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Friday, November 9, 2018

"This is the Way the World Ends" -- sort of a book review.doc

While writing my bi-monthly 
economics newsletter 
this week, on the 
Trump Trade War, 
I needed some very
light reading to relax. 

So I found a new 
"science fiction" book 
at one of my local libraries.

This new book, 
with an exciting title,
showed up at the library
in early October 2018:

"This is The Way 
The World Ends --
How Droughts and Die-Offs, 
Heat Waves and Hurricanes 
are converging on America",
by Jeff Nesbit, 
who seems to have
a public relations
background, 
has written 
"dozens of novels"
and is the 
"executive director 
of Climate Nexus", 
whatever that is.

My first disappointment 
was after I realized 
the author had written 
a science fiction
novel, but he thought 
it was non-fiction.

This was a book where 
an author, who most likely 
never took a science course
after high school, 
wildly speculates about 
the future climate, and 
wins great praise from 
fellow leftists by claiming 
fossil fuels are really evil.

Leftists just love to hear that.

That's why the author
got an endorsement 
on the back cover, 
from John Kerry,
one of the dumbest men 
in American politics,
infamous for the 
Iran nuclear "deal", 
where Iran military bases 
were off limits to inspectors, 
and 24-day notices 
were required for all other
nuclear agency inspections.

Here's the first 
John Nesbit sentence
that really 
made me think:
  "Black carbon 
from soot and 
carbon dioxide 
from industrial activities
have together created 
what is essentially
a black sky above us, 
trapping heat and 
causing critical changes 
in weather patterns, 
ecosystems, and 
Earth systems."

I went outside but
did not find 
a "black sky".

While I was outside,
I remembered something
from a few decades ago,
when we were being told 
that the global cooling 
from 1940 to 1975 
was caused by aerosols 
(air pollution) in the air 
blocking some sunlight. 

After a global warming trend 
started in 1975, no one
talked about those
pesky aerosols anymore!

So skeptics wondered 
what happened to the 
sun blocking, 
cooling effect 
of air pollution, 
that had obviously 
overwhelmed 
the warming effect
of more CO2 
in the air, for 
several decades? 

Did all the air pollution 
suddenly fall out 
of the sky in 1975?

Well, never mind 
that puzzle ...

Author Nesbit now says 
the "black sky" (including 
aerosol pollution) 
causes global warming, 
not global cooling,
as it did in the old days!

In "CO2 is Evil 
Science Fiction",
anything is possible !

I soon decided that 
climate science fiction 
doesn't do much for me.

So I stopped reading 
... after two pages
of the introduction !

That was enough 
suffering for me !

And here is my review,
for the back cover, 
if Nesbit wants another 
endorsement:
"The United States 
climate in 2018 
is wonderful,
the sky is not black, 

and this book stinks !