Climate Change Reconsidered: The 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is the most comprehensive objective compilation of science on climate change ever published. It offers a “second opinion” to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2007. Unlike that report, Climate Change Reconsidered finds global warming is not a crisis, and never was.

Principal findings of the book include the following:

• Climate models suffer from numerous deficiencies and shortcomings that could alter even the very sign (plus or minus, warming or cooling) of earth’s projected temperature response to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations.

• The model-derived temperature sensitivity of the earth--especially for a doubling of the preindustrial CO2 level--is much too large, and feedbacks in the climate system reduce it to values that are an order of magnitude smaller than what the IPCC employs.

• Real-world observations do not support the IPCC’s claim that current trends in climate and weather are “unprecedented” and, therefore, the result of anthropogenic greenhouse gases.

• The IPCC overlooks or downplays the many benefits to agriculture and forestry that will be accrued from the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content.

• There is no evidence that CO2-induced increases in air temperature will cause unprecedented plant and animal extinctions, either on land or in the world’s oceans.

• There is no evidence that CO2-induced global warming is or will be responsible for increases in the incidence of human diseases or the number of lives lost to extreme thermal conditions.

Climate Change Reconsidered is coauthored by two distinguished scientists:

Dr. S. Fred Singer is one of the most distinguished scientists in the U.S. In the 1960s, he established and served as the first director of the U.S. Weather Satellite Service, now part of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and earned a U.S. Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award for his technical leadership. In the 1980s, Singer served for five years as vice chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Oceans and Atmosphere (NACOA) and became more directly involved in global environmental issues. Since retiring from the University of Virginia and from his last federal position as chief scientist of the Department of Transportation, Singer founded and now directs the nonprofit Science and Environmental Policy Project.

Dr. Craig D. Idso is founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change. He received his Ph.D. in geography from Arizona State University, where he studied as one of a small group of University Graduate Scholars. He was a faculty researcher in the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University and has lectured in Meteorology at Arizona State University. Dr. Idso has published scientific articles on issues related to data quality, the growing season, the seasonal cycle of atmospheric CO2, world food supplies, coral reefs, and urban CO2 concentrations.

Climate Change Reconsidered lists 35 contributors and reviewers from 14 countries and presents in an appendix the names of 31,478 American scientists who have signed a petition saying “there is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.” For more information about NIPCC, go here.

Dr. Singer, Dr. Idso, and the contributors and reviewers of NIPCC donated their time and best efforts to produce this report out of concern that the IPCC--a government agency that is part of the United Nations–-is provoking an irrational fear of anthropogenic global warming based on incomplete and faulty science. They are especially concerned that the political process involved in the editing of the widely cited Summaries for Policy Makers are misrepresenting the true science of climate change.

Global warming hype has led to demands for unrealistic efficiency standards for cars, the construction of uneconomic wind and solar energy facilities, the establishment of large production facilities for uneconomic biofuels such as ethanol from corn, requirements that electric companies purchase expensive power from so-called “renewable” energy sources, and plans to sequester, at considerable expense, carbon dioxide emitted from power plants. While there is nothing wrong with initiatives to increase energy efficiency or diversify energy sources, the evidence presented in Climate Change Reconsidered makes clear they cannot be justified as a realistic means to control climate.

Seeing science clearly misused to shape public policies that have the potential to inflict severe economic harm, particularly on low-income groups, NIPCC’s team of scientists chose to speak up for science at a time when too few people outside the scientific community know what is happening, and too few scientists who know the truth have the will or the platforms to speak out against the IPCC.

Copies of Climate Change Reconsidered can be ordered from The Heartland Institute or from Amazon.com.

For more information about Climate Change Reconsidered, contact Tammy Nash at The Heartland Institute, 312/377-4000 or by email at tnash@heartland.org, or visit the Web sites of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, www.sepp.org, or the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change at www.co2science.org.