Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis--And What We Can Do to Avert Disaster

Rating:
Summary: The Boiling Point - Just a Tub of Lukewarm Water for "W"
Review: "Boiling Point" is well-worth reading. It will help you understand how the American oil and coal industries have consistently tried (and succeeded) to pull the wool over the eyes of Americans. Unlike the reviewers who lamely attack the book, open-minded readers will comprehend and appreciate the author's salient points, none of which are addressed by his attackers:

1. Why would the American oil and coal industries overwhelmingly finance the minority of climatologists who hold the "contrarian" view that mankind's contribution to global warming is negligible? If they are truly concerned about the objectivity of their science, why don't they equally finance those climatologists who represent the majority view? Why aren't Americans taking the oil and coal industries to task for their socially irresponsible lack of objectivity.

2. Yes, read the scientific literature, as "Boiling Point"s handful of critics say. That is exactly what the author recommends! Reasonable people will probably reach the same conclusion that the author has: If the majority of climatologists believe that manmade emissions are contributing significantly to global warming, then why would America's political leaders bury their collective heads in the sand and pray that the contrarians are right and the majority wrong? Wouldn't prudence suggest that we should play it safe and do what we can to reduce potentially harmful manmade emissions?

There are thirty pages of notes at the end of the book for anyone interested in the scientific literature that underpins the author's points. Don't fall into the mindless, do-nothing trap of the nay-sayers, and use as an excuse "Well, there is always scientific controversy, and the majority is not always right." That is the refuge of buffoons. We cannot afford to gamble that perhaps the minority view is correct.

Rating:
Summary: An important book that explains the impact of climate change
Review: After hearing about Michael Crichton's idiotic thriller "State of Fear," I was compelled to read a nonfiction book about the science and politics behind the global warming debate. "Boiling Point" was the perfect place to start. It's a short book, but also very detailed. No one can read this book and fail to understand the urgency of our need to reduce carbon emissions worldwide. I also plan to read Gelbspan's earlier book "The Heat Is On," as well as "The Carbon War" by Jeremy Leggett.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Review of the Current Crises
Review: Gelbspan has done an excellent job of examining a wide range of aspects of global warming - the science, politics, potential soulutions, etc - and brought them together in this one single volume. I noticed a couple of reviewers had faulted him for misstating the work of Hansen. I assume they mean Dr. James Hansen who heads the Goddard Institute of Space Studies. I have read in detail Dr. Hansen's Scientific American article and then his more detailed download. I find that Gelbspan has accurately represented his work. There may be some details that I missed but the essence is accurate. The planet is warming up due to our influence and it is more than likely that the consequences will be disruptive and sometimes deadly to the population of the earth.

Rating:
Summary: A MUST READ FOR THE RESPONSIBLE CITIZEN
Review: It seems that ever since the Texas oil lobby moved into the White House, anyone who questions what they'e doing to planet earth -- the only one we have -- are fair game for ridicule. But like the infamous rats who are first to abandon sinking ships, they'll be the first ones to beg for their lives. My introductory rant has to do with the few who fling spitballs at serious writers like Ross Gelbspan. I'd call them mindless apes but that would be unfair to the intelligent primates who live in African and South American forests.

Release of "Boiling Point," comprehensively pulls together a lot of the science on climate change that has published during the past several years. It provides increased credence to scientific concerns about the climate change.

Gelbspan's position is, climate change is much more than "just another issue." Indeed, it goes far beyond "only" being an environmental issue. He makes the case and warns that it is an all-encompassing economic, energy, political and moral issue.

"We are living on an increasingly precarious margin of stability," he warns, describing how "we have set in motion massive systems of the planet that have kept it relatively hospitable for the last 10,000 years."

Gelbspan calls for a kind of Marshall Plan to stop what he hopes isn't too late to reverse the "suicidal" trends. He appears to emjoy the attacks that will come from the "skeptics" whom he (and many others) accuses of feeding at the trough of the big coal and oil interests.

Gelbspan sems to enjoys his critics dismissing his earlier sharing of a Pulitzer when he was an editor at the Boston Globe. Acknowledging those criticisms to be "quite hurtful," he admits to being "privately pleased." He says his coal and oil industry critics couldn't refute his reporting in "The Heat is On" and instead had to resort to character assassination by lying about his award.

In the preface to his new book Gelbspan reports that he had "conceived and edited" the Globe series on systematic job discrimination against African Americans, "helped select the reporters, directed the reporting, and edited the articles." The Globe's editor and publisher chose him to receive the Pulitzer on behalf of the paper, and included his photo and bio along with those of other team members under the headline "Pulitzer Prize Winners." He's posted that and other related information on his website. But the carbon crowd, as they dishonestly spread information on climate change, also lie about Gelbspan's Pulitzer.

