People send me stuff, such as this email I recently received about a global warming spy thriller. I’m not fully comfortable with the “hoax” title, as there indeed has been some warming in the past century, some of it man made and some of it natural variation, but there’s also been a largess of funding and a shedload of zealotry and hype attached to all of that, and that’s what this book is about.
Mr. Watts,
As a retired Earth scientist, I am appalled at the war the current Administration and the EPA are waging against fossil fuels. Many good books and websites such as yours have effectively debunked the pseudoscience behind climate change. Sadly, this academic evidence has done little to sway alarmists, educators, regulators, the liberal media or the Pope.
My approach to this controversy is a bit different. I have written an apocalyptic thriller exposing the hypocrisy masquerading as man-made global warming. While the plot is entirely fictional, scientific issues embedded in the novel are essentially factual. Anyone reading this story will be made aware of the sound reasons to reject counterproductive limits on greenhouse gas emissions. A Sinister Charade is available as a paperback or eBook at Amazon.com.
This book is self-published. Although the intended audience is different from the people who are drawn to your site and twitter account, I would be thankful for any help you might provide in publicizing this novel. Your feedback is appreciated.
Dan Coffman
The description at Amazon reads:
Jesse Ngata, a prominent oceanographer, believes global warming is a sinister charade intended to destroy the American way of life. His damaging accusations provoke an attempt on his life, forcing Jesse to hunt down the climate change criminals before they kill him. Jesse’s nemesis, Basil Radoff, is a shadowy Russian agent who was given a fortune and an unconventional mission when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He has spent the past twenty-five years convincing global thought leaders that fossil fuel emissions are destroying the Earth’s environment. Radoff has persuaded the United Nations to ban carbon emissions, while continuing his malevolent campaign to cripple the world’s energy industry. Millions of children are being taught to fear their carbon footprint. Billions of dollars are corrupting scientists and regulators around the world. Factories are shuttered and rusting. Environmental constraints are killing jobs. Radoff’s global warming hoax may be too entrenched to die. America’s future hangs in the balance, and only Jesse Ngata can stop this diabolical attack.
One of the reviews reads:
A Sinister Charade projects the hypocrisy of global warming as a means for our government to control and instill fear into everyone. From the political leaders and scientists to the individuals trying to live a normal existence…there is deception. Fear is instilled upon people by those they should have been able to trust. This book is a fast moving, exciting, soul-searching thriller. It was food for thought. Like the seasons, our lives are changing. We can’t control those changes. We can’t stop them and we have no more control over them than the change in weather. Global warming is God’s doing….not man’s. However, there are those who would like for us to think otherwise. A great read. Kudos to Dan Coffman.
The book is available on Amazon:
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For a work of fiction to have an effect, it has to be well-written.
It was only a matter of time before thriller writers realised the huge potential for global warming. I’ve ordered my copy.
Just realised why I want to read this book. It’s because I’m intrigued to know how much of it will need to be “fiction” – my guess is not a lot.
Where did the author pluck that Ngata name from? It can only be New Zealand Maori. Not saying it’s implausible, as Kiwis have recent form in the field, with Auckland University oceanographer Paul Kench especially prominent recently in debunking ocean-rise claims in the Pacific.
But Ngata is still a strange choice. Is Coffman keen to depict the US as a “nation of immigrants”? Was he keen to go uber-exotic? Did he want a name that could not be tied to anyone in the US?
Ngata doesn’t figure in the top 70,000 US surnames, as collated by the OUP’s Dictionary of American Family Names. (Interestingly, especially for Monty Python aficionados, Ni appears to have 455 occurrences.)
Another oddball is the Russian agent with the comic book name. The Russians? Really? Does Coffman follow the real-world action? Or would an American bad guy kill sales?
Sounds Japanese American. Issei or Neissei.
That would be Nagata. I also agree with Graphite that Radoff is a comic book name. In the end, I’m old and don’t waste my time reading fiction anymore, except the stuff you can’t avoid in the mass media.
As Steve P says, if it was Japanese it would be Nagata.
There are plenty of people in New Zealand bearing the name Ngata, the most famous being Heremaia Ngata, better known as Harry Ngata, a professional soccer player of some standing in Australasia.
He should have called his protagonist: James Bond.
Never mind the book, you claim that climate has warmed last century due in part by human input. What data (evidence) do you have to support this claim?
