Red Faces At The Met Office

CCNet – 22 December 2010

The Climate Policy Network



Red Faces At The Met Office




Let’s hope Santa isn’t relying on weather forecasts from the U.K. Met Office. The British deep freeze of recent weeks (which has also immobilized much of continental Europe) is profoundly embarrassing for the official forecaster. Just two months ago it projected a milder than usual winter. This debacle is more than merely embarrassing. The Met Office is front and centre in rationalizing the British government’s commitment to fight catastrophic man-made global warming with more and bigger bureaucracy, so its conspicuous errors raise yet more questions about that “settled” science. –-Peter Foster, Financial Post 22 December 2010



The Met Office has not issued a seasonal forecast to the public and categorically denies forecasting a 'mild winter' as suggested by Boris Johnson in his column in the Daily Telegraph. --Dave Britton, Chief Press Officer, Met Office, 20 December 2010



The Met Office denial of a forecast is fatuous and their temperature map demonstrates clearly their computer models, featuring the global warming bias that undermines the Met Office’s predictions, are as much use as a chocolate fireguard. –Autonomous Mind, 20 December 2010



The economic impact of the freezing winter will deepen this week as Britain prepares for more travel gridlock, and millions of workers, travellers and shoppers were expected to stay at home in the run-up to Christmas rather than brave the icy conditions. Estimates from the insurer Royal Sun Alliance (RSA) have put the cost of the weather to the economy at £1bn per day, a sum that is thought to be hitting retailers, restaurants and bars the hardest. The total cost is expected to be around £13bn. --Jonathan Brown, The Independent, 20 December 2010



The row over the need for a multimillion-pound investment in snowploughs, de-icing equipment and salt stocks deepened this morning with the publication of a government-backed report using Met Office predictions that successive hard winters are rare. But the findings of the government-commissioned study were contradicted by Sir David King, the government's chief scientific adviser from 2000 to 2007, who warned that ministers should plan for more cold winters. Quarmby said the Met Office remained convinced that the severe cold snap is a one-off phenomenon. –Dan Milmo, The Guardian, 21 December 2010



This is the third winter running when we have had very cold and snowy conditions hitting the UK. It comes at a time of continued, unusually weak, solar activity. Perhaps we all need to get used to colder winters across the UK in the next few years.—Paul Hudson, BBC Weather, 20 December 2010



It turns out that Dr. Viner of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit was flat-out wrong when he told the Independent in early 2000 that within a few years snow would be rare. In fact, snow has been abundant during every year but one since then. -- Donna Laframboise, 7 January 2010



1) Peter Foster: Red Faces At The Met Office - Financial Post, 22 December 2010

2) Met Office 'Denies Categorically' That It Forecast Mild Winter - The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 20 December 2010

3) Met Office: Memory Or Honesty Deficiency? - Autonomous Mind, 20 December 2010

4) Paul Hudson: Record December Cold - Should We Get Used To It? - BBC Weather, 20 December 2010

5) Winter Resilience & Met Office Advice - Bishop Hill, 21 December 2010

6) Climate Psychics: 10-Year-Old Snow Prediction Fails Miserably - No Frakking Consensus, 7 January 2010

7) New Book: Chasing Rainbows by Tim Worstall - The Washington Examiner, December 2010

8) New Book: Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist


1) Peter Foster: Red Faces At The Met Office

Financial Post, 22 December 2010

After predicting a mild winter, the British weather service is profoundly ¬embarrassed by the current deep freeze

Let’s hope Santa isn’t relying on weather forecasts from the U.K. Met Office. The British deep freeze of recent weeks (which has also immobilized much of continental Europe) is profoundly embarrassing for the official forecaster. Just two months ago it projected a milder than usual winter.

This debacle is more than merely embarrassing. The Met Office is front and centre in rationalizing the British government’s commitment to fight catastrophic man-made global warming with more and bigger bureaucracy, so its conspicuous errors raise yet more questions about that “settled” science.

When you’re making confident global projections for the year 2100, you can only be contradicted on the basis of alternative hypotheses, of which the vast majority of people have no comprehension. But pretty much anybody can look out of the window and tell the difference between light drizzle and a snowbank. Moreover, private forecasters strongly disagreed with the Met Office’s winter projections as soon as they were made (which should add fuel to calls for the organization’s privatization).

