“If a person could read only one book this year on climate change, this is the one”
— National Review Online
“absolutely essential”
— The American Spectator
“legendary scientists” offer “a timely, necessary antidote to a political and scientific . . . groupthink”
—The Washington Times
“No one who reads The Deniers will be able to claim a scientific consensus exists on global warming.”
— The Vancouver Sun
“takes every aspect of global warming theory and systematically presents a scientific argument to the contrary . . .  For the Left, this is one inconvenient book.”
— FrontPage Magazine

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Attention Al Gore:
The Science is NOT settled

THE DENIERS-by a world famous environmentalist—highlights the brave scientists-all leaders in their fields—who demolish the conventional wisdom on global warming.

This changes the debate forever. The scientists profiled are too eminent and their research too devastating to allow simplistic views of global warming to survive.

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Al Gore and his media allies claim the only scientists who dispute the alarmist view on global warming are corrupt crackpots and “deniers”, comparable to neo-Nazis who deny the Holocaust.

Now internationally renowned environmentalist author Lawrence Solomon calmly and methodically debunks Gore’s outrageous charges, showing in one ‘headline’ case after another that the scientists who dispute Gore’s doomsday scenarios have far more credibility than those who support Gore’s theories. These men who expose Gore’s claims as absurd hold top positions at the most prestigious scientific institutes in the world. Their work is cited and acclaimed throughout the scientific community. No wonder Gore and his allies want to pretend they don’t exist.

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Lawrence Solomon is not only a journalist, but a longtime environmental activist. Solomon knew firsthand from his efforts in the battles over nuclear energy in the 1970s and 1980s that scientists with integrity can hold unconventional and unpopular views, despite the scorn heaped upon them by the establishment. He wondered if something similar wasn’t happening in the case of those being tarred as global warming deniers. In his regular column in Canada’s National Post, he began to tell their story.

In THE DENIERS he profiles some of the principal dissenters from global warming dogma-all recognized leaders in their fields, with many of them even active in the official body that oversees most of the world’s climate-change research, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

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In the process, Solomon provides absorbing insight into both the scientific issues and the ferocious political and media battles that are being waged about global warming. The scientists he profiles are unflaggingly honest: many of them not only disagree profoundly with the global warming doomsayers, but with other scientists who are also profiled in this book. “Such disagreement,” he says, “is the very stuff of science” - real science, not the debased and politicized Al Gore variety.

THE DENIERS also shows how these men have suffered for their integrity, how Gore and Co. have mounted an all-out campaign against them, portraying them as hacks bought off by profit-mad oil companies or as non-credentialed cranks and lunatics. On the contrary, Solomon writes, their impeccable credentials “are often far more impressive than those of some of the gurus propounding climate-change catastrophes.”

In profiling these “deniers,” Solomon does a valuable service in advancing honest debate and asking real questions about the most contentious issue of our times. Among the topics Solomon and his subjects cover:

  • The Medieval Warming Period - Gore & Co try to erase it because it proves recent warming is far from unprecedented.  The world famous statistician who exposed their tactics under oath before Congress.
  • Gore and Co. claim “everyone knows” that current CO2 levels are extraordinarily high and dangerous. Meet the world-renowned expert on ancient ice who says current CO2 levels were common in the 19th century.
  • How the natural, cyclic increase in the earth’s temperature may be causing increased levels of CO2 rather than the reverse. And the disasters we could be facing if temperatures begin falling and CO2 levels begin to fall with them.
  • The odd story of how the world’s leading solar scientists became the bitter enemies of the global warming establishment.
  • Meet not one but several of the world’s greatest scientists who declare the complex computer models at the heart of global warming alarmism to be incapable of producing a coherent scientific prediction.
  • How a much-cited and influential National Geographic article making the case for global warming relied on imaginary glaciers and ice sheets, not on the actual formations that exist in Greenland and Antarctica
  • Why the Kyoto Protocol and carbon tax and trade schemes are the greatest threat today to the global environment-and the poor of the third world.