Well, there is no data known to exist. But that also means one cannot tell that human influence doesn’t exists.
We can affect LOCAL weather but climate? no we can’t because the drivers are not within out influence. The theory of the GHE has never been validated never mind other pet theories that float around the internet.
Get the data, prove the theory.
I have to thank you for this post. This book is terrible, but it’s terrible in that “so terrible it’s hilarious” sort of way. I’m loving it. The plot of the book is so absurd I want this to be turned into a B movie complete with overacting and cheesy special effects.
I know this post says:
But I don’t think that is remotely accurate. If you want to see my take on it, you can find it here, but the short version is this book is about paining global warming as a conspiracy complete with assassinations and terrorism in an effort to take over the world.
And it’s awesome. Horrible, but awesome.
“I’m not fully comfortable with the “hoax” title, as there indeed has been some warming in the past century, some of it man made and some of it natural variation,”.
Fossil fuel emissions have more than doubled over the last few decades. Nevertheless, CO2 have been increasing at roughly 2ppm per year – there has been no acceleration.
Temperatures over the last 20 years have not increased commensurately with what would be expected from the increase in CO2.
At this stage, the only scientific statement we can make is that we don’t know – we do not understand either how human emissions affect total CO2 in the atmosphere, nor how CO2 in the atmosphere affects temperature. We may have an opinion but we don’t know.
Brandon:
Ever read “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”? Maybe reality is scarier than fiction. Having been threatened with not being able to leave countries overseas for not agreeing to “dash”; and being told repeatedly that North Americans don’t know how “to do business”, reality checks are important; and a reason why I stopped working overseas. It got so you could never tell who was a businessman or a spook and where the line was.
The most stupid aspect of this analogous rhetorical debate is that even if we are changing the climate there is absolutely nothing we can do about that unless we begin a process of culling the population bearing in mind that as Obama is about to spend $80 billion on new B3 long range bombers he must believe that oil will be around for a little while yet. This view is contradicted by the latest BP report which says oil and gas have at best 68 years with coal disappearing by 2100 so at least Figueres whilst in retirement on a lovely fat UN pension can look out of her centrally heated and air condition apartment in New York and watch Tesla’s grinding to halt because the wind turbines cannot be turned into the wind or serviced and maintained because there is no coal, no gas and no oil to generate auxiliary electricity to keep them warm or fuel the helicopter to service thousands of off shore turbines.
Its a bad joke to begin with but the joke gets worse because the proposed solution to a non problem has not a hope in hell of providing a solution so when the word hoax is used that is the correct description it is all a bad joke a political charade of apocalyptic proportions.
You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet but that doesn’t mean we should spend what is left of our lives wearing sack cloth and ashes but that doesn’t mean oil gas and coal will last forever because they wont and as yet there is no technology, no device no means of production even speculated that can provide a product which has the energy and portability of oil, we burn 95 million barrels of the black stuff every single day and only fools believe that this can go on forever into infinity.
“with coal diappearing by 2100”
We have about 300 years of coal right hear in Wyoming and maybe more now that the EPA is regulating it out of the market.
Give BP a call then! All I am trying to do is expose the complete and utter stupidity of the whole climate change rhetoric. Greenies say we should be investing more money in renewables but they never say exactly what those renewable technologies should be if they are not wind and solar. Clearly wind and solar cannot work in the long term they only exist for the purpose of alarmist rhetoric because Greenpeace activist could not pose as the righteous authors of a solution if they did not at least have wind and solar to imply that we really can live without coal oil and gas.
I will be long gone by the time coal oil and gas expire but China would not be recovering islands off shore unless they have begun to realise that without have raw materials they have a real problem and those raw materials they need may well be beneath the sea.
So in 68 years we better have a bunch more nukes in place to provide power? Or here is some food for thought …
My father ran a team of horses on a road grader; he mowed and stacked hay with horses, we had no running water or electricity and not even a graveled road to the farm “68” years ago. We rounded up cattle and drove them to market on horseback. One of my great grandmothers was born in Butte, Montana the year that Canada became a country in 1867. she had an amulet from a Sioux sub chief of Sitting Bull. ( He came across the border into Canada in the Cypress Hills of Alberta/Saskatchewan for a few years.)