Yesterday, the British-based Global Warming Policy Foundation, one of the world’s leading advocates for climate objectivity, called on the U.K. government to set up an independent inquiry into the Met Office’s failures. It also wants an examination of the institution’s politicization, although that is hardly likely to come from the very government that is manipulating it. Still, bias can be expensive. Dr. Benny Peiser, the GWPF’s director, noted that the price tag on the country’s unpreparedness for this winter could reach $15-billion.

At the recent Cancun climate meetings, the Met Office presented a study suggesting that the outlook for global climate was, on balance, worse than projected in the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Given its short-range accuracy, this forecast might be taken with a pinch of road salt, or a tot of de-icing fluid.

Significantly, the Met Office is closely associated with the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, home of Climategate. Both organizations are deeply involved with the IPCC. When it comes to the CRU’s crystal ball, one of its official declared a decade ago: “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.” No danger of that for little Britons this year.

The Met’s blunder follows similar cockups last year and the year before. In February, Met Office scientist Peter Stott declared that 2009 was an anomaly, and that milder and wetter winters were now — for sure — to be expected. He suggested that exceptionally cold British winters such as the one that occurred in 1962-63 were now expected to occur “about once every 1,000 years or more, compared with approximately every 100 to 200 years before 1850.” Now, the Met Office is admitting that the current December may be the coldest in Britain in the past 100 years.

No doubt the warmist crowd will be quick to express outrage at this blatant confusion of global climate with local weather, but that won’t wash. The Met makes its short-term forecasts on the basis of the same brand of massive computer power and Rube Goldberg modelling used to project the global climate. The suggestion that forecasting the climate is easier than forecasting the weather comes into the same category as acknowledging that governments couldn’t run a lemonade stand, but then believing that they can “manage” an economy.

Confusing weather with climate isn’t always condemned by alarmists. In March, Al Gore deemed it disgraceful that “deniers” dared to suggest that North America’s East Coast Snowmageddon in any way undermined the Inconvenient Truth of man-made global warming. More snow was obviously due to man. The very next day, B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell declared that the lack of snow at the Vancouver Olympics was due to … man-made global warming.

Another example of one-way theory was provided three months later by climatologist Michael Mann, concoctor of the infamous “Hockey Stick” graph, and one of the reluctant stars of the Climategate emails. In an interview, Mr. Mann claimed that the then current North American heat wave was clear evidence of hand of man. So you see the principle: If it supports the warmist cause, it’s climate; if it doesn’t, it’s just weather.

The Met’s red face comes at the end of a very bad year for climatism. It started with Climategate and ended with the utter collapse of the Kyoto process at Cancun. In between, there was a United Nations report that admitted that the IPCC process was deeply flawed, followed by projections from the International Energy Agency that confirmed that bold commitments to slash fossil fuel use were so much political pollution. Meanwhile, the vast costs of government promotion of alternatives such as wind and solar have also become increasingly apparent, along with the fact that green jobs are a mirage.

Mirages definitely aren’t a problem this week on the runways of Heathrow.

Financial Post, 22 December 2010



2) Met Office 'Denies Categorically' That It Forecast Mild Winter

The Global Warming Policy Foundation, 20 December 2010

Dave Britton, the Met Office's Chief Press Officer, e-mailed the following statement to the Global Warming Policy Foundation:

Following the entry on your blog regarding the Met Office please find the Met Office response below:

The Met Office has not issued a seasonal forecast to the public and categorically denies forecasting a 'mild winter' as suggested by Boris Johnson in his column in the Daily Telegraph.

Following public research, the Met Office no longer issues long-range forecasts for the general public; instead we provide a monthly outlook on our website, which have consistent and clearly sign-posted the very cold conditions.

Our day-to-day forecasts have been widely recognised as providing excellent advice to government, businesses and the public with the Daily Telegraph commenting only today that 'the weekends heavy snow was forecast with something approaching pin-point accuracy by the Met Office'.

The public trust and take heed of our warnings and it is misleading to imply that the Met Office did not see this cold weather coming.

Dave Britton Chief Press Officer

Met Office - FitzRoy Road Exeter EX1 3PB United Kingdom

E-mail: dave.britton@metoffice.gov.uk - http://www.metoffice.gov.uk

GWPF Note: The Met Office's track record of forecasting mild winters can be found here: Warm Bias: How The Met Office Mislead The British Public



3) Met Office: Memory Or Honesty Deficiency?