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Al Gore says any scientist who disagrees with him on Global Warming is a kook, or a crook. Guess he never met these guys:

Dr. Edward Wegman—former chairman of the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics of the National Academy of Sciences—demolishes the famous “hockey stick” graph that launched the global warming panic.

Dr. David Bromwich—president of the International Commission on Polar Meteorology—says “it’s hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now.”

Prof. Paul Reiter—Chief of Insects and Infectious Diseases at the famed Pasteur Institute—says “no major scientist with any long record in this field” accepts Al Gore’s claim that global warming spreads mosquito-borne diseases.

Prof. Hendrik Tennekes—director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute—states “there exists no sound theoretical framework for climate predictability studies” used for global warming forecasts.

Dr. Christopher Landsea—past chairman of the American Meteorological Society’s Committee on Tropical Meteorology and Tropical Cyclones—says “there are no known scientific studies that show a conclusive physical link between global warming and observed hurricane frequency and intensity.”

Dr. Antonino Zichichi—one of the world’s foremost physicists, former president of the European Physical Society, who discovered nuclear antimatter—calls global warming models “incoherent and invalid.”

Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski—world-renowned expert on the ancient ice cores used in climate research—says the U.N. “based its global-warming hypothesis on arbitrary assumptions and these assumptions, it is now clear, are false.”

Prof. Tom V. Segalstad—head of the Geological Museum, University of Oslo—says “most leading geologists” know the U.N.’s views “of Earth processes are implausible.”

Dr. Syun-Ichi Akasofu—founding director of the International Arctic Research Center, twice named one of the “1,000 Most Cited Scientists,” says much “Arctic warming during the last half of the last century is due to natural change.”

Dr. Claude Allegre—member, U.S. National Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Science, he was among the first to sound the alarm on the dangers of global warming. His view now: “The cause of this climate change is unknown.”

Dr. Richard Lindzen—Professor of Meteorology at M.I.T., member, the National Research Council Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, says global warming alarmists “are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn’t happen even if the models were right.”

Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov—head of the space research laboratory of the Russian Academy of Science’s Pulkovo Observatory and of the International Space Station’s Astrometria project says “the common view that man’s industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations.”

Dr. Richard Tol—Principal researcher at the Institute for Environmental Studies at Vrije Universiteit, and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, at Carnegie Mellon University, calls the most influential global warming report of all time “preposterous . . . alarmist and incompetent.”

Dr. Sami Solanki—director and scientific member at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, who argues that changes in the Sun’s state, not human activity, may be the principal cause of global warming: “The sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures.”

Prof. Freeman Dyson—one of the world’s most eminent physicists says the models used to justify global warming alarmism are “full of fudge factors” and “do not begin to describe the real world.”

Dr. Eigils Friis-Christensen—director of the Danish National Space Centre, vice-president of the International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy, who argues that changes in the Sun’s behavior could account for most of the warming attributed by the UN to man-made CO2.

And many more, all in Lawrence Solomon’s devastating new book, The Deniers.

Order today and get your copy at better-than-wholesale, direct from the publisher.

About the Author

Lawrence Solomon is an internationally renowned environmentalist author and activist. For decades he has been at the forefront of movements to stop nuclear power expansion and save the world’s rainforests. He is a columnist for the National Post (Toronto) and author of half a dozen books including Energy Shock (Doubleday). Mr. Solomon’s Energy Probe Research Foundation works with citizens’ groups around the world to stop environmentally destructive development projects, often imposed by authoritarian governments with little regard for human rights. Mr. Solomon and his colleagues at Energy Probe pride themselves on finding economically rational solutions to environmental problems.

