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I'm hoping to rework the synopis to the book The Real Global Warming Disaster soon. Watch this space. Jprw (talk) 16:49, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

And here it is, thanks to a rescue effort from Zulu Papa 5. It is approx. 1400 words, and needs to be reduced to 400-600 words in order to conform with Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books/Non-fiction_article Jprw (talk) 07:22, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay, the first thing that becomes obvious is that the chapter headings have to go and that the book should be described instead in its three parts, each of approx. 200 words each. The first part currently stands at 429 -- so more than half has to go.Jprw (talk) 07:41, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Synopsis

The book is divided into three parts.

In Part One, Forging the 'Consensus 1972—1997, Booker first presents a graph depicting average global temperatures over the past 11,000 years showing how temperatures over the last 1,000 years have consistently fluctuated and how, when they again began to rise in the 1970s scientists such as Paul Ehrlich began to postulate that the earth, as a result of the greenhouse effect, was heating up—with potentially disastrous consequences. Figures such as the environmental activist Maurice Strong and scientist Bert Bolin are then introduced, who would "play a crucial role in what lay ahead" in influencing governmental policy and helping form the scientific basis for global warming. Booker then identifies 1988 as being a key year in which the IPCC was set up and James Hansen made an appearance at the Senate Committee of Natural Resources in Washington, at which he declared that he was "99 percent certain" that man's contribution to the greenhouse effect was the cause of global warming. According to Booker, "on all sides 'global warming' became the cause of the moment" after Hansen's appearance. Booker then describes how:

• in 1990, the IPCC published its first assessment report which made projections of future temperature rises;
• at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit "politicians from 154 countries queued up to sign a 'UN Framework Convention on Climate Change'" that would "commit all the signatory governments to a voluntary reduction of greenhouse gas emissions";
• the second IPCC report (SAR) in 1995 which found that the "body of statistical evidence now points to a discernible human influence on the global climate".

The SAR came in for particular criticism from the Frederick Seitz, who alleged that "more than 15 sections in Chapter 8 of the report – the key chapter setting out the scientific evidence for and against a human influence over climate – were changed or deleted after the scientists charged with examining this question has accepted the supposedly final text". The chapter ends with an account of the signing of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the setting of new targets for reduced CO
₂ emissions.

In Part Two: The 'consensus' carries all before it: 1998—2007, Booker asserts that the medieval warm period "contradicted the idea that late twentieth century temperatures had suddenly shot up to a level never known before in history", and that this problem was dealt with by a 1998 graph depicting temperatures "suddenly shooting up in the twentieth century to a level that was quite unprecedented. Familiar features such as the Medieval Warm Period and the little ice age simply vanished". Booker claims that the the graph graph became the "supreme iconic image for all those engaged in the battle to save the world from global warming". He then asserts that the IPCC's methods, and in particular the draft summary of its next report, came in for serious criticism from scientists such as Richard Lindzen.

Booker then examines Al Gore's Oscar winning film An Inconvenient Truth and the subsequent questioning of many of the assertions in the film, including retreating glaciers, drowning polar bears, use of the Hockey Stick graph, the melting of the ice caps and snows of Kilimanjaro and rising sea levels. The controversy included a court action in the UK. The chapter then goes on to examine the findings of the 712 page Tony Blair commissioned Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, and the EU's setting a target in 2007 of 20% reduced CO
₂ emissions by 2020.

Booker begins Part Three: The 'consensus' begins to crumble: 2007—2009 by quoting the then British Environment Secretary's stating that the IPCC's fourth assessment reportwas the "the final nail in the coffin of the climate change deniers"., but contrasts this assertion with what he sees as evidence emerging to the contrary: that the earth had in fact begun to cool, and how this may have been as a result of solar variation; however, the results of research into this theory by the scientists Knud Lassen, Eigil Friis-Christensen and Henrik Svensmark were dismissed by the IPCC's Bert Bolin as "scientifically extremely naïve and irresponsible". The theory was further expounded in the 2007 film The Great Global Warming Swindle,. The chapter ends with details of a report published at the end of 2007 by the US Senator James Inhofe, which claimed to list 400 scientists from all over the world "now prepared to express their dissent, sometimes in the strongest terms, from the IPCC's 'consensus' view of global warming", and that there was now a 'consensus' and 'counter-consensus' forming. Booker then quotes the June 2007 International Energy Agency announcement that the cost of halving CO
₂ emissions by 2050 (the US and UK governments were intending 80% cuts) would be US$ 45 trillion – equivalent to "two thirds of the world's entire current annual economic output".

Booker ends the book by describing events in the lead up to the climate conference at Copenhagen:

• President Obama's taking the issue of climate change very seriously;
• the emergence of bloggers skeptical of climate change such Stephen McIntyre and Anthony Watts placing IPCC data under close scrutiny;
• the BBC reporting that "the severity of global warming over the next century will be much worse than previously believed";
• the failure of the Caitlin Atlantic Survey to establish that ice at the North Pole was diminishing;
• a conference organised by the Heartland Institute entitled "Global warming: is it really a crisis";
• the reluctance of BRIC countries to reduce their CO
  ₂ emissions, frustrating efforts before the Copenhagen conference;
• the increasingly astronomic forecast cost to Western economies of decarbonising their economies.

"In the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear". A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act V, Scene 1

— quoted by Christopher Booker at both the beginning and the end of The Real Global Warming Disaster

Bibliography

• Booker, Christopher (2009). The Real Global Warming Disaster. Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd. ISBN 1441110526.