CLIMATE CHANGE ADVOCATES:
1. AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (2006) by Al Gore.  Former Vice President Al Gore is chairman of Current TV, an independently owned cable and satellite television nonfiction network for young people based on viewer-created content and citizen journalism.  He also serves as chairman of Generation Investment Management, a firm that is focused on a new approach to sustainable investing.  Gore is a member of the Board Directors of Apple Computer, Inc., and a senior advisor to Google, Inc.  Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976 and the U.S. Senate 1984 and 1990.  He was inaugurated as the 45th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years.  He is the author of the 1992 bestseller Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit.

2. A GLOBAL WARMING PRIMER (2016) by Jeffrey Bennett.  Dr. Jeffrey Bennett holds a B.A. in Biophysics from the University of California, San Diego and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado.  His extensive educational experience includes teaching at every level from preschool through graduate school.  He served two years as a Visiting Senior Scientist at NASA Headquarters, where he helped create numerous programs designed to build stronger links between the research and education communities.  He is the lead author of college textbooks in astronomy, astrobiology, mathematics, and statistics that together have sold more than 1.5 million copies, and of numerous critically acclaimed books for the general public, for children, and for educators.  He has received numerous awards, including the American Institute of Physics Science Communication Award.  His six children's books are all currently aboard the International Space Station, where they have been read aloud by astronauts for the Story Time From Space program.
 
3. THE HOCKEY STICK AND THE CLIMATE WARS (2012) by Michael Mann.  Michael E. Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology and Director of the Earth Systems Science Center at Penn State University.  Despite being in the public eye, he continues an active research program in climate science and has published over 160 peer-reviewed papers in leading scientific journals.  He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union.  In 2012 he received the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union.  Along with other scientists, he contributed to the reports of the IPCC, which was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.  He is also a co-founder of the award-winning website, RealClimate.org.
 
4. THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING CAPITALISM VS THE CLIMATE (2014) by Naomi Klein.   Naomi Klein is a syndicated columnist for The Nation and The Guardian, a reporter for Rolling Stone, and a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine.  She is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization and of capitalism.  She first became known internationally for her books No Logo (1999) and The Take (2004).  This book was a New York Times non-fiction bestseller and the winner of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.  She is a member of the board of directors of the climate activist group 350.org and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute.
 
5. THE THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO CLIMATE CHANGE (2014) by Robert Henson.  Robert Henson is an award-winning author and journalist on topics primarily concerned with the weather and climate change, subjects of his 22 books.  Henson holds a bachelor's degree from Rice University and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma.  In 1989 Henson joined the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and its parent organization, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).  He has interviewed dozens of the world's top climate scientists while producing newsletters and reports for UCAR and NCAR.  He has won several Distinguished Technical Communications awards in international competitions sponsored by the Society for Technical Communication.  As a freelance writer, his work has appeared in Nature, Scientific American, Discover, Audubon, Sierra and dozens of other publications.  He is a contributing editor for the magazine Weatherwise.
 
6. CLIMATE CHANGE What Everyone Needs to Know (2016) by Joseph Romm.  Dr. Joseph Romm is one of the country's most influential communicators on climate science and solutions.  He is Chief Science Advisor for Years of Living Dangerously which won the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Series, and founding editor of the blog Climate Progress, which the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called "indispensable."  In 2009, Time named Romm one of its "Heroes of the Environment" and "the Web's most influential climate-change blogger." Rolling Stone named him one of 2009's "100 people who are reinventing America."  Romm was acting assistant secretary of energy in 1997, overseeing $1 billion in low-carbon technology development and deployment.  He holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT.
​
CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTICS:
7. UNSTOPPABLE GLOBAL WARMING (2008) by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery.  S. Fred Singer is an Austrian-born physicist, a distinguished research professor at George Mason University, and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia. He designed mines for the U.S. Navy during World War II, before obtaining his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1948 and working as a scientific liaison officer in the U.S. Embassy in London.  He became a leading figure in early space research, was involved in the development of earth observation satellites, and in 1962 established the National Weather Bureau's Satellite Service Center.  He was the founding dean of the University of Miami School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences in 1964, and held several government positions, including deputy assistant administrator for the Environment Protection Agency, and chief scientist for the Department of Transportaion.  He held a professorship with the University of Virginia from 1971 until 1994, and with George Mason University until 2000.  He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate (1997) and Climate Policy – From Rio to Kyoto (2000).  Dennis T. Avery is the director of the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, where he edits Global Food Quarterly.  A food policy analyst for the past 30 years, Dennis Avery began his career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, served on the staff of President Lyndon Johnson's National Advisory Commission of Food and Fiber, and was the senior agricultural analyst for the U.S. Department of State. He is the author of several books, including this New York Times bestseller.
 
