The Prophet Says : “even in 2005 it was too late to stop it”

Yet global warming activists do bear some resemblance to their evangelical counterparts in two ways: Both often describe a sort of conversion experience in which they become powerfully convinced of the need for personal change, and once converted they can bring a missionary zeal to spreading the word.

That’s certainly true of Mark Hertsgaard, author of “Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25). His conversion experience happened in 2005 during a reporting trip to London, when he interviewed David King, the chief science advisor to the British government. King pointed out that climate change wasn’t some theoretical future event – it was already happening, and even in 2005 it was too late to stop it.

It so happened that Hertsgaard’s daughter, Chiara, had been born that year, and the discussion with King got him thinking about what kind of world Chiara would grow up in. The book is his response.

And make no mistake, Hertsgaard is a global-warming missionary. At times, his IPCC-assessment-thumping gets a little tiresome even for fellow believers like me, especially the section devoted to refuting the claims of climate deniers. Pointing out that tobacco companies are now being sued for deceptive marketing practices of past decades, he suggests that the fossil fuel industry might similarly be held liable someday for trying to refute the scientific evidence of climate change. That’s quite a stretch; reports from conservative think tanks, fact-free though they may be, aren’t really the same thing as deceptive ads.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/03/14/2114337/book-review-hot-living-through.html