TWISTED: The Distorted Mathematics of Greenhouse Denial

This book analyses some of the ways in which the so-called greenhouse sceptics distort the data to create unjustified doubt about the reality of human-induced global warming.

Author Ian Enting presents series of examples in non-technical form, highlighting the inconsistencies in the sceptics' arguments and showing how the data have been distorted.

Finally, the book describes some new calculations showing the emisssions that will be required to achieve various targets of stabilising CO₂ concentrations.

Flyer with chapter summaries (pdf).
(Extracts). .
Science Showinterview/ transcript.

Publication and ordering

The Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute sponsored the publication of TWISTED in 2007. It is now distributed by Spellbound Interpretation (e-mail twisted.ige@gmail.com) and available from selected bookstores.

Online by Ian Enting

Rogues or respectable? How climate change sceptics spread doubt and denial was published in The Conversaton on June 23, 2011. see
http://theconversation.edu.au/rogues-or-respectable-how-climate-change-sceptics-spread-doubt-and-denial-1557.

Analysis of the fabrication, misrepresentation, inconsistency (and a bit of plagiarism) in Ian Plimer's book Heaven + Earth at http://www.complex.org.au/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=91

Reading on pseudo-sceptics

A particularly important book is Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. Bloomsbury Press, 2010.
See New Scientist, May 12, 2007.

Some more instances of greenhouse denial, too recent to have been included in TWISTED

About the author

Ian Enting is a professorial Fellow at the ARC Center of Excellence for Mathematics and Statistics of Complex Systems. From 1980 to 2004 he was a research scientist at CSIRO Atmospheric Research. He was one of the lead authors of the chapter CO₂ and the Carbon Cycle in the 1994 IPCC report on Radiative Forcing of Climate Change.

TWISTED: The Distorted Mathematics of Greenhouse Denial is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Don Hutton, 1938-2007, physicist, educator and environmentalist.

Disclaimer

This page, its contents and style, are the responsibility of the author and do not represent the views, policies or opinions of The University of Melbourne.

Ian Enting: last change 9/7/11.