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Title: The Heat Is on: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription by Ross Gelbspan ISBN: 0-7382-0025-5 Publisher: Perseus Publishing Pub. Date: September, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.29 (24 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Powerful, Compelling Book about Global Warming
Comment: "The Heat is On" is a well-researched, detailed description of how the coal and oil industries are trying (and succeeding) to confuse the issue of global warming today. In this frightening exposé, Ross Gelbspan shows how the fossil fuel industries are spending millions of dollars to confuse the public through misleading advertising and PR tactics in order to protect their financial interests. The story behind this campaign of lies is astounding.
Try a little experiment: talk to several people about global warming. Just bring it up in the conversation, and watch their reaction. I did, and I found that most people laughed, or said, "Yeah, but I heard there's no conclusive evidence to support that." This is the direct effect of the fossil fuel industry's PR campaign. Gelbspan describes how they have done this largely through industry-created groups with misleading names (such as the "Information Council on the Environment"), and pseudo-scientists paid by the industry.
Gelbspan explains that the industry's groups and scientists have received a great deal of media coverage because journalists, as part of their duty, are compelled to cover both sides of the story. The problem is that the "other side of the story" in this case is a small group who is paid by the industry. The confusion and lies promoted by the fossil fuel industry has been enough to drown out the 2,500 climate scientists around the world who all agree that global warming is a fact.
"The Heat is On" offers irrefutable facts to debunk the myth that global warming evidence is inconclusive. For example, many people claim that recent extreme colde and winter weather refutes the theory. Wrong, says Gelbspan: "severe winter weather perfectly consistent with global warming. One effect of climate change is to produce more extreme local temperatures--leading to hotter hots, unseasonal colds, and more severe snowstorms." And temperature changes are just the beginning of the problem. Other effects include outbreaks of disease, proliferation of pests, and extinction of species, among others.
The only solution is to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions, probably as much as 60%. This is no easy task, but Gelbspan does offer a plausible "prescription". He suggests that we (1) divert all fossil fuels subsidies ($20 billion/year!) to renewable energy development, (2) implement efficiency standards to require generating facilities to be highly efficient (instead of the current 35% efficiency average), and (3) support developing nations in the conversion with an international currency transaction tax.
This is a very powerful book. Hopefully it will help to re-educate the public, and serve as a model for global change. I strongly recommend it.
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent exposé of the fossil fuels industry
Comment: "The Heat is On" is a well-researched, detailed description of how the coal and oil industries are trying (and succeeding) to confuse the issue of global warming today. In this frightening exposé, Ross Gelbspan shows how the fossil fuel industries are spending millions of dollars to confuse the public through misleading advertising and PR tactics in order to protect their financial interests. The story behind this campaign of lies is astounding.
Try a little experiment: talk to several people about global warming. Just bring it up in the conversation, and watch their reaction. I did, and I found that most people laughed, or said, "Yeah, but I heard there's no conclusive evidence to support that." This is the direct effect of the fossil fuel industry's PR campaign. Gelbspan describes how they have done this largely through industry-created groups with misleading names (such as the "Information Council on the Environment"), and pseudo-scientists paid by the industry (such as Pat Michaels, Robert Balling, and Dr. Fred Singer).
Gelbspan explains that the industry's groups and scientists have received a great deal of media coverage because journalists, as part of their duty, are compelled to cover both sides of the story. The problem is that the "other side of the story" in this case is a small group who is paid by the industry. The confusion and lies promoted by the fossil fuel industry has been enough to drown out the 2,500 climate scientists around the world who all agree that global warming is a fact.
"The Heat is On" offers irrefutable facts to debunk the myth that global warming evidence is inconclusive. For example, many people claim that recent extreme colde and winter weather refutes the theory. Wrong, says Gelbspan: "severe winter weather perfectly consistent with global warming. One effect of climate change is to produce more extreme local temperatures--leading to hotter hots, unseasonal colds, and more severe snowstorms." And temperature changes are just the beginning of the problem. Other effects include outbreaks of disease, proliferation of pests, and extinction of species, among others.
The only solution is to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions, probably as much as 60%. This is no easy task, but Gelbspan does offer a plausible "prescription". He suggests that we (1) divert all fossil fuels subsidies ($20 billion/year!) to renewable energy development, (2) implement efficiency standards to require generating facilities to be highly efficient (instead of the current 35% efficiency average), and (3) support developing nations in the conversion with an international currency transaction tax.
This is a very powerful book. Hopefully it will help to re-educate the public, and serve as a model for global change. I strongly recommend it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Invasion of the weather-snatchers
Comment: Coral reefs in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are dying because of rising water temperatures. Butterflies are migrating northward. Antarctica is melting. Northern hemisphere forests are being decimated by climate-related fires and insect infestations. The Great Plains states are becoming deserts, as are areas of Southern Europe. Tropical diseases such as malaria and West Nile fever are spreading northwards as temperatures rise.
These are all facts that are incontestably documented by science today, and each of them is directly linked to the climate change brought about by global warming. The earth and its species are in for a tough time in the century ahead. Extreme weather patterns caused by the heating up of the planet is already creating climatic chaos: horrible downpours and snow in some areas, rising temperatures and drought in others, hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, and so on. And for the most part it's been caused by the incredibly high rate of fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions--6 billion tons (and counting) a year.
Ross Gelspan argues that the science is clear; most of the world's leading scientists agree that fossil fuels are causing the problem. The rub is that the oil and coal industries--at $10 trillion, the largest in human history--have an obvious vested interest in convincing the public and lawmakers that global warming is all Chicken Little stuff. So they fund a handful of dissenting scientists who, like tobacco industry scientists a few years ago, are in the business of convincing the public that global warming is a myth. Conservative lawmakers have been particularly receptive to their line, and this in turn has affected public policy for the worse.
Gelbspan's book is horrifying in its diagnosis of global warming and the extent to which the fossil fuel industry has protected its own interests at the expense of the planet's. But the book also makes clear that the technology to replace the world's use of fossil fuels already exists, and concludes with a plan of action for weaning ourselves from our oil addictions.
Make no mistake about it, however: things will get worse, and perhaps much worse, before they get better. We're only beginning to feel the effects of carbon dioxide emissions from 50 years ago. We've yet to feel the whammy from our current frenzied use. When we do, God help us.
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Title: The Carbon War: Global Warming and the End of the Oil Era by Jeremy K. Leggett ISBN: 0415931029 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Discovery of Global Warming : by Spencer R. Weart ISBN: 0674011570 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Dead Heat: Globilization and Global Warming by Tom Athanasiou, Paul Baer ISBN: 1583224777 Publisher: Seven Stories Press Pub. Date: 15 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Climate Change Policy: A Survey by Stephen H. Schneider, Armin Rosencranz, John O. Niles ISBN: 1559638818 Publisher: Island Press Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Climate Change Impacts on the United States - Overview Report by National Assessment Synthesis Team ISBN: 0521000742 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 11 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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