Leduc No. 1 was brought in by Esso in February of 1947 and started “68” years of prosperity in Alberta in the oil patch. Right now, Shell has shut down two major multi-billion dollar upgrader projects as even if the price of oil was higher, there is no way to ship it out of Alberta at the moment. So, as far as oil running out in 68 years, if we can’t pump it or rail it; there will be LOTS left in the ground.
That issue aside, the advances in the last “68” years have been amazing. Now there are oil and gas wells all around the old homestead, powerlines, paved roads, and huge diesel powered cattle liners.
So where will we be in another “68” years?
I would imagine there will be a lot of amazing changes.
Maybe a fleet of solar powered blimps carrying oil to petrochemical plants to make plastics by passing the Obaminators ban of Keystone?? Just kidding. But we’ll need something to power all those cell phones and computers. And I doubt we’ll have electric farm tractors by then … but maybe biodiesel or something else. Human ingenuity will prevail.
Wayne
And we have 500 years of known coal reserves at current consumption rates here in Australia. Coal is not running out anytime soon. BP are in to oil, not coal even though hydrocarbons can be extracted from coal easily.
Perfectly comfortable with ‘hoax’.
Definitely ok with hoax.
As with everything, follow the money and you get the answer.
added to my kindle (OT but I love kindle unlimited, read a book a day usually so well worth the 9.95 a month) thanks for the heads up
It’s good to see discussion about whether man has had an impact on global warming . I think skeptics including Anthony always seem careful to state this as a fact as if to not concede that point would be to sound a bit like a lunatic. What doesn’t get emphasised is that whether man has influenced climate or not is irrelevant but whether there is a direct correlation between CO2 and global warming AKA climate change is what the issue is about. Man’s influence through concrete high rise Inspired urban island effect is hard to refute but when one looks at CO2 and temperature the key major assumption which is the dominant influence on policy debate in this area fails miserably. It is in fact irrelevant whether the increased CO2 is man made or not if there is no evidence that the correlation actually exists. That is what the hiatus is all about . That is what hind casting alarmists predictions have shown. It is proof that whatever it is that is driving future climate and temperature changes it is NOT CO2. The sooner sceptics turn the argument to that clear disconnect the easier it will be to dismantle AGW theory. We have to stop putting in the disclaimer that there has been some human induced influence and start saying there has not been any CO2 influence such that removing CO2 from human lifestyle would actually make a difference.
Stop making this concession because warmists get some comfort that at least they are half right. The reality is that everything related to their predictions are wrong.
I would like to pick up a (hard) of Climate Change, the Facts, but curiously no European Amazon shop stocks it. Why????
Pretty well written. Half way through on Kindle. Enjoying the read.
Amazing and standing on its own merit Coffman has proven ‘that fact is stranger than fiction’ ..looking forward to reading more of his works before the lights go off
Yesterday afternoon I finished reading the digital version of the book ‘A Sinister Charade’ by Dan Coffman.
As a fictional thriller/ adventure/ action book it was pretty enjoyable.
I liked the down to earth characterization of the protagonist cum hero named Jesse Ngata.
The book is rooted in a plot to destroy capitalism by a hardline Soviet communist leaving Russia and going undercover near the collapse of the hardline communist coupe (1991). The hardline Russian’s undercover plan is to wage a long term campaign to destroy capitalism by using the emerging climate change (global warming) movement as a vehicle and his financial means to do so is from immense Russian owned Swiss bank accounts of German WWII gold the Russians attained at end of WWII. After 20++ years into that plan we see Jesse Ngata being impacted by the undercover activities and thus the action begins against the plan. Well, that is not too different from the worldwide plots used by Ian Fleming in many of his James Bond books, so it isn’t atypical. It is a plot where the Cold War never really ended but just went underground; while reading the book, however, one can have strong doubts of the credibility of its premise that the Cold War never ended.
In the end, it is a book that leaves me with considerable intellectual resolve on behalf of those critical (aka skeptical) wrt the hypothesis of dangerous/significant AGW from fossil fuels.
NOTE: A very interesting point to me was that only one real person was mentioned in the book. That person was mentioned twice; once near the very beginning of the book and once at the very end of the book. That person, the only real person the booked mentioned, was Maurice Strong. I have heard that meme of some kind of all-powerful Maurice Strong too many times; it weakened the book in my view but not fatally so. I recommend the book.
John