Your Reactions to Moment of Truth in Iraq

We sent out an email asking you for your reactions to Michael Yon’s book, “Moment of Truth in Iraq” (Buy it here! Or pick up a signed copy here!) and the response was overwhelming.  But don’t take it from us, here’s what some of you had to say:

“Read it, loved it, and sent a signed copy to my son who is a combat infantryman.”
-John Day

“What a wonderful tribute to our brave troops!”
-Linda Brehm

“I enjoyed reading the book and comparing my own experience in Iraq, 2004-2007.  I’m thankful that Yon was there and got it down right.”
-Howard Cornell

“I wholeheartedly believe what has been said, that the servicemen and women of this day have proved to be the new ‘Greatest Generation.’”
-Rolf Ness

“Michael is so good in his writing, since he does not write; he experiences the lives of our troops in Iraq.”
-Carl Leviwitz

“I found Michael Yon’s ‘Moment of Truth in Iraq’ very informative and educational.  So much so that I bought a second copy and donated it to the library at the high school where I work.  If it opens even one pair of young eyes to the reality of good and bad of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I consider it money well spent.”
-Alex Knepper

“The book explains the complexities and the ‘gray shades’ of Iraq; the extreme heroism of many of that country’s people; and the corruption and dishonesty of some.  It shows the glaring contrast between those trying to build that country up and barbarians trying to tear it down.  It showed to me that - given a chance - they have the potential to once again become a great nation.”
-Micheal Openshaw

“Say what you will about whether we should’ve gone to Iraq in the first place, but there’s no doubt that anyone remotely interested in the war, opponent or supporter, should read Yon’s book.”
-Byron Mazur

Are you interested in receiving emails from Richard Vigilante Books?  If so, you can sign up for the Vigilante Report.

Kathryn Jean Lopez’s National Review Online interview with Michael Yon was great! In case you missed it:

Kathryn Jean Lopez: What does it mean to be American “in the most romantic sense of the word” and why is it essential to counterinsurgency?

Michael Yon: Remember the scene in Lawrence of Arabia, where Peter O’Toole executes an Arab friend? “It was written,” Anthony Quinn tries to console him. Lawrence turns on him furiously and declares “Nothing is written.” It’s a very American moment in an English story. Americans live in a romance of possibility; we say “we can do it!” We reject fate.

Replacing fatalism with hope is crucial in a counterinsurgency. The citizen is trapped by despair - caught between an inept and/or corrupt local government and brutalizing terrorists. So when the government comes looking for the terrorists-next-door, the neighbors say nothing. That’s how insurgencies survive.

Counterinsurgency is political war. Governments that can’t remove sewage, lose the people. So in a counter insurgency American soldiers trained to hunt and kill terrorists may find themselves in a Baghdad neighborhood talking to the locals about sewage removal.

Strange combo, you might say - warriors and sewage removal. But these warriors are Americans. If it needs to be done, they do it or help do it. And next thing you know, the locals are telling our folks where the terrorists are hiding.

The romance of self-reliance. Replacing fatalism with hope. This is absolutely essential because counterinsurgency works only if people help defend themselves.

The American soldier is the most dangerous man in the world, and the Iraqis had to learn that before they would trust or respect our folks. But it is only after they see with their own eyes these great-hearted warriors, who so enjoy killing the enemy, are even happier helping to build a school or to make a neighborhood safe that we really got their attention.

Lopez: How many days of this war have you spent on the frontlines? What got you there the first time and what’s brought you back subsequently?

Yon: I don’t know how many days. Since December 2004, I have been either in Iraq or Afghanistan a lot more than I have been in the U.S. And most of the time I have been embedded in combat units. At first I traveled around a lot from place to place, unit to unit. But then I found that if I settled down with a unit for a while, lived as they live (though they try to keep me from getting shot, or misplaced) I would see the war more closely than other writers.

In a counterinsurgency there may be a lot of combat but there is really no frontline. Counterinsurgency is a fight wherein the people are the center of gravity, and the fight takes place not on the high seas, but in the neighborhoods where the people live and where the terrorists hide. We are winning partly because in the most violent sections of the country this became a war of competing values, terrorist values vs. American values. But only when we got off our big bases, and out of our tanks and deeper into the neighborhoods, could we make that choice very clear. Few people with a choice choose al Qaeda.