In "Boiling Point," Gelbspan's indictments are launched in chapters with titles such as "Criminals Against Humanity," opening with a bizarre quote from Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Ok).

"Nothing has further alienated the United States from the rest of the world than the Bush administration's dismissal of global climate change," Gelbspan writes. The book was written and released in the aftermath of Bush's failed Iraq War.

"With the 2000 presidential election, however, the fossil fuel lobby won a victory beyond its wildest dreams," he continues. "What began as an industry campaign of deception and information was adopted as presidential strategy."

Gelbspan doesn't spare the American media a tongue lashing. He finds American news organizations missing-in-action (or inaction), and possibly complicit.

"The U.S. press has basically played the role of unwitting accomplice by consistently minimizing this [climate change] story, if not burying it from public view altogether," writes Gelbspan.

Calling it political reporting, not the science or environmental beat, providing a career path to being a top editor, he accuses the media of doing "a deplorable job in disseminating" decade-old scientific information of human impacts on climate "and all its implications." He says US newspaper coverage is shameful in comparison with responsible reporting on climate change in Western Europe.

Footnote to this review: I wish to add that in the July 2004, I attended the Third World Health Organization meeting on health effects of global warming. Under very high security, dozens of European cabinet officials )ministers of health, environemtn, and public safety) met in Budapest. Discussed were the effects of floods and other natural disasters associated with climate change. The Europeans are making life saving plans for their future generations while Americans are still quibbling about whether or not the climate is changing.

Can Gelbspans literary efforts help to turn the American suicidal madness around?

Rating:
Summary: Boiling over!
Review: Ross Gelbspan's book is a disgraceful piece of unadulterated propaganda, pages and pages of deliberate mis-information. I am sure he is perfectly aware of the monstrous inaccuracies (I dare not use stronger terms), but is doubtless hoping that it will be a best-seller.

As a professional scientist, I am very troubled by this aspect of the climate change debate. I see it as just one manifestation of an extremely dangerous development in modern society, the creation of a widely accepted mythology by activists using the 'big talk' of science to delude the public.

I urge everyone to read this book, and then to check authentic scientific sources to judge whether it was worth paying $22.00 for such propaganda.

Rating:
Summary: We cannot say that we did not know
Review: Take a good look around you. The signs are numerous and unmistakable. The Arctic glaciers are melting at an alarming rate. Entire island nations in the South Pacific are being permanently evacuated and tropical diseases are spreading as birds and insects migrate farther and farther north. Hardly a week goes by without another bizaare weather event dominating the headlines. It is against this backdrop that Ross Gelbspan brings us "Boiling Point". This is the authors clarion call for the peoples of the world to take their heads out of the sand, set aside their differences and work together to solve a problem that threatens the world as we know it.
According to Gelbspan, an overwhelming majority of scientists around the world agree that the world must reduce carbon emissions by some 70%! And we have less than two decades to get the job done. Obviously, there are major obstacles everywhere, not the least of which is the Bush administration who is clearly in the hip pocket of the oil and coal industry.
In fact, less than two months after his inauguration, the President broke a campaign promise and stated that he would no longer seek to regulate power plant emissions. And throughout the remainder of his first term the President fought any kind of regulation on the energy industry tooth and nail. The author quotes longtime Bush supporter Robert Luft, President of Entergy Corp who flatly states "Still, I cannot express my frustration with his performance in this area...Make no mistake. If today's leaders of government and business don't start understanding the need to take emissions reductions seriously, we will leave a grim, grim legacy for a children and our grandchildren."
After reviewing what divides us, Ross Gelbspan proposes a challenging three point plan that would help to bring about the dramatic changes that are needed to help avoid an environmental calamity. And while I will not enumerate his proposal here it is safe to say that all of us as individuals and all of the nations of the world must put aside our many and deep differences and work for the common good. The author is cautiously optimistic that given the right set of circumstances that this could actually happen. Let's hope and pray that it can. As another reviewer so aptly put it, "Boiling Point" is a must read for the responsible citizen. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: In the Tradition of Rachel Carson
Review: The beauty of this amazing book is that it cogently addresses probably the world's most awesome issue and forcefully demonstrates why it must be dealt with immediately. Gelbspan even presents a plausible plan to deal with global climate change. Formulated in 1998 at Harvard, The World Energy Modernization Plan details a systematic process for making the required 70% cuts in oil and coal usage in order to stem the permanency of global warming. It involves jettisoning the Kyoto provisions in favor of the more stringent Fossil Fuel Efficiency Standard, while shifting the fossil fuel industry's billions of dollars in subsidies to programs developing clean energy.

