What should we do about the dangers posed by global warming? Judging by the collective actions of society, so far the answer has been “nothing”. Frustrated by this lack of progress and deeply worried about the future, several prominent climate scientists have written books in the past year describing their views of the problem, in which they try to tell their personal stories, educate the public and stimulate action by governments. Stephen Schneider, who died suddenly (and far too early) in July, told his part of the story in Science as a Contact Sport (see our review from September). James Hansen warned of the dangers of global warming in Storms of My Grandchildren. And in Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway described how fossil-fuel companies are using the same tactics and “scientists” that cigarette and chemical manufacturers once used to obscure and deny the dangers posed by tobacco, acid rain and ozone depletion in an attempt to confuse the public about the science of global warming and delay regulation of greenhouse-gas emissions.

In this crowded field, Coming Climate Crisis? Consider the Past, Beware the Big Fix stands out. Written by Claire L Parkinson, a distinguished NASA sea-ice researcher and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, it differs from the others in its attitude towards those who deny the reality of global warming, or humanity’s role in causing it. Although Parkinson does not share the sceptics’ views on climate change, one of the messages in her book is that global-warming deniers are legitimate scientists who need to be taken seriously.

At this point, I should probably mention that Parkinson is a friend of mine. In fact, the copy of the book I used in preparing this review is a personal, signed gift from her. But friends are allowed to disagree sometimes, and in this case I definitely do. To be blunt, Parkinson’s interpretation of the action of global-warming deniers strikes me as subjective and wrong, and it conflicts with the scholarship of Oreskes and Conway, who document the organized campaign to confuse the public about climate science so as to delay action. I agree with Lonnie Thompson, the Ohio State University palaeoclimatologist who has written the book’s unusually critical foreword: “the major issue I [Thompson] have with the book is that [Parkinson] ascribes nearly equivalent validity of the contributions of those in the climate-change community who rely on the peer-review system to disseminate ideas and the smaller group of ‘climate sceptics’ or contrarians. Many in the latter group are not climate scientists, and their ideas and work are often disseminated in white papers, editorials, privately funded foun_dation documents, blogs and other attention-getting media outlets.”

That said, most of the book is not controversial, and it makes some excellent points. For example, its first four chapters describe the climate system in a way that is easily accessible for non-specialists, going through the history of climate change on Earth for the past 4.6 billion years and describing how the carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases we are now spewing into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate will produce rapid global warming in the future. Parkinson also gives many examples of how humans have inflicted significant environmental damage on local and regional scales.

Towards the end of the book, the sections on geoengineering – the “big fix” referred to in the title – are likewise spot-on. The term “geoengineering” refers to a number of proposed techniques for managing solar radiation, such as deliberately introducing light-scattering aerosols into the stratosphere. Parkinson rightly points out that there are many potential risks associated with such schemes, and gives multiple examples of smaller-scale efforts of environmental modification that have gone wrong. She is far from alone in these views. I have personally published 20 reasons why geoengineering may be a bad idea, and the Royal Society, the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union have all advised that much more research is needed on the benefits, risks and costs involved before society can make an informed decision about whether to even consider it in the event of a planetary emergency. Whatever its merits, geoengineering is certainly no substitute for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

However, in the middle part of the book, Parkinson devotes a lot of effort to raising doubt about the consensus of scientists on global warming by criticizing the validity of “scientific consensus” in general. To support the latter argument, she gives a number of examples from the past – from the heliocentric model of the universe to the supposedly unsinkable Titanic – in which a prevailing viewpoint was later overturned. However, I think there are probably many more examples of a consensus – like the fact that volcanic aerosols cool the planet – being correct and only modified in rather minor ways as knowledge has progressed. The global-warming community consists of thousands of people who have been working for decades on this problem, and the consensus only gets stronger. There is no scientific analysis of that process in this book.

Parkinson also goes along with Richard Lindzen, a prominent denier (and atmospheric scientist), whom she quotes as complaining about “alarmists”. She then uses the term herself. However, this is confusing advocacy with science. Scientists whose results support global warming are not being alarmists – they are merely presenting the results of their scientific investigations. Advocates of particular actions who use science in a dishonest way are the real alarmists, and there are those on both sides of the issue. Those who honestly present their results are doing their duty to society by warning others about the dangers that they find. It would be irresponsible to do otherwise. If people find those results alarming, Occam’s razor tells me that this is because the science itself is alarming, not because of some vast conspiracy of scientists to exaggerate their results. In fact, an individual scientist would be much more strongly motivated to find a fundamental flaw in the theory of global warming. That is what would make them famous and bring in grants and money – not yet another paper that supports the consensus.

In the book, Parkinson writes that she is afraid she will anger a number of her professional colleagues in publicizing her views. In my case her fears were partially justified: I was indeed a little angry and frustrated after I read her book, although I felt better after I had communicated my thoughts (many of which are reproduced here) to her. But the fact is that when “sceptical” scientists misrepresent the science on purpose, they are doing a disservice to our profession and to the planet, and they should be condemned – not have their specious arguments accepted uncritically, as in this book.