WASHINGTON – A leading climate skeptic’s newly self-published e-book challenging the science behind Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Sequel” is drastically outselling the film’s companion book on Amazon.
Meanwhile, climatologist Roy W. Spencer’s e-book, “An Inconvenient Deception: How Al Gore Distorts Climate Science and Energy Policy,” was ranked 328th.
In Amazon’s climatology category, Gore’s book was ranked 11th on Thursday, while Spencer’s was ranked first.
“Maybe people are finally wising up to Mr. Gore,” Spencer said on his Global Warming blog.
Gore describes his 320-page book as “your action handbook to learn the science, find your voice, and help solve the climate crisis.”
Spencer’s 81-page book dismantling Gore’s theories was also ranked first in the environment category and first in Kindle short reads for science and math.
Spencer, an award winning former NASA senior scientist for climate studies and a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said he wrote the point-by-point rebuttal in two weeks after Gore’s Aug. 4 wide release of the documentary “An Inconvenient Sequel.”
While Gore’s book was published on July 25 by Rodale books, and Spencer’s e-book first appeared on Amazon last week, Gore’s book benefits from its accompanying film’s publicity by Paramount Pictures and Gore’s international promotional tour.
Gore’s climate-change documentary, “An Inconvenient Sequel,” also nosedived at the box office this week.
According to Box Office Mojo, Gore’s movie earned $331, 007 this week, a 59 percent drop from last weekend’s gross of $816,150.
Spencer, who continues to work with NASA on the U.S. Science Team, also gave a disparaging critique of Gore’s new movie, claiming it is rife with propaganda.
“After viewing Gore’s most recent movie, ‘An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,’ and after reading the book version of the movie, I was more than a little astounded,” Spencer said on his blog, Global Warming. “The new movie and book are chock-full of bad science, bad policy and factual errors.”
The leading climatologist and author of three previously published books on climate change contends Gore’s new documentary is just as bogus as its 2006 predecessor.
“An Inconvenient Truth” “implies repeatedly that naturally occurring weather episodes are the result of human-caused global warming — for example, a shot in which the former vice president stands ankle-deep in a flooded Miami street,” Spencer said.
“That flooding is mostly a combination of (1) natural sea level rise (I show there has been no acceleration of sea level rise beyond what was already happening since the 1800s), and (2) satellite-measured sinking of the reclaimed swamps that have been built upon for over 100 years in Miami Beach,” he continued.
Last week, John Coleman, a retired TV weatherman and founder of the Weather Channel gained national attention after blasting Gore and repudiating others who insist “deniers” are the worst of humanity are “Algorian” scientists.
“I’m just a dumb old skeptic — a denier as they call me — who ought to be jailed or put to death,” he said. “I understand how they feel. But you know something? I know I’m right. So I don’t care.”
Coleman, known for his skepticism of the view that mankind is a significant cause of climate change, lamented that has become a political issue when it should have remained a scientific one.
The former weatherman said he would have retired from meteorology sooner amid the politicization of weather and climate if it were not for the support of his manager, Michael D. McKinnon, at KUSI-TV, where he worked for 20 years until 2014.
McKinnon “strongly supported my skeptical position on global warming,” Coleman said in an interview with MyNewsLA. “If it hadn’t been for that, I probably would have retired much sooner. [KUSI] gave me a great platform from which to work.”
Coleman repudiated Gore for starting the “global warming silliness” and said he was “horrified” to see San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer channeling Gore’s Climate Action Plan.
It “just turns my stomach,” he said. “San Diego’s not going to go underwater. Period,” he said. “Not in my lifetime or yours or our kids’ lifetime. When the Earth ends in 4 1/2 billion years, it probably still won’t have flooded.”
He also mocks the “tsunami warning route signs that they put up all over the city,” which he calls “about as silly as anything I’ve ever saw in my life. The chance of a significant tsunami hitting Southern California is about as great as a flying saucer landing tonight at Lindbergh Field. It’s just sheer nonsense.”