The Inside Story Of The Battle Against Climate Change Denial By Peter Stott — Review

The shocking behind-the-scenes story of climate deniers’ fight to discredit climate change science over the past twenty-five years, told by one of the world’s foremost climate scientists who lived it

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Greta Thunberg and Fridays for Future. Tomato soup splashed onto a priceless van Gogh masterpiece. Orange paint sprayed on landmarks and across office buildings around London. What is all this drama about?

Climate change, or more accurately, climate catastrophe, after the complete failure of COP26. Now that COP27 is underway and is making international news, you may finally have become concerned to learn about climate change: what it is, what it’s doing to us globally and locally, how we know that the climate is indeed warming up and why we all — every one of us — should care deeply about this issue. If so, then you will learn a lot from this provocative debut book, Hot Air: The Inside Story Of The Battle Against Climate Change Denial (Atlantic Books, 2022: Amazon US / Amazon UK).

Hot Air is the fascinating personal narrative by climate scientist Peter Stott, who heads the Climate Monitoring and Attribution team of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research at the Met Office. He also is Professor of Detection and Attribution in the Mathematics Department at the University of Exeter, and is a world expert on natural and human causes of climate change.

In this informative book, Professor Stott presents a comprehensive history of the behind-the-scenes actions of numerous climate denialists he’s dealt with throughout the years, giving readers a real sense of the frustrations that scientists face when trying to make any climate progress at all, even as the climate emergency grows ever more dire. Almost perversely, whilst climate science is constantly being updated and improved, the denialists’ arguments have remained unchanged since the 1990s.

In Professor Stott’s meticulously researched and copiously cited narrative, you will learn about the nuances of climate science research as he shares some pivotal events in his career during the past 40 years, you will gain a deep appreciation for how rigorous climate science truly is and how many disparate disciplines it draws from, and you will understand the urgency with which we all must act — both personally and locally as well as nationally and globally. You also will see many of the disgraceful tactics used by climate change denialists, anti-science wingnuts and other lunatics to promote mountains of disinformation disgorged by global oil, gas and coal corporations, big agriculture companies, and the logging, mining and transportation interests who, along with politicians, elitists, fabulists and profiteers, seek to convince the public that burning alive in a barren hellscape is not as bad as we think it will be.

Shame, shame, shame on them all.

The truth is that it is relatively easy to dispute climate science because the data are often quite complicated. But in Hot Air, Professor Stott provides readers with clear examples that explain and illuminate these complex findings and make them comprehensible. The author’s discussions of “the hockey stick graph”, Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Greta Thunberg and Trump were all insightful. The drama of conference presentations was interesting and, at times, surprising. But perhaps most surprising was that before each IPCC report is released, scientists and world delegates go through a painstaking process of approving each and every word in every sentence, words such as “substantial”, “likely” and “unequivocal” — despite the efforts of delegates from nations such as Saudi Arabia that have a vested interest in derailing or diluting the message to preserve the status quo. Such a difficult task faced by climate scientists in particular!

This perceptive and entertaining book is a must-read for everyone, but especially those who are inclined to believe the absurd, baseless claims of climate deniers and other anti-science nutters despite evidence to the contrary. For example, according to NASA, all ten of the hottest years on record have occurred since 2005 (ref); with the hottest five since 2015. But there is time — a tiny fleeting window of opportunity — to avert the worst effects of climate change, but we all must aggressively demand immediate action from our leaders — and from the world’s elites. This timely book is a clarion call to all of us to act to save our planet and ourselves and our grandchildren.

Hot Air has been shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize of 2022 and for the Royal Society for Literature Christopher Bland Prize of 2022.

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