The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming

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The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming Pub. Date: 9/28/2010 Publisher: Basic Books

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Overview

The world’s response to climate change has been deeply flawed. The Climate Fix is where we begin to get it back on track, as science policy expert Roger Pielke, Jr. dissects the disastrous climate debate and offers a solution: expanding energy access and increasing energy security while lowering costs through technological innovation.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Pielke (The Honest Broker) presents a smart and hard-nosed analysis of the politics and science of climate change and proposes “a commonsense approach to climate policy.” According to Pielke, the “iron law of climate policy” dictates that whenever “environmental and economic objectives are placed in opposition to each other,” economics always wins. “Climate policies must be made compatible with economic growth as a precondition for their success,” he writes, and because the world will need more energy in the future, an “oblique” approach supporting “causes,” such as developing affordable alternative energy sources rather than “consequences,” such as controversial schemes like cap-and-trade, is more likely to succeed. Although some may protest on principle the suggestion that we accept the inevitability of energy growth, Pielke’s focus on adaptation to climate change refreshingly sidesteps the unending debate over the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and opens up the possibility for effective action that places “human dignity and democratic ideals at the center of climate policies.” (Oct.)

Library Journal

Pielke, an environmentalist, policy analyst, and son of a noted meteorologist, clearly has a distinct, insider's understanding of the highly charged global-warming issue. Here, he sets out to "clarify the climate debate in a way that anyone who can use a bit of addition, multiplication, and common sense can make sense of." The discussions have become so polarized as an issue of policy vs. science that the actual concerns have gotten lost. The numerous recent books on the topic only add to the debate. Pielke is unusual, as he neatly separates the science of climate change from the rhetoric, bringing the issue back to the realm of rational discussion. Assuming that readers have a working knowledge of climate science, he handles the technical aspects in a general way. It is not until the end that he briefly discusses specifics of how climate change could actually impact the future. VERDICT Overall, an excellent primer for getting past the politically charged debate clouding the issues. Recommended for readers confused by the deluge of conflicting climate information and willing to revisit the quandary and make their own assessments.—Marianne Stowell Bracke, Purdue Univ. Libs., West Lafayette, IN

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780465020522
Publisher: Basic Books
Publication date: 9/28/2010
Pages: 288
Sales rank: 836,275
Product dimensions: 6.30 (w) x 9.30 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Roger Pielke, Jr. is a Professor of Political Science in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado. He is the author of The Honest Broker and lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Preface vii

1 Dinner Table Climate Science for Commonsense Climate Policy 1

2 What We Know for Sure, but Just Ain't So 35

3 Decarbonization of the Global Economy 61

4 Decarbonization Policies Around the World 81

5 Technological Fixes and Backstops 117

6 How Climate Policy Went Off Course and the First Steps Back in the Right Direction 143

7 Disasters, Death, and Destruction 161

8 The Politicization of Climate Science 191

9 Obliquity, Innovation, and a Pragmatic Future for Climate Policy 217

Acknowledgments 239

Notes 243

Index 267

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leopardiNJ

Posted October 13, 2011

An Alternative View of Climate Change Policy - Worth a Read

A better subtitle for this book might have been "How Climate Scientists Can't Keep Their Mouths Shut." very little evidence in this text on climate change policy for any kind of "cover up" within the climate change science community.

The basic theme of The Climate Fix is that climate change policy actions should avoid the issue of a cause of that change and focus on global adaptation to change. Along the way, Pilke claims, such a policy would automatically lead to some decarbonization (doing fine on its own without government interference) of the world economy thereby mitigating some of the buildup in greenhouse gases. What greenhouse gases remain in the future, the world can deal with by sequestration technologies.

Pielke does a decent job of dealing with a number of climate change topics on the boundary between science and policy that are not necessarily treated in detail in other books:
. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are not the only potential forcing agent in climate change. Dealing with them alone while excluding other human factors in climate change may leave the world no better or even worse off.
. There is plenty enough political will when it comes to addressing climate change.
. Waiting around for certainty in climate change science theory is pointless and unnecessary - major global political actions have been taken for other global challenges without even as much support as climate change has garnered.
. The "iron law" of climate change - economics trump environment every time - dictates that any action taken to address climate change will fail unless it improves the global economy. A corollary to that claim is that economic progress is inexorably linked to increased energy use - any attempt to address climate change must go hand in hand with the improved and innovative technologies of non-fossil-fuel energy production.

The author devotes two chapters to quantitatively debunking plans for achieving national CO2 emission goals, cap and trade (he favors a carbon tax) and geo-engineering. However, when his analysis turns to GHG technology fixes, he gives short shrift to all but CO2-absorption technologies, while failing to provide any quantitative reasons why. In a similar vein, Pielke overstates his claim that ambiguity surrounding the very definition of climate change (GHG-induced vs anything) is the primary cause of the stalemate over international agreements on climate-change policy.

The Climate Fix reserves it most stringent (and often uncomfortably personal) barbs for what is claimed to be the IPCC's malfeasance with respect to the a climate-change-extreme-weather link. This tempest in a teapot ignores the IPCC's hedging on this issue - the theoretical/modeling foundation for expecting such a trend is sound, the hard data remain a bit fuzzy yet some signals seem to be emerging.
Pielke calls for what would be essentially a "Hail Mary" offence on climate change ignoring the claimed bias against adaptation in the current climate-change community and advocating economic development centered on innovative, carbon-free or -neutral innovation. Again, however, he fails to apply the same quantitative analyses to these adaptive strategies (in fact, he doesn't even define what they might be) that was applied to, for example, geo-engineering.

Richard R. Pardi, Environmental Science, William Paterson University
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