From WORLD SCIENTIFIC and the “let’s dumb it down so these stupid deniers can understand” it department comes this press release that seems pretty desperate. At $150 a copy, and unavailable on Amazon, I’m sure there will be a huge rush to buy it. /sarc
If you follow either traditional news sources or social media, you would have heard strikingly different assertions about scientific issues such as climate change. Is it a “hoax created by the Chinese” or “the most urgent issue confronting the world” today? How is it possible for such contradictory claims to coexist in the scientific community?
Answering such questions requires some understanding of how science is done, on the one hand, and specifically the state-of-the-art of the relevant science. And Science of the Earth, Climate and Energy does just that.
Important problems like energy resources, sustainability and climate change are discussed in the book in terms of basic principles, without much use of mathematics. The reader can then understand the nature of controversial debates which are related to these issues, and so contribute to the discussion from an informed background.
The book begins with a description of the ingredients associated with scientific discovery and debate, in general. A key element is the fundamental premise that “science never proves anything”. Instead, scientific understanding advances through experiments, their analyses and theoretical interpretation by many individuals. If and when a consensus emerges, it is provisional and subject to further testing.
In the case of climate science, such a consensus has been reached: human activities are contributing significantly to climate change. This anthropocentric interpretation implies that global warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification and other consequences of our actions affect our planet adversely. The book describes the evidence for this conclusion and what the troubling situation implies for mitigation of these potential problems.
Since this book is addressed at a general reader, who possesses relatively little relevant background, the level of presentation is appropriately qualitative. Such a reader might want to assess the pertinent scientific evidence and its consequences for him or her, as well as for the planet as a whole. A key component of the book is an extended discussion of actions than can be taken by individuals, through both their energy-related actions and as citizens in their societies’ decision-making.
This book currently retails for US$150 / £130 (hardback) at major bookstores. To know more about the book visit http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.114210807.
###
Update: the link above in their own press release is broken, here is a working one.
“let’s dumb it down so these stupid deniers can understand”
Actually, this is a book pitching to the true believers – intended to give them talking points, since they’re mostly brain-dead parrots, anyway.
That’s why it’s dumbed down.
Hey hey hey… I’m a parrot owner and parrots are much smarter thanks 😉
Jeff Labute
I am a parrot, and this is just canaryshit!
🙂 ……Squawk!
From when Cleese was funny.
Our younger son sent me an ad for a dead budgie saying it wasn’t going cheep.
James Bull
I apologize if I offended parrot owners.
One would have to be pretty dumb to actually pay $150 for a work of boring fiction…I guess the far-left zombies will bite.
“sounds awesome, I’ll take 2”
With sarcasm of course
I’ll wait for the movie.
No sarcasm, they’re optioning everything these days.
For $150 I expect it is handwritten by angels and delivered by pixies on unicorns.
I assume it will be in the fiction section of the bookstore? Or perhaps in the children’s section under a sign which says; “every time you don’t purchase this book, a fairy dies”.
I doubt it, more likely it is a required book for some liberal college course. If no one wants to buy it, make them!
Definitely priced like a college textbook. 😐
Probably required reading in the courses taught by the professor’s that wrote it.
and with the pages made from faerie wings
I tried the link at the bottom of the post to view the book and it said, book not found.
Maybe the book is not found because the link goes to a real science book site and they meant to link to a science fiction/fantasy book site?
Or it was written in “The Twilight Zone”?
The worldscientific.com has close ties with The Imperial College, an institution which represents all that the Americans revolted against.
George
Oh heck. How do I say this?
The American constitution is in no small part, reliant on the Cato letters, written in the early 18th Century by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon I believe. Two Englishmen.
“Almost a generation before Washington, Henry, and Jefferson were even born, two Englishmen, concealing their identities with the honored ancient name of Cato, wrote newspaper articles condemning tyranny and advancing principles of liberty that immensely influenced American colonists. The Englishmen were John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. Their prototype was Cato the Younger (95-46 B.C.), the implacable foe of Julius Caesar and a champion of liberty and republican principles. Their 144 essays were published from 1720 to 1723, originally in the London Journal, later in the British Journal. Subsequently collected as Cato’s Letters, these “Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious” became, as Clinton Rossiter has remarked, “the most popular, quotable, esteemed source of political ideas in the colonial period.” http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/trenchard-catos-letters-vol-1-november-5-1720-to-june-17-1721-lf-ed
Imperial College wasn’t established until the late 19th, early 20th Century, significantly, well after the revolution.