8. GLOBAL WARMING, ALARMISTS, SKEPTICS AND DENIERS (2012) by G. Dedrick Robinson Ph.D.  and Gene D. Robinson III Esquire.  G. Dedrick Robinson recently retired after nearly thirty years as a Professor of Geology at James Madison University in Virginia.  He is the author of numerous scientific articles in peer reviewed journals.  His background in teaching a wide variety of scientific concepts has uniquely qualified him to discuss difficult scientific concepts in a way that is understandable and interesting to non-scientists.  He has studied glaciers in Alaska, volcanic processes in California and Oregon, landslides in North Carolina, flood deposits in Virginia, river processes in Arkansas, zinc deposits in Tennessee, acid mine drainage in Colorado and the conditions which promote the precipitation of manganese oxide coating on stream alluvium.  He has spoken at state, regional, national and international geoscience conferences and also has a long record of having successfully taught introductory geology to non-science majors and geology courses to high school earth science teachers.  Gene D. Robinson III has been practicing law in Virginia since 2007.  Prior to establishing his own law practice, he worked as an associate or a law firm in Fairfax, Virginia from 2007 until 2009.  He is a 2007 graduate of the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, where he was the Managing Editor of the Florida Journal of International Law.
 
9. THE HOCKEY STICK ILLUSION (2010) by A. W. Montford.  Andrew Montford is an English writer and editor who is the owner of the Bishop Hill blog.  He is the author of several books including Hiding the Decline (2012); Nullius in Verba: On the Word of No One: the Royal Society and Climate Change (2012); Climate Control: Brainwashing in Schools (2015).

10. A DISGRACE TO THE PROFESSION (2015) compiled and edited by Mark Steyn.  This book contains the viewpoints of 120 different scientists on Michael Mann's The Hockey Stick as compiled by Mark Steyn.  I will provide a short biography on the authors of those viewpoints utilized in the excerpts.
  
11. THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO GLOBAL WARMING AND ENVIRONMENTALISM (2007) by Christopher C. Horner.  Christopher C. Horner is a senior fellow and attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and an acknowledged expert on global warming legislation and regulation.  He has represented CEI as well as Members of the U.S. House and Senate on matters of environmental policy in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.  He has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign relations and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and works on a legal and policy level with numerous think tanks and policy organizations throughout the world.  He has given numerous addresses to audiences in the European Parliament and before policymakers in European capitals including London, Rome, Prague, Copenhagen, Madrid and Warsaw. He has provided legal, policy, and political commentary several hundred times each on both television and radio including on the Fox News Channel, Court TV, MSNBC (with repeat visits on The New Hour with Jim Lehrer), BBC, CNN, CNN International, ITN, CBC, Bloomberg, and Reuters Television.
 
12. CLIMATE CHANGE FACTS (2015) edited by Alan Moran.  This book is a compilation of 21 reports by 13 noted scientists and 8 scientific and political writers which examine the science of climate change (6 reports), the politics and economics of climate change (6 reports), and the climate change movement and the development of the international institutional framework and the growing disconnect from science and scientific observation that characterizes the public debate (9 reports).  I will provide a short biography on the authors of those reports utilized in the excerpts.
  
