This 2nd edition of Rev. Foster's book is a multi-faceted handbook of denial (with an unusual theological twist) in which Rev Forster concludes that: "It is now firmly fixed in the public psyche that [anthropogenic climate change (AGW)] is an established fact of science, despite the fact that there is no scientific evidence for it" (page 167). However, this is an astonishing claim that just does not stand up to scrutiny.

Foster repeatedly refers to the cause of AGW as being the "greenhouse hypothesis"; and therefore disputes the fact that AGW could be happening at all because: (1) a greenhouse becomes warm by preventing convection rather than trapping reflected radiation (as per Prof. R.W. Wood's experiment of 1909) and (2) the transfer of heat from a cooler atmosphere to a warmer surface would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics (page 223-7). However, this over-simplistic analysis does not acknowledge that (1) the greenhouse analogy is not (nor was it ever) perfect; and (2) the insulating effect of CO2 in the atmosphere does not trap all reflected radiation (as it is scattered in all directions) and, although it does indeed not warm the ground, some of it does warm the atmosphere.

Foster also favours the view that CO2 is not a pollutant; and that apparent warming is mainly an artefact of the urban location of many weather stations (page 127-30). He criticises climate models, which he says can probably be dismissed as "being irrelevant" (page 156-63); and identifies the MBH98 "hockey stick" graph as a scientific fraud (page 166-7). The trouble with all of these arguments is that they have been comprehensively demolished on a variety of mainstream climate science websites (if your cognitive dissonance will allow you to look at them).

Foster also cites eight "baseless fears" of environmentalism in general and climate science in particular (page 131-9). Namely that we face (1) dramatic sea level rise; (2) more frequent extreme weather; (3) shortages of water; (4) increased prevalence of disease; (5); disruption to oceanic circulation currents (6) widespread species extinctions; (7) mass starvation; and (8) long-term elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations. All of this is, of course, an attack on what Foster would no-doubt call environmental "alarmism"; including a denial of all Limits to Growth arguments. In this context, it should however be noted that, although they have been around (and ridiculed) for over 200 years, the validity of such arguments are only now becoming clear: e.g. political unrest across the Arab world triggered by sudden increases in food prices, themselves possibly caused by misguided diversion of crops to produce biofuels.

Also it is worth noting that AGW is in itself merely the most obvious example of the finite capacity the Earth has to deal with the waste products generated by the human population that it is now struggling to support, as this quote from The Limits to Growth: The 30-year Update, makes clear: "...the more successfully society puts off its limits through economic and technical adaptations, the more likely it is in the future to run into several of them at the same time... the [Earth as modelled] does not run out of land or food or resources or pollution absorption capacity, it runs out of the 'ability to cope' [i.e. too much industrial output has to be diverted to solving problems]..." (p. 223).

The question any open-minded reader should ask themselves is "Why does Rev. Foster want to deny all of these facts about the world in which we live?" The answer is that his conspiracy theory avoids the need to accept that we are to blame for what is happening (see David Aaronovitch in Voodoo Histories: How Conspiracy Theory Has Shaped Modern History).

The good news is that Christians do not have to be fatalistic about the environment; nor leave it up to God to solve the problem. Rather than just stand by and allow mankind to have dominion over the Earth and subdue it (i.e. trash it), they can decide to be good stewards of it; and fight for the intrinsic value of the Earth and all its inhabitants - value it would have even if we were not here to observe it!

Rather than read such optimistic pie in the sky (which is totally divorced from reality), I would recommend you invest what little time you may have left (to rectify damage already done) by reading Clive Hamilton's Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change.