I started to read the Cato letters a few weeks ago, a hard slog for me mate, let me tell you, but I’m determined to get through them.
The book is scheduled for publication in June. Chapter 1 is available at
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789813233621_0001
It contains the hockey stick, of course, and no continuation of tree ring data after they became inconvenient.
they seriously use the hockey stick, that even IPCC dropped? And claim they can use the word “scientific”?
Two of the three authors come from Penn State University. No, he’s not one of them.
Oh, mann that’s too bad.
Yeah, I read that price for a CC book aimed at ordinary readers, and that was my first thought; manniacal is involved somehow.
If the Penn State looney is not an author, the odds are a substantial portion of the book relies upon mannicerisms, quotes and faux science.
It’s a classic oxymoron!
This sounds like some clever method of laundering money for funding the Greens. Look for some ‘Foundation’ buying a couple of hundred thousand…
Or government units (California Department of Education?)
“when a consensus emerges, it is provisional and subject to further testing.” So the science isn’t really settled?
I think that was Anthony’s comments. When I first read it, my thinking was “Hey – they got something right!” But on closer review, it was Anthony talking about how real science works, not Climate Science.
Hm. Maybe that was from the book. Not sure, now.
They need to dumb it down some more.
Pay $150 for a “political science consensus” book?
I’m not that dumb.
+100 Gunga!
What are you guys complaining about? $1.50 sounds like a fair price.
The book has 3 authors.
– Milton W Cole is Distinguished Professor of Physics at Penn State University.
– Angela D Lueking is Professor of Energy and Mineral Engineering and Chemical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University
– David L Goodstein is Professor Emeritus of Physics and Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology.
The first two of course are at the same institution that hired hockey stick-creator Michael E. Mann. I suspect they are the chief authors of the Climate and Earth (respectively) legs of this book. In all honesty, there should be nothing to too controversial there if it is well-written and stick to the physics and how Earth’s energy reserves are extracted..
The third author… we know a little something more about him.
Dr Goldstein published this book in 2004.
“Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil ” by David Goodstein. Still available from Amazon in paperback: https://www.amazon.com/Out-Gas-End-Norton-Paperback/dp/0393326470/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526327780&sr=1-1&keywords=Out+of+Gas%3A+the+End+of+the+Age+of+Oil
Of course, now in 2018, we know not only were Goldstein’s oil projections and forecasts wrong, they were wildly wrong. Of course few, if any, in 2004, saw the shale fracking revolution extending world oil-gas reserves out to 100 years or more.
Still it seems the propensity to make projections on both energy and Earth’s climate response to CO2 that turn-out to be wildly wrong is a congenital defect of the Left.
Sadly, with today’s universities turning into mere indoctrination centers, I doubt the students who will be ordered to buy this tome for a class will also receive the training in critical analysis to question what they read.
Perhaps sales were flagging on his last set of predictions after they became laughable, forcing him to squint at the ceiling and dream up some new ideas.
A slight suggested edit:
“Still it seems the propensity to make projections that turn-out to be wildly wrong is a congenital defect of the Left.”
It was easy to make such predictions. In 2009, a good friend of mine in the deep sea oil rig business told a group of us that it was only going to get worse. Prices were going up because the planet was running out of oil.
He was close to the oil business – and totally missed fracking – which put a severe dent in his company’s business.
As one who tens toward abiotic oil, I still couldn’t much argue with him when oil prices were >$120/bbl.
‘tends’
I’ve wanted to research this but don’t know where to find a beginners guide. It seems the Russians believe it both abiogenic and fossil derived, but I want to read good material arguments from both sides. I know the Rockefeller history and politics to create scarcity, but not sure if there is any validity to claims otherwise
World Scientific is an academic publisher. They are used to getting exorbitant prices paid by university libraries and captive students. They don’t care if their books sell to the general public.