Autonomous Mind, 20 December 2010

Dave Britton, the Met Office’s Chief Press Officer, e-mailed the following statement to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF):

Following the entry on your blog regarding the Met Office please find the Met Office response below:

The Met Office has not issued a seasonal forecast to the public and categorically denies forecasting a ‘mild winter’ as suggested by Boris Johnson in his column in the Daily Telegraph.

Following public research, the Met Office no longer issues long-range forecasts for the general public; instead we provide a monthly outlook on our website, which have consistent and clearly sign-posted the very cold conditions.
(Continues on the GWPF website).

This is all very interesting. Either the Met Office’s left hand doesn’t know what it’s right hand is doing, the Met Office has no idea what is being said by its employees, or the Met Office is playing semantics in a very disingenuous manner. Why? This bit of information issued by the Met Office in October…

The latest data comes in the form of a December to February temperature map on the Met Office’s website.

The eastern half of England, Cornwall, Scotland and Northern Ireland is in for temperatures above the 3.7C (38.6F) average, more than 2C warmer than last winter.

The map also shows a 40 per cent to 60 per cent probability that western England and Wales will be warmer than 3.7C (38.6F), with a much smaller chance of average or below-average temperatures.

Update: Screengrab of the map as at October 2010… (click to enlarge)

The piece even goes on to name the Met Office employee who spoke about the map and talked up the effort that had gone into producing the start point for a ‘seasonal forecast‘:

Helen Chivers, Met Office forecaster, insisted the temperature map takes into account the influence of climate factors such as El Nino and La Nina – five-yearly climatic patterns that affect the weather – but admits this is only a “start point” for a seasonal forecast. She said: “The map shows probabilities of temperatures in months ahead compared to average temperatures over a 30-year period.

You can read the whole piece on the Daily Express website, including this response from the independent forecaster, Positive Weather Solutions:

But other experts maintain we are in for another big freeze. Positive Weather Solutions senior forecaster Jonathan Powell said: “It baffles me how the Met Office can predict a milder-than-average winter when all the indicators show this winter will have parallels to the last one.

“They are standing alone here, as ourselves and other independent forecasters are all predicting a colder-than-average winter.

“It will be interesting to see how predictions by the government-funded Met Office compare with independent forecasters.”

So when is a forecast not a forecast? When the Met Office gets it wrong, it seems. Let’s see how they spin this. But for now the words ‘bang to rights’ spring to mind.

See also: That Met Office Global Long-Range Probability Map

Autonomous Mind, 21 December 2010



4) Paul Hudson: Record December Cold - Should We Get Used To It?

BBC Weather, 20 December 2010

Local and national records continue to be set as the UK remains firmly in the grip of exceptional weather. Last night Northern Ireland had its coldest night since records began in the 1800's.

Here in Yorkshire there were no new records set over the weekend. But the month is turning out to be without precedent. December 1981 holds the record locally as the coldest December; nationally December 1981 was the coldest December of the last century.

The diagram below shows Leeming's average minimum temperatures so far this month, and compares it with December 1981 and January and February 1963. The winter of 1962/63 was the coldest of the last century.



It gives a graphic illustration of just how cold the last few weeks have been. It's safe to say that so far this winter has been unprecedented.

The longest data set in the world is the Central England Temperature data set (CET) which allows us to look back all the way to 1659. The diagram below shows the coldest Decembers by rank

So far, with a mean (average of maxima and minima) CET of -0.4C, December 2010 is the 3rd coldest December since records began in 1659.

But with some models trending milder in the period from Christmas to New Year, it's probably safer to say that December 2010 is likely to be the 7th coldest December since records began in 1659, and the coldest since 1890 (itself the coldest on record), beating the coldest December of the last century, which was 1981 with a CET of +0.3C.

Weatherwise, another intense frost is expected tonight with -14C likely at Topcliffe in North Yorkshire. From Wednesday through to Christmas Eve a northeasterly wind will increase cloud and bring the risk of snow showers especially to eastern areas.

Temperatures will recover a little, especially close to the coast, but CET mean temperatures are unlikely to get much above 0C.