13. CLIMATE CHANGE THE FACTS (2017) edited by Jennifer Marohasy.  From the book’s introduction: This book is a collection of chapters by so-called climate sceptics.  Each writer (22 in total) was asked to write on an aspect of the topic in which they are considered to have expertise.  None of them deny that climate change is real, but instead, they point out how extremely complex the topic of Earth's climate is, with some of the contributors also querying the, often generally accepted, solutions.  This is not a book with just one message, except perhaps that there is a need for more scrutiny of the data, and of our own prejudices.  This book's reason for being is to give pause for thought and to throw some alternative ideas and considerations into the mix.  I will provide a short biography of the authors of the contributors utilized in the excerpts.  

CHANGE ADVOCATES:
14. AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (2006) by Al Gore.  Former Vice President Al Gore is chairman of Current TV, an independently owned cable and satellite television nonfiction network for young people based on viewer-created content and citizen journalism.  He also serves as chairman of Generation Investment Management, a firm that is focused on a new approach to sustainable investing.  Gore is a member of the Board Directors of Apple Computer, Inc., and a senior advisor to Google, Inc.  Gore was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976 and the U.S. Senate 1984 and 1990.  He was inaugurated as the 45th Vice President of the United States on January 20, 1993, and served eight years.  He is the author of the 1992 bestseller Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit.

15. A GLOBAL WARMING PRIMER (2016) by Jeffrey Bennett.  Dr. Jeffrey Bennett holds a B.A. in Biophysics from the University of California, San Diego and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Colorado.  His extensive educational experience includes teaching at every level from preschool through graduate school.  He served two years as a Visiting Senior Scientist at NASA Headquarters, where he helped create numerous programs designed to build stronger links between the research and education communities.  He is the lead author of college textbooks in astronomy, astrobiology, mathematics, and statistics that together have sold more than 1.5 million copies, and of numerous critically acclaimed books for the general public, for children, and for educators.  He has received numerous awards, including the American Institute of Physics Science Communication Award.  His six children's books are all currently aboard the International Space Station, where they have been read aloud by astronauts for the Story Time From Space program.
 
16. THE HOCKEY STICK AND THE CLIMATE WARS (2014) by Michael Mann.  Michael E. Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology and Director of the Earth Systems Science Center at Penn State University.  Despite being in the public eye, he continues an active research program in climate science and has published over 160 peer-reviewed papers in leading scientific journals.  He is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union.  In 2012 he received the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union.  Along with other scientists, he contributed to the reports of the IPCC, which was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.  He is also a co-founder of the award-winning website, RealClimate.org.
 
17. THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING CAPITALISM VS THE CLIMATE (2014) by Naomi Klein.   Naomi Klein is a syndicated columnist for The Nation and The Guardian, a reporter for Rolling Stone, and a contributing editor for Harper's Magazine.  She is a Canadian author, social activist, and filmmaker known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization and of capitalism.  She first became known internationally for her books No Logo (1999) and The Take (2004).  This book was a New York Times non-fiction bestseller and the winner of the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.  She is a member of the board of directors of the climate activist group 350.org and a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute.
 
18. THE THINKING PERSON'S GUIDE TO CLIMATE CHANGE (2014) by Robert Henson.  Robert Henson is an award-winning author and journalist on topics primarily concerned with the weather and climate change, subjects of his 22 books.  Henson holds a bachelor's degree from Rice University and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma.  In 1989 Henson joined the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and its parent organization, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR).  He has interviewed dozens of the world's top climate scientists while producing newsletters and reports for UCAR and NCAR.  He has won several Distinguished Technical Communications awards in international competitions sponsored by the Society for Technical Communication.  As a freelance writer, his work has appeared in Nature, Scientific American, Discover, Audubon, Sierra and dozens of other publications.  He is a contributing editor for the magazine Weatherwise.
 
