The Heat Is on: The Climate Crisis, the Cover-Up, the Prescription

by Ross Gelbspan

Book Overview

This book not only brings home the imminence of climate change but also examines the campaign of deception by big coal and big oil that is keeping the issue off the public agenda. It examines the various arenas in which the battle for control of the issue is being fought--a battle with surprising political alliances and relentless obstructionism. The story provides an ominous foretaste of the gathering threat of political chaos and totalitarianism...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0738200255
• ISBN13: 9780738200255
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

This writer has done his homework

This book is accurate and a stunning piece of reporting. The man , a pulitzer prize winning journalist, has done his homework. I learned a great deal from reading it. He explains the dynamics of the market place and why it is so dang hard to get anything done to benefit humanity. The writing is well done,highly documented, readable, informational and he lays out the problem and possible solutions with a clarity befitting his reputation. Read this book now and learn. Thanks.I'm telling everyone I know about this book.

Powerful, Compelling Book about Global Warming

"The Heat is On" is a well-researched, detailed description of how the coal and oil industries are trying (and succeeding) to confuse the issue of global warming today. In this frightening exposé, Ross Gelbspan shows how the fossil fuel industries are spending millions of dollars to confuse the public through misleading advertising and PR tactics in order to protect their financial interests. The story behind this campaign of lies is astounding.Try a little experiment: talk to several people about global warming. Just bring it up in the conversation, and watch their reaction. I did, and I found that most people laughed, or said, "Yeah, but I heard there's no conclusive evidence to support that." This is the direct effect of the fossil fuel industry's PR campaign. Gelbspan describes how they have done this largely through industry-created groups with misleading names (such as the "Information Council on the Environment"), and pseudo-scientists paid by the industry.Gelbspan explains that the industry's groups and scientists have received a great deal of media coverage because journalists, as part of their duty, are compelled to cover both sides of the story. The problem is that the "other side of the story" in this case is a small group who is paid by the industry. The confusion and lies promoted by the fossil fuel industry has been enough to drown out the 2,500 climate scientists around the world who all agree that global warming is a fact."The Heat is On" offers irrefutable facts to debunk the myth that global warming evidence is inconclusive. For example, many people claim that recent extreme colde and winter weather refutes the theory. Wrong, says Gelbspan: "severe winter weather perfectly consistent with global warming. One effect of climate change is to produce more extreme local temperatures--leading to hotter hots, unseasonal colds, and more severe snowstorms." And temperature changes are just the beginning of the problem. Other effects include outbreaks of disease, proliferation of pests, and extinction of species, among others.The only solution is to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions, probably as much as 60%. This is no easy task, but Gelbspan does offer a plausible "prescription". He suggests that we (1) divert all fossil fuels subsidies ($20 billion/year!) to renewable energy development, (2) implement efficiency standards to require generating facilities to be highly efficient (instead of the current 35% efficiency average), and (3) support developing nations in the conversion with an international currency transaction tax.This is a very powerful book. Hopefully it will help to re-educate the public, and serve as a model for global change. I strongly recommend it.

A very motivating behind-the-secnes look at global warming.

I work in the field of global climate change, so I am fairly familiar with the arguments - and I found this book to be well-researched. The more you look into this issue, the more alarming it becomes, and Ross is an excellent writer. I recommend it to anyone who wants to get a better understanding of the intricacies of carbon dioxide, the solar revolution, and the campaign by the fossil fuel industry to tell us that their emissions are not a problem.

Gelbspan offers insight into science & politics of warming

Having just read The Heat Is On and interviewed both Ross Gelbspan and Robert Balling for EV World, I came away with an appreciation of both the complexity of the issue, but also the politics underlying it. While Gelbspan admits he's no climatologist, he's interviewed numerous professionals in the field, and read the works of the leading skeptics, including Balling who would have you believe that this is a non-issue and even if it were an issue, we can't do anything about it. Ross not only thinks we can do something about it, but he's also spent the last year working with others to develop a plan to begin the gradual transition away from fossil fuels to sustainable technologies, one which won't jeopardize the global economy or the environment. EV World features RealAudio interviews with both Gelbspan and Balling.

Must reading on this subject

Ross Gelbspan provides an invaluable addition to the literature on a global problem. He details the way in which the oil and coal industries, both of whom have an enormous financial stake in the status quo, energy-wise, have poured money into a propaganda campaign designed to prevent action on global warming. They have done so by creating the illusion that there is a genuine debate by scientists as to whether global warming is taking place. Probably the most valuable part of the book is the appendix in which Gelbspan reproduces statements from leading climate scientists demolishing some of the most common arguments of the so-called "greenhouse skeptics" Patrick Michaels, Robert Balling and S. Fred Singer, three key figures in the corporate propaganda campaign.