Lopez: How has the Internet changed war reporting?

Yon: It means that instead of getting paid to go to Iraq and get shot, I can do it for free. It also means the sky is the limit on reaching readers worldwide. People from approximately 100 countries come to my site each day.

Lopez: My impression is you did not go over as a Bush/McCain foot-solider saying “No surrender,” now I’ll slant the story to make sure we don’t. You went there wanting to tell what was going on. What brought you to “no surrender” mode?

Yon: We made horrible mistakes in 2004 and 2005.

It is true that al-Qaeda funded and tried to control the Sunni insurgency and use it to start a civil war. But al -Qaeda never would have had such a big chance if we hadn’t given it to them. Al-Qaeda exploited the insurgency, but we helped create it. The extent of the Sunni insurgency was not inevitable. Much of it was a reaction - and in some ways a rational reaction - to American policies approved by the Bush administration and enforced by Ambassador Bremer.

General Petraeus proved that the insurgency was not inevitable by what he achieved while in command of Nineveh province in 2003. He was able to restore civil order, rebuild security, even hold local elections and see the economy start coming back to life. He held local elections in Nineveh before Bremer was on the ground in Baghdad.

Part of the reason it worked was that Petraeus got temporary exemptions from the policies that excluded former Ba’ath party members from any role in post-Saddam Iraq. Nineveh for some reason happens to be a big retirement area for Iraqi army officers. Petraeus used to have tea once a week with dozens of former Generals, many of whom were helpful in restoring order. A year later, when Petraeus was gone and the Bremer policies were fully enforced many of those same men, or their protégés, were in the field against us.

Lopez: All that sounds pretty discouraging. But once again, what changed your mind?

Yon: Things changed dramatically in 2007. The Anbar awakening actually got started in 2006, but when Petraeus took command in 2007 things really turned around. He understands counterinsurgency, believes it can work, and has experience with it working - and then falling apart - in Iraq.

I saw that American units were doing what he had asked of them, and switching from “kinetic warfare” mode to counterinsurgency. That wasn’t a “gimme.” Special Forces are trained in counterinsurgency. Most regular Army and Marines are not. But I observed large “traditional” units learning more about Counterinsurgency.

Then of course there was the “awakening” when so many of the Sunni tribes switched sides and began fighting with us against al-Qaeda. This really started in 2006 but settled over parts of Iraq in 2007.

But most of all I began to see the fruits. I saw it working, the Iraqi people beginning to align with us and for themselves. I saw it in big “kinetic” battles where we took a fraction of the casualties we expected because the citizens told us where almost every terrorist ambush and booby trap was hidden. And I saw it in neighborhoods in which the American military had become the most respected institution in Iraq, and it was our soldiers whom the people turned too for protection but also for justice.

Lopez: What was the low point of our efforts in Iraq?

Yon: I think flattening Fallujah in revenge for the massacre and public desecration of four American security contractors was a terrible mistake. It looked like a declaration of war against the Iraqi people, and many Iraqis who had been on the fence took it that way. Fallujah - and of course Abu Ghraib - were giant recruitment campaigns for al Qaeda that were launched in April 2004.

Lopez: Was the surge the turning point or was it something more under the radar?

Yon: The “Awakening” was a separate phenomenon that happened before and after the surge, and continues today. If you think of “the surge” as just an increase in troop levels, then it does not begin to describe what happened or how we turned things around. It’s true we needed lots of troops to do a counter-insurgency right - and we still need more today - but changing our approach was critical. More troops doing more of the wrong thing would have just been more wrong. We needed more troops doing things better and that’s what we got.

You win a counterinsurgency by walking the neighborhood, not by flattening it. Not that counterinsurgency is a tea dance. There are always some people you just have to kill and our guys are always ready for that job. But the army alone can’t protect a neighborhood any more than the police alone can protect a neighborhood. You need the neighbors.