Thanks for verifying that. Yes the only people who will buy this book are libraries and college students; two groups that generally are spending other people’s money.
The ” Chinese hoax” theory doesn’t exist in the scientific community. That was a tweet by President Daffy Donny. I know a lot of people here love Don but objectively, you gotta wonder about him.
He said that several years ago before he was in politics. Putting that statement in the book pitch is clearly a straw-man attack.
It’s not a chinese hoax. It is just a hoax cleverly expoited by the chinese.
That’s how my friends and I interpreted it. But some of us prefer to think the worst of others, especially if we disagree with their politics.
It’s called “The Art of the Troll.” And libs STILL don’t get it. They fall for it EVERY time, the way my Labrador chases any ball I can throw.
I call it throwing fish to trained seals. Trump probably does some of it deliberately, just to enjoy the predictable squawks of outrage from the twitterati.
Albert,
Seems you have missed the memo about Trump.
Never take his remarks “literally.”
Do take him seriously.
about Salena Zito on Willis’ blog
too funny….we wrote a book about science…with no science in it…so we can say whatever we damn well please
When I was in grade school there was a big, mean kid who felt that the rest of us had too much lunch money and it wasn’t good for us. Many of disagreed, but after a few weeks of being “convinced” by the big, mean kid we realized that he was absolutely correct and so, a consensus developed that we should give him our lunch money.
How come I have this deja vu feeling whenever I read about this scientific consensus thing that has NEVER BEFORE IN THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE MATTERED?
Have a look at the illustration on p. 14:
“Fig. 1.4 Oil production in the “lower 48” (mainland) states of the United States, as predicted by Hubbert in 1962 (dashed curve), compared with actual production (full curve)”
https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789813233621_0001
Just one little problem. The “full curve” is natural gas prduction, not oil. We’re dealing with real pros here. Almost up to Mannian standard.
They show the Mann hockey stick in Fig 1.3 and then use Marcott (reference 20) to justify it by saying, ”
“The temperatures presented in this figure were derived from diverse techniques of data acquisition and analysis. In some cases, the results have been challenged, but most recent and thorough studies confirm the results shown in Fig. 1.3 (20)”
They show the infamous hockey stick:
http://i68.tinypic.com/k1p3xe.png
Of course that’s the Mannian NH reconstruction. That were challenged (successfully to anyone who bothered to examine the challenge) by McIntyre and McKitrick.
What did Marcott actually show for the NH?
Here it is:
http://i65.tinypic.com/28sx7yf.png
Notice anything?
Let me blow it up a little.
http://i64.tinypic.com/dory37.png
How about this book focusing on just the last 1,000 years, and not the last 11,000 yrs that Marcott did.
Of course, that would force the student’s to ask why is it so cold now? And why the huge decline just before the spike?
Can’t have that.
The authors of Marcott have repeatedly stated that the uptick is not “statistically robust” because it is of a shorter duration than the resolution of their reconstruction. Which makes one wonder why they didn’t truncate it.
Some mann once wrote: “No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, “grafted the thermometer record onto” any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation websites) appearing in this forum.”
I guess these authors don’t qualify as researchers in this field.
They also, like so many others, leave out the decline in proxy “temperatures” after 1960.
Here, let me de-truncate that abrupt spike for you.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_April_2018_v6.jpg
The other problem of course with Mann’s reconstruction graph is he hid the decline in the tree proxy data with truncation at 1961and appended on the instrumental record onward to get the blade in his hockey stick. The Marcott reconstruction stops at 1950. The so their Hockey Stick blade in Marcott, eta al is 1890 to 1950, which they call not robust.
So even the hockey stick blades are of two different, non-overlapping periods, which the authors of this book just ignore. It really doesn’t get anymore dishonest than that, especially when you are claiming to your students that you are a critical arbitrator of science.
How can you expect to sell a book in which propaganda is used as facts, and it isaimed at higher education-level students, when they don’t even understand basic biology?