Those laughingstocks of the scientific community, the "greenhouse skeptics" (the folks the rightwing propaganda machine loves to quote and bounce around their GOP echo chamber ad nauseum), are touched on by Gelbspan and shown to be nothing more than clever shills for one of the most powerful and richest industries on earth. The fossil fuel lobby keeps the "skeptics" in their back pockets always ready to shuffle out on cue to confuse the public with their disinformation campaign aimed at proving the global warming phenomenon's a hoax. Their mercurial goal being to inculcate in the public consciousness the notion global climate change is only "theory" rather than what it truly is: a well proven scientific fact. The fossil fuel industry espouses their nonsense even though the fact of human induced global warming has been firmly substantiated in the most rigorously peer-reviewed scientific study in history. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NOAA and National Academy of Science all concur that if CO2 emissions are not drastically cut, an insoluble catastrophe could result. Gelbspan further points out that "Science" magazine is advocating, with Manhattan Project urgency, the development of wind, solar and hydrogen fuel.

Boiling Point's at its best when broaching the mainstream media's (of course corporate owned) role in perpetuating public ignorance. The concept of journalistic balance leads to warped and biased coverage of global climate change. Providing "skeptics" equal time with the scientific community is akin to granting equal time to crackpots who believe 2+2=3. Gelbspan astutely notes that when questions of fact are at issue journalistic balance is absurd.

At a time when George Bush (the dry drunk, Jesus freak, draft dodging, warmongering, failed businessman, dithering dolt president of the United States) stakes out a position on global warming that alienates and flies in the face of the international community and the scientific method; Gelbspan has delivered a terrifying yet essential work, which is a direct call to arms for anyone who values human civilization ahead of the profit margins of ExxonMobil, the Peabody Group and BP Amoco.

Rating:
Summary: Wake Up Call
Review: The world has known about global warming for years, but it's time to wake up and do something about it. This well-written, revealing book should add much to the effort. We cannot afford the rabid political diatribe of global warming naysayers that don't have any facts to stand on. There are no more legitimate papers refuting global warming then there are good papers in support of Creationism. The world must awaken.

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece
Review: When Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, she was widely attacked for advocating the elimination of DDT. But Carson had done her homework well. Her book was meticulously documented and it withstood the inevitable assaults from those who believed that behind her opposition to DDT lay some sort of covert left-wing agenda.

I predict that Ross Gelbspan too will survive such assaults. Like Carson, he is a journalist who writes with passion but also with full documentation.

Even today, there are scientists who deny that DDT poses environmental problems. The same will likely be true of global warming: there will always be deniers. But reviewers like "Chaxford" mischaracterize the nature of the debate within the scientific community. For example, the Harvard-Smithsonian study, which he cites as an example of mainstream science undermining the human-driven global warming hypothesis, does nothing of the sort. That study merely documents that non-human global warming has occurred before -- hardly a surprising fact! (...)Or Google on the title: "Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal."

Those interested in the true nature of the debate should also read another source mentioned by "Claxford," NASA's James Hansen (note: not Hanson), rather than accepting at face value Claxford's characterization of Hansen. Hansen does suggest a somewhat different approach than Gelbspan -- and yes, he has been criticized by "political types." But Hansen is hardly in the camp of the deniers. (...)
Or Google on the title of the article: "Can We Defuse the Global Warming Time Bomb?"

The closing paragraph of Hansen's article actually provides as good a defense of Ross Gelbspan's work (and refutation of critics like "Claxford") as any. Hansen writes: "The bottom line. How can I be optimistic if, as I have argued, climate is now in the hands of humans and it is closer to the level of "dangerous anthropogenic interference" than has been realized? If we compare the situation today to that 10-15 years ago, we realize that the main elements required to halt climate change, as summarized above, have come into being with remarkable rapidity. I realize that it will not be easy to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, but I am optimistic because I expect empirical evidence for climate change and its impacts to continue to accumulate, and that this will influence the public, public interest groups, industry,and governments at various levels. The question is: will we act soon enough. It is a matter of time."





Rating:
Summary: In case you thought there was no ecological crisis...
Review: You may have noticed climate changes in your cubby hole area. They should have warned you through 'normal channels' but they seemed to have all been wiped out. They used to say the crisis of the environment was only a matter of time, now the time has come and this book should be essential reading for anyone glued to standard sources of (dis)information. You know the time has come when Bush starts hemming and hawing on this issue. It's not a prearranged signal, but it's alarmingly indicative. In another decade they may change their story. Meanwhile, all the important measures are starting to spike and major lifestyle changes are on the table.
Very important reading.