19. CLIMATE CHANGE What Everyone Needs to Know (2016) by Joseph Romm.  Dr. Joseph Romm is one of the country's most influential communicators on climate science and solutions.  He is Chief Science Advisor for Years of Living Dangerously which won the 2014 Emmy Award for Outstanding Nonfiction Series, and founding editor of the blog Climate Progress, which the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called "indispensable."  In 2009, Time named Romm one of its "Heroes of the Environment" and "the Web's most influential climate-change blogger." Rolling Stone named him one of 2009's "100 people who are reinventing America."  Romm was acting assistant secretary of energy in 1997, overseeing $1 billion in low-carbon technology development and deployment.  He holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT.
​
CLIMATE CHANGE SKEPTICS:
20. UNSTOPPABLE GLOBAL WARMING (2008) by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery.  S. Fred Singer is an Austrian-born physicist, a distinguished research professor at George Mason University, and emeritus professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia. He designed mines for the U.S. Navy during World War II, before obtaining his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1948 and working as a scientific liaison officer in the U.S. Embassy in London.  He became a leading figure in early space research, was involved in the development of earth observation satellites, and in 1962 established the National Weather Bureau's Satellite Service Center.  He was the founding dean of the University of Miami School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences in 1964, and held several government positions, including deputy assistant administrator for the Environment Protection Agency, and chief scientist for the Department of Transportaion.  He held a professorship with the University of Virginia from 1971 until 1994, and with George Mason University until 2000.  He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming's Unfinished Debate (1997) and Climate Policy – From Rio to Kyoto (2000).  Dennis T. Avery is the director of the Center for Global Food Issues at the Hudson Institute, where he edits Global Food Quarterly.  A food policy analyst for the past 30 years, Dennis Avery began his career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, served on the staff of President Lyndon Johnson's National Advisory Commission of Food and Fiber, and was the senior agricultural analyst for the U.S. Department of State. He is the author of several books, including this New York Times bestseller.
 
21. GLOBAL WARMING, ALARMISTS, SKEPTICS AND DENIERS (2012) by G. Dedrick Robinson Ph.D.  and Gene D. Robinson III Esquire.  G. Dedrick Robinson recently retired after nearly thirty years as a Professor of Geology at James Madison University in Virginia.  He is the author of numerous scientific articles in peer reviewed journals.  His background in teaching a wide variety of scientific concepts has uniquely qualified him to discuss difficult scientific concepts in a way that is understandable and interesting to non-scientists.  He has studied glaciers in Alaska, volcanic processes in California and Oregon, landslides in North Carolina, flood deposits in Virginia, river processes in Arkansas, zinc deposits in Tennessee, acid mine drainage in Colorado and the conditions which promote the precipitation of manganese oxide coating on stream alluvium.  He has spoken at state, regional, national and international geoscience conferences and also has a long record of having successfully taught introductory geology to non-science majors and geology courses to high school earth science teachers.  Gene D. Robinson III has been practicing law in Virginia since 2007.  Prior to establishing his own law practice, he worked as an associate or a law firm in Fairfax, Virginia from 2007 until 2009.  He is a 2007 graduate of the University of Florida, Levin College of Law, where he was the Managing Editor of the Florida Journal of International Law.
 
22. THE HOCKEY STICK ILLUSION (2010) by A. W. Montford.  Andrew Montford is an English writer and editor who is the owner of the Bishop Hill blog.  He is the author of several books including Hiding the Decline (2012); Nullius in Verba: On the Word of No One: the Royal Society and Climate Change (2012); Climate Control: Brainwashing in Schools (2015).

23. A DISGRACE TO THE PROFESSION (2015) compiled and edited by Mark Steyn.  This book contains the viewpoints of 120 different scientists on Michael Mann's The Hockey Stick as compiled by Mark Steyn.  I will provide a short biography on the authors of those viewpoints utilized in the excerpts.
  
24. THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO GLOBAL WARMING AND ENVIRONMENTALISM (2007) by Christopher C. Horner.  Christopher C. Horner is a senior fellow and attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and an acknowledged expert on global warming legislation and regulation.  He has represented CEI as well as Members of the U.S. House and Senate on matters of environmental policy in the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.  He has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign relations and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and works on a legal and policy level with numerous think tanks and policy organizations throughout the world.  He has given numerous addresses to audiences in the European Parliament and before policymakers in European capitals including London, Rome, Prague, Copenhagen, Madrid and Warsaw. He has provided legal, policy, and political commentary several hundred times each on both television and radio including on the Fox News Channel, Court TV, MSNBC (with repeat visits on The New Hour with Jim Lehrer), BBC, CNN, CNN International, ITN, CBC, Bloomberg, and Reuters Television.
 