The latest American and midnight European operational models bring milder air in from the west during the second half of next weekend, bringing with it the risk of disruptive snow, followed by near normal temperatures next week.

The latest UK Met Office model is very similar. Other solutions I've seen in the last 24 hours, including the midnight run of the UK Met Office, keep a blocking high pressure across the country next weekend, which prevents milder air making any inroads.

Past history shows that models are often too fast in displacing entrenched cold air with milder Atlantic air, and so on balance the best estimate would be for a slow transition to milder conditions from the end of next weekend and into early next week, with a risk initially of further snowfall especially across eastern Britain.

This is the third winter running when we have had very cold and snowy conditions hitting the UK. It comes at a time of continued, unusually weak, solar activity.

In my blog 'could the sun cast a shadow on global temperatures' I wrote about how Australian scientist David Archibald was convinced that prolonged weak solar activity could mean much colder winters in future. He wrote his paper in February 2009.

Perhaps we all need to get used to colder winters across the UK in the next few years.

BBC Weather, 20 December 2010


5) Winter Resilience & Met Office Advice

Bishop Hill, 21 December 2010

Andrew Montford

With the whole of the UK apparently grinding to a halt with the cold and snow, it was interesting to be pointed to an official review of the UK's winter resilience capabilities (H/T John B).

A small team was set up under the leadership of Dr David Quarmby, a member of the "great and good" with background in transport. The team published its terms of reference here; an interim report was published last summer, and the final report appeared just a couple of months ago.

For our purposes the interim report is more interesting since it has a whole section entitled "Weather forecasting and climate change". All emphasis below is added by me.

12.7 The science of forecasting up to 30 days ahead and beyond has made great progress in recent years and will continue to develop; comparison of outturns against probabilistic predictions out to 30 days suggests that the information is of increasing value for winter service resourcing and planning.

"Increasing value" eh? I wonder what the absolute value of these forecasts is though?

12.8 The Met Office has ceased publishing seasonal forecasts through the PWS, because – again – the nature of the weather and climate means that at these timescales it only makes sense to give probabilistic predictions rather than definitive forecasts, and this has proved difficult to communicate.

"Difficult to communicate"? Don't they mean that they were wrong? I'm struggling with the idea of a "barbeque summer" that turned into a rain-drenched washout being a communication problem.

12.9 Yet, as this Review makes clear, critical policy and strategic decisions would be enormously enhanced by even a probabilistic prediction about next winter’s weather. Forecasting over this timescale and beyond takes us into the area of climate forecasting and the impact of climate change.

12.10 We have explored these issues in some depth with the climate research team at the Met Office Hadley Centre. The starting point is the slow but steady rise in average global temperatures. The consensus on the UK is that on average summers will become warmer, and winters will become warmer and wetter, though the next 10–15 years may be dominated by natural variability. When severe weather events happen they may be more extreme in terms of heat and rainfall.

Aha! So the Met Office were involved, and told the review that winters were going to become warmer and wetter. What else did they say?

12.11 Although the probability of severely cold winters in the UK is gradually declining, there is currently no evidence to suggest similar changes in extremes of snow, winds and storms in the UK.

12.12 We have also explored whether or not the occurrence of two successive severe winters influences the probability of a third in succession – in other words, is there any evidence of clustering? There is some small influence from year to year but these matters are still very uncertain and it would be safer to assume that there is statistical independence between one winter and the next.

12.13 In other words, we are advised to assume that the chance of a severe winter in 2010–11 is no greater (or less) than the current general probability of 1 in 20.

Now didn't the Met Office tell us just yesterday that they didn't make any predictions on the weather for this winter? I would have thought many people might have mistaken the words highlighted above as discussing a forecast of some kind. Perhaps it's another of those communication difficulties.

12.14 For the purpose of this report, the following summarises what we understand:

The probability of the next winter being severe is virtually unrelated to the fact of just having experienced two severe winters, and is still about 1 in 20.

The effect of climate change is to gradually but steadily reduce the probability of severe winters in the UK.

However, when severe winters come, they could still be extreme – in terms of snowfall, wind and storms, though not necessarily in relation to temperature.

12.17 But we need to understand and accept that the chance of a severe winter is still relatively small and that there will be many years when some will question the degree of resources committed to winter resilience.

