Energy and Climate Wars: How Naive Politicians, Green Ideologues, and Media Elites are Undermining the Truth About Energy and Climate [Hardcover]

This book is a very pleasant, interesting, informative, never boring reading.
Dealing with a planetary controversial subject like Energy and its many implications, the debate is articulated and hot but never harsch and irrespectful towards others' points of view.
The authors sustain passionately their ideas, but never look dogmatic and narrow-minded (a very rare gift nowadays!), as they use facts and science to substantiate their views.
I would certainly suggest this book not only to the ones interested on realistic, no-romanticistic interpretation of our possible energy future, but also to the many that have already matured firm convictions on their own, as they will be offered on a golden plate lots of challenging thoughts and ideas to test their beliefs with.

There is some good stuff on the exaggerated claims of those who believe we are all doomed, but the climate-change material is less good than in several other recent books (especially Carter, which I recommend) and the energy material is really quite boring at times. Quite trenchant, though, and recommended to anyone new to this. Not very well copy-edited or proofed, a problem with topical books.

Pretending to be an information source about the present and the future with regard to energy and climate, this book is, in fact, a long winded advert for the oil, gas and coal industries. It is the sort of treatise that some industies might use to try to persuade politicians that all is well with the status quo and that the greenhouse effect is simply a figment of the imagination of eco freaks like Greenpeace, Friends of The earth, etc. Much of the book is simply dishonest, or else attempts to mislead or whitewash so much that what it says amounts to the same thing. For example, chapter 5 -The pseudo-science war on Carbon and Climate, contains statements like "Carbon di oxide is a trace gas and by itself will produce little warming." Or "CO2 has been totally uncorrelated with temperature over the last decade and has proved significantly negative in effect since 2002" or "CO2 is not a pollutant but a naturally occurring gas" - this is true of course. But has nothing to do with the function of CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Or how about page 17 where it is stated "The fact is that while the alleged causal link between CO2 and temperature rise remains mere theory, it has not prevented the EU from designating CO2 Public Enemy Number 1". I could go on. There are many statements of this quality in the book. At times the content sounds more like a collection of schoolboy howlers than a serious attempt to inform.

As you read the book, you only need to get through the first few pages before you realise that the authors are pro George Bush and capitalism with no holds barred, ie. total market freedom. The USA is held up as good because of its free market ideals while the European Union is condmned for its "socialism". Is Europe socialist? I hadn't noticed it. The book is markedly sensitive to any suggestion that The USA is not always right. For example, also on page 17, "the EU seems ... interested in getting America to repent its "sins" as the worlds leading CO2 "polluter" - and bankrupt itself in the process". This particular sentence almost sums up much of the attitude of this book - the EU (socialist) unfairly attacking the USA (capitalist) and the rightness of maintaining all and any commercial activity at any cost. In fact, much of chapter 1 is in praise of the rightness of US economic thinking, ie. carbon fuels are good, and a condemnation of EU wrongheadedness in trying to take measures to control CO2 production. President Obama obviously comes in for criticism because of his failure to completely adhere to the established American attitude as stated in this book. The authors claim to be a British Conservative and an American Democrat. One has to wonder about the Democratic Party.

The propaganda for the Petrol and coal industies and against renewable energy is seen throughout the book. P 13 "The stark reality is that current technology offers no realistic hope of seeing the current generation of alternative energy sources replacing hydrocarbons for decades to come, if ever". Such an assertion, and there are many such, has to be seen as silly, since the consequences of not reducing CO2 production, although denied in this book, are well known, and not good. Trying to use the fact that CO2 is not toxic as proof of the fact that it is a good thing, is again silly, since no thinking scientist would ever claim the CO2 is toxic. The threat from increasing CO2 in the atmosphere is not because of its toxicity.

A minor problem with this book is the poor english in which it is written and the bombastic, almost bullying style in which that poor english is used. Over-all this is not a good book. It is scientifically unsound, containing unsubstantiated assertions of untruths, and it shows a biased attitude in favour of the existing hydrocarbon energy industries such as oil, coal and gas. Given that the book is so unbalanced and so biased towards the carbon based industies, and the fact that the authors seem to claim to be informed, intelligent people, there have to be many questions as to why they wrote this book. If you want the truth and not misinformation and half truths, then look elsewhere.