Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction xi
An Important Note on Temperature Histories and Trends xvii
1 A Little History 1
2 The Lukewarm World 7
3 Autumn in Paris 11
4 Getting Real about the Greenhouse Effect 19
5 Human Nature and Forecasting Models 21
6 Grand Narratives, Availability Cascades, and Granfalloons 25
7 In the Availability Cascade, What Is Not Real Is Real 31
8 The Availability Cascade Runs Amok 37
9 Paris, December 1, 2015 45
10 California Cascade 47
11 Outside the Cascade: Reality Bites 51
12 Breaking Up with Your Forecast is Hard to Do 55
13 Is the Pause Just an Artifact of Dad Data? 59
14 Testing the Climate Models 65
15 Paris, December 4, 2015 69
16 If You Explain Everything, You Explain Nothing 73
17 Popper vs. Knobs on the Climate Machine: Lukewarmers Choose Popper 79
18 Does This Tail Make Me Look Fat? 85
19 Some More Insensitivity about Global Warming 91
20 The Sociology of Climate Alarmism 99
21a The First National Climate Assessment: Willful Violation of Normative Science 107
21b The Second National Climate Assessment: Where's the Rest of the Science? 111
21c The Third National Climate Assessment: "A Key Deliverable of President Obama's Climate Action Plan" 119
22 Paris, December 10, 2015 125
23 U.S. Temperature Assessments: Cherries for the Picking 129
24 Alternative Reality: The Luke warmer's Greener World 135
25 Back to the Genetic Garden of Eden? 139
26 Rational Optimism in the Lukewarm World 145
27 Food to Burn 151
28 Is Global Warming Making Us Ill? 155
29 The Sexiest Storms on Earth 163
30 How the U.S. Global Change Research Program Sees Hurricanes 171
31 Typhoon Haiyan: "Man Has Slapped Nature in the Face" 175
32 Are Floods Increasing? 179
33 Tornado Warning! 185
34 Quiz Time: Damages from Extreme Weather 189
35 Polar Ice Extent: A Tale of two Hemispheres 191
36 Death of the Polar Bear? 199
37 The End of the Apocalypse 203
38 Human Nature 211
39 Climate MAGICC 215
40 Damn the MAGICC, Full Speed Ahead 219
41 Paris, December 12, 2015 223
42 Paris's Last Tango? 231
Appendix 233
Index 235