Toronto Sun on Climate Files

Lorrie Goldstein of the Toronto Sun asks if maybe climate science shouldn't be just a bit more open, and citing Fred Pearce's The Climate Files as evidence. The tone of the article is interesting, with Goldstein noting that Pearce is not a "denier", but pointing out his criticisms of the climatology community's failure to check its findings.

As well as taking pot shots at climatology peer review, he also has things to say about the Climategate inquiries:

Simply having panels of sympathetic academics (or politicians) take a cursory look at the work of climate scientists and pronounce it sound — what happened following Climategate — doesn’t cut it.

Josh 61

Josh did a draft of a cover for Tim Worstall's book. Stacey decided to go with a photo instead, keeping the style consistent across the series, but Josh's version is rather lovely...

More cartoons by Josh here.

Chasing Rainbows

My review of Tim Worstall's book, Chasing Rainbows, has been slightly delayed, the reason being that my copy has been purloined by the missus. Now this is a rather remarkable thing, as 'er indoors more normally reads Aga-sagas and other genres of girl book. Economics just isn't really her thing.

But that's the nice thing about Chasing Rainbows - as a primer in environmental economics, it's wonderfully approachable, with Tim's good humour and good sense suffusing the whole thing. It's also admirably concise, running to little over a hundred pages, so few people are likely to be frightened off on that score.

Click to read more ...

Graun on best green books

Damian Carrington looks at best selling books on the environment. Apparently the top seller for 2010 was The Vanishing Face of Gaia, which shifted 5200 copies.

I did a double take since The Hockey Stick Illusion has sold slightly more than this, although I'm not sure we are comparing like with like - the 5200 figure may be UK-only and many of my sales have been to the US.

It will certainly be interesting to see whether I get a name-check in any of the "books of the year" articles that are coming our way.

Best sceptic books

Reader Pat writes from Australia, wondering what sceptic books he should be recommending to his local library. He suggests that they will take as many as five different titles, so tick as many suggestions as you like in the poll below.

Click to read more ...

Great minds

What an extraordinary coincidence...

Budiansky again

I really must stop linking to this guy - but some of his postings are just irresistible. I picked this quote almost at random from his current posting, which picks up some of the ideas Matt Ridley puts forward in The Rational Optimist and has a damn good curmudgeonly rant in support of them:

Pessimism is of course a proven fund-raising tool; "save the whales!" is always going to bring in more cash than "the whales are being saved!" But much more than that, we have today the amusingly ironic spectacle of tenured professors with salaries, health insurance, lifetime job security, and excellent retirement plans courtesy of TIAA-CREF being showered with worldly rewards (bestselling books, "genius" awards) for telling us that progress is an illusion and the end is near . . . while still preening themselves as daring outsiders courageously taking on the mighty and powerful. The fact that it takes no daring at all to adopt such an intellectual posture these days does not stop any of the practitioners of this business model from invariably announcing themselves to be the bearers of "dangerous" or "heretical" ideas and congratulating themselves for "speaking truth to power."

Signed copies of HSI

Stairway Press is now offering North American readers signed copies of The Hockey Stick Illusion. Get them here.



Prospect on the Hockey Stick (again)

There's a new review of the Hockey Stick Illusion at Prospect Magazine's blog. Two reviews from the same magazine!

This one is a critique, by Professor Richard Joyner of Nottingham Trent University.  He hasn't really got anything to say apart from saying he doesn't like it. It's good though to see that he has no issues with the facts as presented, just like several  of the other critiques. I think we can probably say that there is now a "consensus" that the facts are accurately presented in the book.

Click to read more ...

Useless fact

Number of uses of the words "conspiracy", "conspirator", etc in The Hockey Stick Illusion: 2

Number of uses of the words "conspiracy", "conspirator", etc in Bob Ward's article: 3

Did he read it?

My publisher wonders if I am going to write to the Scottish Review of Books and ask to respond to Alastair McIntosh's review. School is back tomorrow and there is something of a backlog of real work to complete. But I thought I would set down a few thoughts and see if I can bring myself to write anything.

Click to read more ...

Big oil day out

Many thanks to the Scottish Oil Club who invited me to attend the talk given by former BP boss, Lord Browne, at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Browne has a book to push, with the self-effacing title: Beyond Business: An Inspirational Memoir From a Visionary Leader. The title of the talk itself was equally understated: The Story of a Corporate Superstar.

I can't help feeling I haven't quite got a handle on the self-promotion angle to being a writer yet.

Scottish Review of Books

A critical review of The Hockey Stick Illusion in the Scottish Review of Books. I was interested to see the Huybers and von Storch critiques of McIntyre's GRL paper mentioned without any allusion to the reasons given in my book as to why they were wrong.

You get a lovely warm feeling when this is the best your critics can come up with...

More evidence of changing GW narrative

Interesting to see the success of the Our Climate iPhone app - Anthony reports that it has made the front of the US iTunes store, despite efforts to denigrate it at the Guardian.

All I need now is for Graun to print a really bitchy review of HSI to send my sales stratospheric...

Bunfight at the Wiki corral

The bunfight over the Wiki page for The Hockey Stick Illusion continues apace, with the whole article now locked down. One of the bones of contention is whether the NWT review that I posted about is allowable, with one participant arguing that the review (which was by NWT's editor) was "a comment to promote a product in a webshop".

The idea that the magazine's editor should be writing sales copy for a webshop is rather extraordinary, so I queried this with Marcel Crok, who ascertained that the review had appeared in the magazine proper...

...and in a sister publication called De Ingenieur....

One word for readers here - I suggest you don't get involved in the bunfight. Leave it to those who have been dealing with the issue already. We don't want to fall foul of Wiki's proscriptions against canvassing.