Sound and fury

The popular vision of an approaching apocalypse caused by global warming has no scientific foundation, says Patrick J. Michaels. Those who warn of a catastrophic greenhouse effect - such as Sen. Al Gore - can justify neither their fears nor their blueprints for dramatically interfering with the U.S. and world economies. Sound and Fury criticizes "science by sound bite" and congressional show trials complete with testimony that has not been peer reviewed according to scientific standards. Among the misconceptions exposed is the claim that most scientists subscribe to the apocalyptic vision of global warming. "Rather, the consensus is the opposite: the Popular Vision is unscientific," Michaels writes. Even Greenpeace's survey of scientists who participated in the major United Nations study of climate change found that only 13 percent of the respondents believe that failure to change our energy use would result in a runaway greenhouse effect. Michaels shows that the slight warming over the last century has been far less than the prophets of the apocalypse would expect - throwing the reliability of their computer climate models into doubt - that most of it happened before industry's massive carbon dioxide emissions began, and that most of the warming is at night, when it produces benign effects such as longer growing seasons. In other words, the warming that has resulted from natural climatic processes is good. Among other points brought out in this pathbreaking book: for most of the last billion years, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was greater than it is today. Carbon dioxide, far from being a pollutant, makes plants grow. Research shows that enhanced CO[subscript 2] concentrations make plants grow better. The result: cheaper, more plentiful food. Proposed policies to prevent global warming would be "the greatest centrally planned social engineering experiment in history." Before we impose a trillion-dollar plan on our economy to fix a dubious problem, every informed American should read Pat Michaels's words of warning.