Energy

The Scientist Who Debunked ‘An Inconvenient Sequel’ Published Another E-Book That’s Already Outselling Al Gore

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Climate scientist Roy Spencer is out with a new e-book on why hurricanes can’t be blamed on man-made global warming, and it’s already outselling former Vice President Al Gore’s book on Amazon’s Kindle store.

Spencer’s new book “Inevitable Disaster: Why Hurricanes Can’t Be Blamed On Global Warming” is ranked 14,847 for purchases from Amazon’s Kindle store. The rankings are based on the “most popular products based on sales,” according to Amazon.

Gore’s companion book to his recent film “An Inconvenient Sequel” is only ranked 63,152 for Kindle store purchases as of Tuesday.

Spencer’s last book, which he released in August, is 17th on Amazon’s best seller list for non-fiction books for the week of September 10th. The book was written to debunk the “bad science, bad policy and some outright falsehoods” in Gore’s latest movie.

Now, Spencer, a global warming skeptic, is out with another book to set the record straight on the connection between global warming and hurricanes.

Recent hurricane landfalls reignited long dormant debates about the connection between global warming and extreme weather. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma both hit the U.S. as Category 4 storms, breaking the 12-year streak with no U.S. major hurricane landfalls.

Some scientists argued warmer ocean and air temperatures fueled Harvey and Irma, making them stronger and wetter. Sea level rise made storm surge worse, they argued.

Ironically, Gore himself connected Harvey and Irma to man-made global warming.

“Within the last two weeks we have had two more record-breaking, climate-connected storms,” Gore said at an World Economic Forum summit in New York City.

Spencer argues in his new book that hurricanes can’t be linked to man-made warming. Indeed, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists agree with him, saying in April it was “premature” to make such a connection.

“Even the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] has low confidence in whether hurricanes will become more frequent or more severe in the coming decades,” Spencer wrote in a blog post.

“NOAA’s GFDL says we might see 2% to 11% increase in activity by the end of the century,” Spencer wrote. “Does that sound like what you should be worrying about during hurricane season if you live on the Florida coast?”

“Maybe instead you should worry that you chose to live somewhere that will, inevitably, be hit by a hurricane sent by Mother Nature that will be catastrophic with or without the help of humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions,” he wrote.

Spencer has testified before Congress on global warming — he did it for the first time in 1990 before a committee chaired by Gore. Spencer currently compiles satellite-derived global temperature data with Dr. John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

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