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Book Sales Trump Scientific Observation & Analysis

There's some bad news for warmenists today, from Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt.

Physicist Lubos Motl Pilsen has found definitive proof that teh global warming doesn't matter. The proof is in Amazon's list of best sellers on climatology:

1. Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor by Roy Spencer
2. Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming by Bjørn Lomborg
3. Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years,Updated and Expanded Edition by S. Fred Singer
4. Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas
5. The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 by Brian M. Fagan
6. A New Climate for Theology: God, the World, and Global Warming by Sallie McFague
7. The Weather Makers : How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery
8. Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media by Patrick J. Michaels
9. The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook: 77 Essential Skills To Stop Climate Change by David de Rothschild
10. The Hot Topic: What We Can Do About Global Warming by Gabrielle Walker
11. Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years by Dennis T. Avery (Author), S. Fred Singer (Author)

Well that's the top 11 books as I found them at Amazon this morning. Pilsen's top 11 lists author names only with a short description of each author from Pilsen:

1. Roy Spencer, realist (#116)
2. Bjorn Lomborg, realist (#959)
3. Fred Singer, realist (#1324)
4. Brian Fagan, neutral (#6156), a book about the little ice age
5. James Lovelock, Gaia priest (#8706)
6. Wallace Broeckner, alarmist (#9202)
7. Mark Lynas, alarmist loon (#10308)
8. Patrick Michaels, realist (#12027)
9. Tim Flannery, alarmist loon (#16135)
10. Henrik Svensmark, realist (#16309)
11. Dennis Avery and Fred Singer, realists (#19266)

Pilsen's list in turn is based on this earlier list, from self-confessed climate modeller Michael Tobis (descriptions only):

1. denialist (#120 in sales)
2. economist quasi-denialist (#834)
3. denialist turned unstoppablist (#1180)
4. competent (#6226)
5. scientist (#8979 )
6. denialist
7. alarmist
8. denialist
9. not very competent
10. unstoppablist

Tim is content to call this "an encouraging trend in Amazon’s climatology book sales"; as long as Spencer and Lomborg's book sales are beating evil Tim Flannery's, who really cares about the science? Andy takes a more activist stance:

Question: If there’s at least a reader appetite for the other side of the global warming scare story, why does the media insist on feeding the public only a diet of the less-popular alarmism?

Good question: why should the debate on climate change - or any other issue - be informed by facts?

Let's face it, people just don't understand facts and sometimes facts are unpleasant. The media should just be telling people what they want to hear while society's proper rulers - people like Italy's Silvio Berlusconi - get on with deciding what's best for them. There's just too much irresponsible use of free speech going on these days - and that's a fact.

Aargh!

'Ouch!' is quite simply inadequate for this:

Police Taser naked man in cavity

Australia's Economic Future Secured!

AUSTRALIA may be sitting on an oil and gas bonanza after winning legal ownership of a slice of undersea territory five times the size of France. (The Age)

Good to know that we can kick off another minerals boom when this one ends, isn't it? We can all relax now - the dire threat of the nanny-state has been put off another few years, thanks to the prospect of more wealth flowing into the economy from all the oil and gas fields we'll find out there. If it comes to it, we'll find a way to pioneer underwater coal extraction too.

What I'm Reading

I've finally gotten around to reading The Gutenberg Galaxy by Marshall McLuhan. Hence the image, which depicts a fairly commonplace event in the life of the global village of cyberspace.

A New Political Compass for Today...

... and the rest of this week.