12.15 An important consequence of the declining occurrence of severe winters is the loss of knowledge and experience among planning and technical staff in local highway authorities and their contractors, especially if the severe winters which do occur have more extreme snow events.

12.16 All this, in our view, reinforces the need for comprehensive resilience planning, and for ensuring that the salt supply chain is resilient.

After the publication of the interim review, the team recommended that the UK import 250,000 tonnes of salt to cope with a possible shortfall. I wonder if this was (a) enough and (b) actually done in practice.

Either way, this looks like more trouble for the Met Office.

Update on Dec 21, 2010 by Bishop Hill

Rob Schneider (via email) wonders if the wording of the Met Office's statement yesterday isn't important - they said they didn't issue forecasts to the public. The problem with this is that the Boris Johnson article to which they were responding said this:

So let me...pose a question that is bugging me. Why did the Met Office forecast a "mild winter"? Do you remember? They said it would be mild and damp, and between one degree and one and a half degrees warmer than average. Well, I am now 46 and that means I have seen more winters than most people on this planet, and I can tell you that this one is a corker.

i.e. Boris is not obviously speaking about a forecast issued to the public - he just mentions a forecast. This makes the careful wording of the Met Office's denial look rather less than straightforward. It may well be that they have issued forecasts to their corporate customers - among them the Civil Aviation Authority and who knows, maybe the Mayor of London too - and that these have been the cause of the trouble.

More digging required.



6) Climate Psychics: 10-Year-Old Snow Prediction Fails Miserably

No Frakking Consensus, 7 January 2010

Donna Laframboise

A decade ago, a scientist with the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia said snow would be rare in Britain within a few years. But plenty has fallen in 9 of the last 10.

On New Year’s Eve, a local radio station aired a brief report about an alleged psychic making her 2010 predictions. The report didn’t mention that psychic abilities have never been scientifically confirmed. Nor did it tell us what percentage of the psychic’s predictions from last year had actually come true.

Although it would have been straightforward to check what the psychic said a year earlier, the media doesn’t hold psychics accountable. Likewise, no one holds the media accountable for itsfalse predictions.

In other words, there is no penalty for getting it wrong. There is no downside to behaving – despite all evidence to the contrary – as though it’s possible to predict the future. A newspaper may publish melodramatic headlines. It may alarm readers with dire, confidently-delivered prognostications. But in a month, a year, a decade (or three) when it becomes clear the story was nonsense, no one gets pelted with limp noodles. Nor do writers, editors, producers, and broadcasters publish year-end roundups that let you know just how mistaken they’ve all been.

Given this state of affairs, it’s sensible and appropriate to regard media scare stories with a healthy measure of skepticism. Some people, no doubt, read this Independent story in early 2000 (the headline of which appears above) and felt melancholy afterward.

Although a decade old, it reads much like the average “environment” news story today. The Independent told its readers:

“snow is starting to disappear from our lives“

“Sledges, snowmen, snowballs…are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture”

“within a few years winter snowfall will become ‘a very rare and exciting event’”

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”

“Heavy snow will return occasionally…but when it does we will be unprepared…Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time“

“chances are certainly now stacked against the sort of heavy snowfall in cities that inspired Impressionist painters” [bold added]

Readers were assured the future could be accurately predicted because “Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia” said so.

They were told something important was happening because Britain’s biggest toyshop “had no sledges on display in its Regent Street store” for the first time.

They were invited to feel alarmed because a spokesman for the Fenland Indoor Speed Skating Club lamented that winters weren’t as cold as they used to be when he was a boy (his current age was not disclosed).

They were advised to be concerned because a second scientist, “David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research” had mused (according to the journalistic paraphrase) that “ultimately, British children [will] have only virtual experience of snow.” [bold added]

Perhaps most persuasive of all, readers were told the lack of snow in the first two months of the year 2000 was “the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years.”

The notion that a complex, dynamic system like the Earth’s climate might experience perfectly natural cycles lasting decades – or even centuries – went unmentioned. Instead, readers were told that “Global warming…is now accepted as a reality by the international community.”

Perhaps the international community would care to explain a few things. British citizens are currently in some distress due to heavy snowfalls. Hundreds of them have been rescued from their stranded automobiles by the armed forces. Their children attend the thousands of schools that have been shuttered. Still others have had their cancer treatments and operations postponed.