Here’s how you explain such things correctly:
Plants need CO2 to live. They produce O2 in quantity.
Animals need O2 to live. They produce CO2 in quantity.
Humans are animals. Plants need humans to live and humans need plants to live.
That is symbiosis, and also basic biology.
End of story.
The authors are all college profs. They will not have to sell it, just put it on the Required list, and the students have to buy it.
As far as getting away with propaganda, it is easy.
It would be much harder if the students did know basic biology, but they do not, so no problem.
[QUOTE FROM REVIEW]”Important problems like energy resources, sustainability and climate change are discussed in the book in terms of basic principles, without much use of mathematics. The reader can then understand the nature of controversial debates which are related to these issues, and so contribute to the discussion from an informed background.”
Of course, don’t use mathematics, because the readers might figure out that the numbers don’t add up. The true purpose is so that readers “contribute” to the discussion from an UNinformed background.
Yeah, they won’t trouble us with that, as math is hard.
/snark
For people with no scientific background.
Expensive, at $150.00.
What kind of books are expensive like that, on a routine basis?
College textbooks.
This is a college text in “Environmental Science”.
Doesn’t “retails” imply actually making a sale?
This would need to be on a copper scroll to justify that price.
Nah, it’d have to be on gold leaf and hand-copied by monks.
just curious, if and when the book is available on Amazon, how are they going to get it to me? via bicycle?
You WALK to the shop thereby saving all the CO2 being used by your computer and the delivery truck. How this compares to the increase in CO2 caused by your exertions I am not certain.
From the Introduction page 16 regarding figure 1.6:
“Note that the consumption of hydroelectric energy (“hydro”), plotted separately from renewable energy in the figure, now exceeds the nuclear energy consumption.”
Bare with me, but where is this hydro in the chart?
Previous commentators have pointed to other errors. For $150 I would expect a bit higher quality.
Also bad term to say “consumption of hydroelectric energy” – You consume the electricity and you produce the the electricity from for example hydro.- And the authors have academic titles?
This too is a sign of desperation.
Repeating the same garbage over and over, and hoping that it will magically turn into gold is an example of magical thinking.
When repeated endlessly, with angry edginess and shallow reasoning like this book, and magical thinking starts to cross the border into delusional thinking.
It appears that after the reader assesses the scientific evidence they have to take some form of action even if their assessment is that no action is necessary.
“A key element is the fundamental premise that “science never proves anything””
Not correct. Science never proves anything absolutely true. However, it proves plenty of things utterly false.
Regarding AGW, science can definitively prove that no one today knows what they’re talking about. That apparently includes the authors of the book.
One hundred fifty dollars??? I know cheeseburgers and old fashion’s taste much better when I pay 20 dollars for them, but this seems akin to robbery. Tip of the hat though, these commies love money as good as anyone
Many years ago there was (and may still be) a pc op code labeled RTW. It was inserted into a pc routine to slow the computer down until a desired signal might become available.
The literal meaning of RTW was Real Time Waster …just like this book.
“At $150 a copy, and unavailable on Amazon”
It seems to be on Amazon here at $52.88.
The hardcover edition at that Amazon link has the suggested retail price of $150, but Amazon is offering it for $142.50. The eTextbook edition is only $60.23. I assume that the eTextbook is the same idea as a Kindle edition, and as often the case with Amazon, the price can change. It’s still too rich for my blood.
“In the case of climate science, such a consensus has been reached: human activities are contributing significantly to climate change. This anthropocentric interpretation implies that global warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification and other consequences of our actions affect our planet adversely. The book describes the evidence for this conclusion and what the troubling situation implies for mitigation of these potential problems.”
If AGW effects can be seen, it does not follow that CAGW effects will follow. CAGW effects depend on positive feedback from increased water vapor in the upper tropical troposphere, which hasn’t been seen.
The press release says: “Professors/universities looking into adopting the book may write to sales@wspc.com for an inspection copy.” It’s intended as a textbook for college level indoctrination. That’s also why it’s so expensive. The cost just goes onto the government subsidized college loan account which will never be paid back.