Quote:
Originally Posted by AlbertaCowboy
The Lorax by Dr. Seuess. I found it to have about the same amount of hard irrefutable scientific data as most climate change papers.
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Probably the most useful recommendation in this thread... but seriously, the only honest review you'll get is if you read some opposing books for yourself and make up your own mind.
True believers in man-made climate change will soak up the hysteria and ignore any objective questioning of the 'facts' - so much for science. And equally, die-hard sceptics will look for any excuse to ignore scientific data regardless of what it shows, for or against the hypothesis.
And so far I'm yet to find a really objective book or web-page that tries to look at all the issues, assess the opposing arguments, and highlight where we should be looking to commit valuable research resources to finding some semblance of the 'truth' - the goal of science after all...
Quote:
Originally Posted by cassidym
State of Fear by Michael Crichton. This is fiction but very interesting and hard to put down, like most of his books
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An excellent read, and food for thought as his point in writing the book was to trigger objective questioning of the honesty and fidelity of any 'science' done under irresistible political and financial pressures. His lesson - consensus is
not scientific fact - it is a large number of people who
believe they know the truth - a significant and fundamental difference...
In Crichton's outspoken speeches and essays on this issue, he is not pretending to be a climatologist, but rather questioning the quality and fidelity of the (rather inconclusive) science and the use of a 'consensus' in place of proven scientific fact. There has been far too much made of that all-important phrase 'consensus of mainstream science', as opposed to scientific fact.
As an aside, for an interesting discussion of the danger of interchanging the words 'Believe' and 'Know' I can recommend this article:
http://americaneditor.wordpress.com/...and-knowledge/ 