by: John from CA says: February 10, 2012 at 7:06 am
Great, I’m glad you like the idea! If it works out with either of them, please do me a favor and drop me an email letting me know they’re available, and I’ll add to the Apple statistics for them by picking them up thru the Apple Bookshelf! Or if you’d like an extra eye to give feedback before the final is published, I’d be happy to take a run thru them if that would be of any use. My email is: RationalDebate “at” gmail “dot” com
Regardless I hope it works out – the more widely that sort of information is available, the better.
re post by: re post by: John from CA says: February 10, 2012 at 7:06 am
Shoot, for that matter, I bet Anthony would be willing to consider a front page post notifying folks if you put together any ibooks like this with others.
I downloaded the book onto my kindle two days ago via the UK Amazon site (so yes it was avaialble to us over here on 8th Feb) but I waited until today and I had read the book to write a review. It’s a shame that many didn’t seem to feel the same need. Some even started their review by saying things like “I haven’t read this book and don’t intend to because…”
What sort of ‘book review’ is that?
I cant wait to pick up a copy at a goodwill or ARC next year.
geronimo says:
February 9, 2012 at 11:21 pm
(snip)
Michael Tobis, well said, no doubt some people here may be rubbishing the book out of malice, but no one has recommended it. I have to ask you though Michael, that Serengeti bit, y’know where we, well organised, well funded, denying bastards separate the zebra from the herd and hunt it down as a pack. Does Michael really understand who we are? I appreciate it that as part of the life of a climate scientist activist it is de rigeur to visit the most exotic places on the planet so Michael will probably have been to the Serengeti and seen the lions at work. But I wonder did he see any of them chasing zebras on zimmers, because he should be aware that enemies are mostly old retired mathematicians, scientists and engineers, and I doubt any of us could could hunt anything down as a pack without a portable toilet.
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Heh heh. I now have an indelible mental image of a bunch of Grandpa Simpsons blindly plunging through the African bush on their zimmer frames, wildly waving their walking sticks, and yelling “Come back here Mann, you varmint!”
kadaka, y’all don’t seem to understand the purpose of a unviersity.
You going to go after this guy, too, for instance?
http://www.personal.psu.edu/glm7/m950.htm
He’s on the naysayer side on the climate question, by the way.
Gerry, Surrey says: “Who really wants to waste their time and money on buying and reading his rubbish so they can write a review on it? What you can do is rate any positive reviews as unhelpful and also read the review for any lies within”
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That is essentially the same thing as writing a review without reading the book. You are assuming you know what is in the book without reading it.
i was looking in the bathroom section
warmism is about why we should shower less right?
maybe some other bathroom activities are relevant as well re the irrefutable science