Lopez: So we should be talking about increasing troop levels not decreasing.

Yon: Absolutely. We know we can win, we know we are winning. We know the investment will pay off. But counterinsurgency requires lots of boots on the ground. On the ground, not in tanks or planes.

Lopez: Why do you spend most of your time with infantry troops and not special forces?

Yon: Our Special Forces are great. I used to be one of them. But a lot of what they do can’t be written about. I did a Special Forces mission a few weeks ago. In fact it was my last mission to date. Meanwhile infantry soldiers are great to talk to because they really don’t have time for anything but the unvarnished truth. Some army or state department bureaucrat might issue a memo like “The tenuous security situation in Ramadi makes it advisable to don protective headgear in situations in which visitors may be exposed to hostile fire.” The infantry will just put up a sign that says “The last dumbass who didn’t duck got shot in the head.”

Lopez: Tell me about the Iraqi security forces.

Yon: Well here’s the good news: whatever problems they have, lack of courage is not one of them. Iraqis are brave fighters. Any badly led or badly trained unit can panic under fire, but few Iraqi soldiers are cowards. I have seen Iraqi regulars and even militia perform courageously under fire. Some units are better than others, but some like the Iraqi 2nd and 3rd Divisions have solid reputations.

The bad news is that it takes a long time to train a modern army and the hardest skills to train don’t necessarily have to do with engaging the enemy in combat on any given day. There is an old saying “amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics.” Logistics, administering a base that is really a small city, moving 20,000 men cross-country to attack “from the march”: those are partly MBA skills and they just take a while.

Bottom line: They have improved amazingly. On my first stay in Iraq in 2004-05, I would often take cover whenever I saw an Iraqi soldier with a gun. In 2007 Coalition forces held the city of Mosul, against heavy terrorist opposition, with one U.S. battalion, about 750 men. We could do that only because Iraqi security forces, army and police, bore most of the burden. The Iraqis do most of the fighting these days.

Lopez: How do Iraqi soldiers and police emulate American Marines and soldiers? Has it affected progress?

Yon: Our guys are the best warriors and so they have the most respect. That’s huge in Iraq and it means everyone wants to be us, especially the guys in Iraqi security forces.

Sometimes it shows in silly hero worship stuff like imitating a walk or way of talking. But often it is very important stuff, like how we treat prisoners. Iraqis can be very harsh on prisoners. But then they see how our guys act with restraint and that becomes the cool, professional, manly thing to. (Long way to go on that front, though.)

One big thing Iraqi officers have learned from Americans is to lead from the front, not the rear. They saw Americans officers and NCOs lead from the front. They saw that in the American army, the higher the rank the more you protect and serve, the more you put yourself on the line. That was a huge lesson for them to learn and they learned by example because they were ashamed not to take the same risks as American officers and NCOs.

Lopez: Will David Petraeus be president of the United States?

Yon: He would make a great president. But the best thing the U.S. is going to get out of Iraq is a great generation of leaders who have had a unique experience in American history of trying to help freedom and democracy and the rule of law take root in a culture that has never known them. Someone should write a book about what that experience could mean for American democracy.

The other day Michael Medved asked me during his show what I would say to people who say that the U.S. military in Iraq is the dregs of American society. And you know you are not supposed to be struck speechless in a radio interview; it’s very bad form. But I really was. At first I thought I was hearing him wrong because it seemed just impossible that anyone would say that. The men and women serving in Iraq are the elite of America - and that I believe is going to become very clear over the next 10-20 years.

Lopez: Let’s say Barack Obama becomes president. How does Iraq work out?

Yon: Well, I don’t do politics.

But since you brought it up, in my view the Bush administration was mostly wrong about the war for a long time and now seems to be mostly right. I will say that Sen. McCain is one of the few who seems to have understood the war, not just backed it, but understood it from the very beginning.

That shows in his steadfast opposition to torture, by the way. Betraying American values is no way to win a counterinsurgency. We win counterinsurgencies by killing the “irreconcilables” and then showing everyone else what America is really like.