No doubt large numbers of these people would welcome an explanation from the CRU’s Dr. David Viner who advised, in 2000, that within a few years snow would become very rare.

In actual fact, Britain has experienced a great deal of snow since then. A mere two weeks after the Independent published this article, London’s “Luton Airport had to be closed, as snow equipment was unable to clear the runways sufficiently for aircraft to take-off…[Meanwhile] snowdrifts up to 60cm were reported…with many cars being abandoned.”

According to the website of Dr. Richard Wild (who recently completed a PhD on British snowstorms and recorded these events as they occurred), by December2000 the country was experiencing the most “widespread snowfall over the UK since February 1996.”

Dr. Wild reports a “total of 12 heavy snowfall days” in Britain in 2001, which he describes as “average”. (Elsewhere, he says nine is also average.)

Although he says “virtually no heavy snowfalls” fell in 2002, in January 2003 “snow caused havoc in many parts of the UK,” spurring the government to signal its intention to introduce “new legislation to force councils to grit roads.” In December of that year, “Heavy snowfall brought New Year['s] Eve misery to large parts of Northern England and Scotland.”

In January 2004, a snowstorm interrupted school for 70,000 Scottish children and “a 74-year-old man from Berwickshire died due to having a heart attack trying to free his wife’s car from a snowdrift.” In late February, Dr. Wild reports that “many schools across Scotland, SW England, N England, N Ireland and Wales…closed, with numerous roads remaining blocked with snow” and that “a football match…[had] to be called off.” In November, Middleton, Derbyshire, received 13 cm of snow – the “largest single fall of snow in November since records began in the year 1977.”

Dr. Wild sums up the year 2005 by observing that it “saw 25 heavy snowfall days, the highest(equal with the year 1876) since the heavy snowfall research began in the year 1861.” (See details here, here, here, and here.) [bold added]

In other words, during the five years immediately following the Independent‘s claim that snow was a “rapidly diminishing part” of British culture, snowfall was minimal in only one year (2002). Not only was there plenty of the white stuff during the remaining four, but 2005 was one for the history books.

So how did the next five years fare? [....]

It turns out that Dr. Viner of the East Anglia Climate Research Unit was flat-out wrong when he told the Independent in early 2000 that within a few years snow would be rare. In fact, snow has been abundant during every year but one since then.

Ten years on, it’s clear the journalist and editors involved in this “news” story might as well have consulted a psychic. A crystal ball could hardly have been further off the mark.

Full story No Frakking Consensus, 7 January 2010



7) New Book: Chasing Rainbows by Tim Worstall

The Washington Examiner, December 2010

Tim Worstall has written quite an amusing book on the subject of how Green policies tend to backfire and make things worse. It’s a rather short book, that rather reflects his role as one of the world’s leading econobloggers. Tim, also an Adam Smith Institute Fellow, he has made quite a name for himself writing witty pieces on state of the economy. His website can be found at www.timworstall.com The book itself is part of the “Independent Minds” series, a title to which Worstall falls neatly under.

Many of the topics covered have been written about elsewhere in deep detail but Tim manages to reduce them to their component parts. Economics and green issues are normally a source for a snicker or two, but Worstall manages to give some good laugh out loud moments.

Of course, some will complain that Worstall is over-simplifying complex issues of the utmost importance. Then again with some of the recent scandals involved in the whole area of environmentalism and abject hypocrisy of its leading lights like Al Gore, some humor is not out of place.

The book is subtitled, “how the green agenda defeats its aims.” This is publication that open minded environmentally conscious readers would do well to read.



8) New Book: Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist

http://www.beattystreetpublishing.com/confessions/

Confessions of a Greenpeace Dropout: The Making of a Sensible Environmentalist is Dr. Patrick Moore’s engaging firsthand account of his many years spent as the ultimate Greenpeace insider, a co-founder and leader in the organization’s top committee.

Moore explains why, 15 years after co-founding it, he left Greenpeace to establish a more sensible, science-based approach to environmentalism.

Confessions details Moore’s vision for a more sustainable world. From energy independence to climate change, genetic engineering to aquaculture, Moore sheds new light on some of the most controversial subjects in the news today.

In Confessions Moore persuasively argues for us to rethink our conventional wisdom about environment and, in so doing, provides the reader with new ways in which to see the world.

More here