In September of 1920, shortly after Hugh Ross’s book Weathering Climate Change was published, a prominent Christian leader asked me what I thought of it. Not long after that, two other prominent Christian leaders asked me the same question. Here is how I responded:

“I’ve read, over the past 15 years or so, over 50 complete books (and parts of 100 or more others) and many thousands of articles, hundreds peer reviewed, on the science, and over 30 books (and parts of 20 or so others) and many thousands of articles, scores peer reviewed, on the economics, of climate change and climate-and-energy-policy. (And over the previous twenty years I’d read about half a dozen other books on the subject, and a few hundred articles.) One of the world’s top climate scientists, Dr. Roy W. Spencer of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, is on my board and told me some eight or more years ago something like, ‘Cal, you understand the arguments pro and con on climate change better than practically any of the climate scientists I know. We all specialize in our own narrow little slices. You read all of it.’

“[Of course, nobody reads ‘all of it.’ But I do read much on many aspects of climate change and from many sides in the controversy.] Another climate scientist, Dr. Neil Frank, who was the longest-serving Director of the National Hurricane Center, told me just a couple of weeks ago, when he was a guest on Cornwall Alliance’s Facebook live program, that he believed I understood the science of climate change much better than most climate scientists. So that’s the background I brought to reading Ross’s book. 

“So, what did I think of it?

“I’ve read carefully about the first 100 pages and scanned the rest, slowing down here and there where it seemed rewarding to do so. It was pretty clear to me within the first 30 or 40 pages that Ross was writing way, way, way outside his own field not only of expertise but also of serious study, and that what he had to say reflected little or no acquaintance with the truly serious debate among truly serious climate scientists about many different aspects of the problem. I searched carefully through his endnotes to see how acquainted he was with climate ‘realist’ (the term I prefer to ‘skeptic’) scientists; he mentioned at most 7 (if I’m generous to him in defining some of them that way) ‘realist’ scientists and 2 journalists/bloggers. He made no reference to any of the heavy hitters, the truly outstanding climate scientists like Spencer, or Judith Curry, or (the late) S. Fred Singer, or Will Happer, or Nick Lewis, or Anthony Lupo, or David Legates, or …. I could go on and on. He does mention one prominent realist scientist—Freeman Dyson—on p. 71, but not with reference to the debate over climate change, and with no apparent awareness that Dyson was in fact highly skeptical of dangerous anthropogenic global warming. (He signed one of Cornwall Alliance’s public statements, and he and I had some delightful correspondence.)

“What this showed me is that Ross, whether intentionally or unintentionally, was completely unacquainted with the serious science of the ‘realist’ side. He showed no awareness of the devastating critiques of Cook et al.’s famous paper (which he cited on p. 40) that concluded that 97 percent of climate scientists agree that global warming is real and mostly manmade. (For one easy critique, see here, but there are much more comprehensive and devastating ones.)

“The more time I spent in the book, the more I kept thinking, ‘This shows all the hallmarks of having been pulled together by a dozen or so college students—who didn’t know how to get much beyond superficial media coverage, who didn’t have any idea that there was a major debate going on, who therefore were aware of only one side and patched things together from it—and then smoothed by the author.’ Silly, obvious errors here and there bolstered that idea. E.g., on p. 60 one reads of ‘the Holocene Climate Optimum [the Medieval Warm Period]’—the bracketed part being the author’s clarification of what the quoted source meant by HCO. But the HCO was a period from roughly 8,000–6,000 BC and was mostly much warmer than any time in the past 4,000 or so years, while the MWP was roughly AD 950–1250 and was much cooler than the HCO and about equally warm as the present (or perhaps a little warmer—there’s debate). 

“A somewhat tangential concern, to me anyway, is that there are lots of places throughout the book that indicate that Ross embraces the idea of a ‘stability’ or ‘equilibrium’ in nature. That notion was popular among ecologists up until about 40 years ago but has since been thoroughly refuted by lots and lots of empirical studies. His notion that ‘We live in a rare moment in Earth’s history. The just-right ice coverage, mountain locations, and elevations are but three examples of fine-tuned features that make our existence possible’ (p. 71) is, at least with regard to the controversy over anthropogenic climate change, horribly naïve. AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is minuscule, even according to the UN IPCC, compared with the enormous differences between glacial maxima and glacial minima (according to ‘standard,’ that is, old-Earth, geology [Ross’s view]).

“In short, I would not recommend the book. Whatever might be the quality of much of Ross’s other work (and I gather, though I’ve not read him at length, that it’s pretty good—one of my sisters-in-law and her husband, both literal rocket scientists, used to admire his work, though more recently they’ve become young earthers and so disagree with him on that point), this book simply doesn’t meet any high standards for a knowledgeable treatment of this highly complex, and highly controversial, topic.”

Those who want to understand climate change from a realist perspective will find that perspective in Climate and Energy: The Case for Realism, co-edited by Cornwall Alliance Director of Research and Education Dr. David R. Legates and myself.