I hope you don’t mind me sharing this, it’s dancing with a line, but I wrote the review myself, so it has that going for it. Besides might be interesting to toss in a book review, see if any one becomes familiar with the book and cares to discuss it.
"Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change"How to Understand and Respond to Climate Science Deniers
Dr. John Cook - Founder of SkepticalScience.com
Citadel Press - Kensington Publishing Corp. - www.kensigntonbooks.com
“Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change” is an easy to read graphic book that at 164 pages frames important climate science and communication issues within cartoons, artwork and concise sentences. Still, don’t be fooled, absorbing of this AGW communication challenge, along with what we are doing to our one and only home planet is difficult in the extreme, but it is, what it is.
Given my half century of attention to Climate Science and the evolving fraud dependent propaganda campaigns of deception and willful ignorance, I found it a light hearted, inoffensive, easy to comprehend look into the challenge of conveying climate science facts to folks who are swimming in disinformation.
John Cook doesn’t shout or agitate, instead preferring to explain the well understood science and communication dynamics, while offering only fleeting glimpses into the past decades of full blown malicious dirty tricks that the contrarian campaigns against climate science understanding are guilty of.
The Cranky Uncle’s opening chapter is “How did Climate Change get so Controversial?” It tells the story of a few corporate funded political operatives and how they were able to completely distort public climate science understanding.
(Turning the public dialogue away from an educational challenge of understanding what was happening within our life supporting biosphere, to a propaganda circus where profits and winning were the only things mattered - the future was jettisoned for the self-interest of a very few. )
It also touches on why grasping the reality of global warming is a “perfect psychological storm,” since it’s a long term threat, while people rarely see beyond their next paychecks. Thus making them easy marks and victims to propaganda fraud.
Cook summarizes the tactics for perpetrating this propaganda fraud with “FLICK” (Fake Experts; Logical Fallacies; Impossible Expectations; Cherry Picking; Conspiracy Fabrications.)
The 2nd chapter, Cranky Uncle is “Denying Reality” looks at current observations and ten favorite denier claims, explaining what makes them false. “Denying Responsibility” begins with a claim that we are causing current global warming. That statement is supported with a Whodunnit that collects and tracks down various scientific lines of evidence, while reviewing eleven contrarian favorites.
The 4th chapter, “Denying Consequences” touches on another ten foolish arguments. “Denying the Science” offers fleeting glances at historic highlights along this path of calculated mass deception, along with exposing another eleven contrarian myths.
In the final chapter “Responding to Science Denial,” Cook points out that Climate deniers are a small but vocal minority and suggests various strategies for recognizing and countering their game.
John Cook’s “Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change,” is a gentle book, it reiterates what we’ve known for a long time and adds a few new insights. It’s value is in being an organized compilation of arguments and evidence along with a simple over-arching narrative.
If you’re involved in any kind of science communication you owe it to yourself to invest in John Cook’s “Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change." I recommend this excellent addition to any high school, public, or general college library, and of course, to your own desk.
Because its simple over view, can serve as a quick reference guide to help you organize and recall the varied aspects that come into play once you really start thinking about communicating how our global heat and moisture distribution engine operates and impacts our lives everyday.
Perhaps it can help you convey that important understanding to others.
This is the g rated version - if you care for a little more spice.