“He’s fearless”
-Gen. David Petraeus 
 ”His readers have learned what most Americans would not know from NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS and NPR”
-Former New York Times foreign correspondent Clifford May
“Michael Yon’s voice is the voice of the soldier-mission focused and battle-hardened.”
-Brian Williams, Anchor NBC Nightly News 
“vivid…shocking and mesmerizing”
-The Boston Herald 
“goes down the back alleys and the bad roads”
Joe Galloway, author of We were soldiers once…and young

Retail: $29.95 Buy it here: $17.95!

Never underestimate the American soldier

That’s the moral of former Green Beret Michael Yon’s brilliant battle-by-battle, block-by-block tale of how America’s new ‘greatest generation’ is turning defeat and disaster into victory and hope in Iraq

The American soldier is the reason General David Petraeus’s brilliant strategy of moving our soldiers off isolated bases and out among the Iraqi people is working. Working to find and kill terrorists, reclaim neighborhoods, and help lead Iraq to democracy.

Iraqis respect strength. They saw that American soldiers are “great-hearted warriors” who rejoice in killing the Al Qaeda terror gangs that took over whole cities, “raped too many women and boys, cut off too many heads, brought drugs into too many neighborhoods.”

But Iraqis also discovered that these great warriors are even happier helping rebuild a clinic or a school or a neighborhood. They learned from the American soldier that the most dangerous man in the world, could be the best man too.

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Moment of Truth in Iraq is packed with Yon’s trademark exciting and often heart-rending tales from the battlefield:

  • The American commander fed up with phony Al Qaeda ‘documentaries’ that showed terrorists shooting at bombed out American vehicles as if they had beaten us in open battle.  The commander and his men staged the “bombing” of a broken down truck. The when the terrorists came to put on their act Navy SEAL snipers killed every one.
  • Follow to the exploits of the great “Deuce Four” battalion that became the center of a “warrior cult” dreaded by terrorists and revered by Iraqis.
  • Think Iraqi soldiers can’t fight? Read the story of an elite Iraqi SWAT team taking down a terror cell for the murder of four American soldiers and a brave Iraqi guide.
  • Think Americans are occupiers, not liberators, of Iraq?  Tell that to the wounded Iraqi interpreter, who, convinced he was about to die, begged his U.S. commander to have his heart cut out and buried in America.
  • Learn why so many Iraqi boys dream of becoming American soldiers.
  • Why our greatest ally in this war is “a citizen with a cell phone who believes the future belongs to the people killing the terrorists.”

Brutalized by Saddam for decades, Iraqis hungered for strength entwined with justice and tempered by mercy.  The American soldier delivered.

We are winning the war in Iraq, not primarily with our overwhelming technology, not with shock and awe destruction, but with the even more powerful force of American values-with the courage and leadership, strength and compassion of soldiers who know both how to kill the bad guy and comfort the child.

Here is the true, untold story of the American soldier and the courage and values that are bringing victory for America-and Iraq.

In Stores: $29.95. Order here: $17.95!

About the Author

Former Green Beret Michael Yon is hands down the best and most exciting battlefield reporter working today, internationally renowned for his dispatches and photos seen by millions around the world.  Yon, who has spent more time embedded with US combat forces in Iraq than any journalist in the world, is totally independent and has never been co-opted by Left or Right, Military or Media.

When US blunders sent Iraq spiraling into civil war Yon told the story earlier and better than anyone. His blunt reporting so angered some of the brass that twice the U.S. military denied him access to Iraq, and twice again threatened to kick him out. But neither does Yon hesitate to call a terrorist a terrorist, and he has no doubt that American defeat would be a disaster not only for us but the Iraqi people.

Our fighting soldiers and officers know Mike Yon stands with them. Result: No other reporter can match Yon’s sources. Our soldiers point him to the hottest spots and most important stories when other less trusted journalists are left behind.