25. CLIMATE CHANGE FACTS (2015) edited by Alan Moran.  This book is a compilation of 21 reports by 13 noted scientists and 8 scientific and political writers which examine the science of climate change (6 reports), the politics and economics of climate change (6 reports), and the climate change movement and the development of the international institutional framework and the growing disconnect from science and scientific observation that characterizes the public debate (9 reports).  I will provide a short biography on the authors of those reports utilized in the excerpts.
  
26. CLIMATE CHANGE THE FACTS (2017) edited by Jennifer Marohasy.  From the book’s introduction: 

This book is a collection of chapters by so-called climate sceptics.  Each writer (22 in total) was asked to write on an aspect of the topic in which they are considered to have expertise.  None of them deny that climate change is real, but instead, they point out how extremely complex the topic of Earth's climate is, with some of the contributors also querying the, often generally accepted, solutions.  This is not a book with just one message, except perhaps that there is a need for more scrutiny of the data, and of our own prejudices.  This book's reason for being is to give pause for thought and to throw some alternative ideas and considerations into the mix.  I will provide a short biography of the authors of the contributors utilized in the excerpts. ​

27. Unsettled? What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and Why it Matters (2021) by Steven E. Koonin. Dr. Koonin is a leader in science policy in the United States. He served as Undersecretary for Science in the U.S. Department of Energy under President Obama, where he was the lead author of the department’s strategic plan and the inaugural Quadrennial Technology Review (2011). With more than 200 peer-reviewed papers in the fields of physics and astrophysics, scientific computation, energy technology and policy, and climate science, Dr. Koonin was a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech, also serving as Caltech’s vice president and provost for almost a decade. He is currently a university professor at New York University, with appointments in the Stern School of Business, the Tandon School of Engineering, and the Department of Physics. Dr. Koonin’s memberships include the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the JASON group of scientists who solve technical problems for the U.S. government. Since 2014, he has been a trustee of the Institute for Defense Analyses, and he chaired the National Academies’ Divisional Committee for Engineering and Physical Sciences from 2014 – 2019. He is currently an independent governor of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and has served in similar roles for the Los Alamos, Sandia, Brookhaven, and Argonne National Laboratories.

28. Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental alarmism Hurts Us All (2020) by Michael Shellenberger. Shellenberger is a Time magazine “Hero of the Environment”; the winner of the 2008 Green Book Award from the Stevens Institute of Technology’s Center for Science Writings; and an invited expert reviewer of the next Assessment Report for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has written on energy and the environment for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Nature Energy and other publications for two decades. He is the founder and president of Environmental Progress, an independent, nonpartisan research organization based in Berkeley, California.

He has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He cocreated the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed, “billions of people are going to die,” contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction.  In his own words:

 I have been an environmental activist for 30 years and researched and written on environmental issues, including climate change, for 20 of them. I do this work because I care deeply about my mission to not only protect the natural environment but also to achieve the goal of universal prosperity for all people.

I also care about getting the facts and science right. I believe environmental scientists, journalists, and activists have an obligation to describe environmental problems honestly and accurately, even if they fear doing so will reduce their news value or salience with the public.

Much of what people are being told about the environment, including the climate, is wrong, and we desperately need to get it right. I decided to write “Apocalypse Never” after getting fed up with the exaggeration, alarmism, and extremism that are the enemy of a positive, humanistic, and rational environmentalism.

​29. The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to the Climate Crisis by Christina Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac (2020). Figueres and Rivett-Carnac led negotiations for the United Nations during the historic Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 which was signed by 195 countries. Figueres is a Costa Rican diplomat who has led national, international, and multilateral policy negotiations. She was appointed Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework on Climate Change, the organization tasked with guiding the response of all governments on climate change. She held that position from 2010 to 2016. In 2016, she was Costa Rica candidate for the United Nations Secretary General and was an early front runner but withdrew after garnering insufficient support. Her father was President of Costa Rica three times. Figueres invited Rivett-Carnac to join the UN effort to advance the negotiations for the Paris Agreement as her chief political strategist. Previously Rivett-Carna had been CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Project USA and a former Buddhist monk.
​
To go to the series syllabus click here: Climate Change Syllabus