Hacker News Reader

Most of Koonin’s sources are directly from the IPCC reports, in fact they are what the book is based around.

Yes, but they are often taken out of context in a misleading way. His statements about melting in Greenland being slower than 80 years ago, for example, are highly misleading, presented in a way to lead the reader to believe that melting in Greenland is decelerating when in fact it is accelerating, it just happened to be exceptionally high for a single year, 80 years ago. Other misleading techniques are the straw-man, there he says something like tornados are not increasing in frequency, leaving the reader to assume that climate models predict increasing tornado frequency when in fact they do not predict that.

First of all, I will point out that he brings up the “context” of facts as a vehicle for an agenda early in the book. The book can essentially be described as a critical reading and overview of the IPCC reports.

And, yes, I do not agree with every point he makes. I think some of the things he says are misleading. That said, he does raise points that climate action advocates, myself included, need to address. For instance, our faulty climate models. This is not climate denial. It’s climate action, from a realistic perspective.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com