Not by any stretch of the imagination is Bjorn Lomborg a 'climate change denier'. Lomborg, the Skeptical Environmentalist, is not a skeptic when it comes to the theory that anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming. He is not a skeptic who disputes the basic theory presented by the IPCC. He makes all of this abundantly clear in Cool It. Life would be simpler for those who want to avoid critical scrutiny of the claims put forward by the IPCC if Lomborg could simply be dismissed as just another 'denialist' who fundamentally disagrees with anthropogenic global warming (AGW).

Instead Lomborg accepts the basic theory and then subjects the evidence and conclusions to critical scrutiny. For this he has been attacked and pilloried, for it seems critical scrutiny is not allowed these days. Such is the state of public discourse when it comes to climate change, that only those who accept without questions the revealed truths from Al Gore, James Hansen and the IPCC can be accorded respect. For those who want to really discuss the issues, however, Lomborg provides plenty of food for thought.

Lomborg's arguments are two-fold. First, he assesses the evidence and concludes that the most alarmist of statements simply do not stand examination. Temperature rise, sea-level rise, increased hurricane activity, increased heat deaths and many of the other favourite horror stories trotted out regularly in the media are simply not backed up by the evidence. The evidence is rather mixed and in fact even the IPCC has been scaling down the future horrors that it predicts for some time now. [Continued]

Latest in Savoy's ongoing series of books about Savoy is this Lord Horror sampler and essay, a handsomely bound hardback boasting an Arcimboldo-inspired John Coulthart cover painting of the great man himself. As for the contents, you get four extracts from the Lord Horror books plus Seward's appreciation and a Horror timeline for under a tenner, which brings this as close as Savoy have got to populist publishing since AC/DC and Kiss.

Lord Horror certainly deserves critical appraisal but Seward's tone is altogether too casual for the job and his arguments unlikely to convince any but the converted - or even many of the converted. Much of the essay is written in the first person - 'It's a good name, and I thought Motherfuckers was good too' - and consists mainly of Seward attempting to categorise the Lord Horror books, a daunting and probably pointless task: surely the work's category implosion is itself half the fun? Reiterations of similarities between Horror and works in the accepted canon of Great Art (Burroughs, Swift, Bosch) are swiftly wearying - can't Horror stand on his own daintily shod feet? - and the pretzels Seward contorts himself into while trying to place the morality of the books surely miss the point: if Horror's 'about' anything it's the transformative power of an imagination weaned on Fudge & Speck, rock'n'roll, fascist iconography and unwarranted incarceration.

Seward's final call to arms, for a US publisher to publish the Horror books as a 'nicely designed line of paperbacks' for broader consumption, is baffling - this is never going to be mainstream fare. [Continued]

Christopher Booker, co-author of Scared To Death, responds to questions on global warming, health scares, the mass media and responses to his book in this interview with LondonBookReview.com [Continued]

The big scare is a recurrent feature of life in Western societies. The sequence of crises that have afflicted us - from salmonella in eggs to listeria to BSE to the Millennium bug - has culminated in recent years with the rise of global warming and the spectre of climate change. In the theory of man-made global warming we have the scare to end all scares, the scare that presents us finally with a vision of the end of the world as we know it. What is remarkable about this sequence of crises is not just the sheer number of them, but also, despite the differences between them, just how much they have in common.

Christopher Booker and Richard North document both these common themes and features, but also the detail of a number of the most important scares. In doing so they look behind the headlines of the day and examine the factual basis on which many of these crises were founded. And, as the title of the book should make clear, 'Scared To Death' makes for grim but salutary reading.

The authors track each story in turn, starting with the salmonella in eggs scandal that broke out in the 1988. As a story is has all of the plot elements that have characterised the major scares that have followed it: the activities of a few self-proclaimed experts who seem to wield influence with politicians and the media (though not necessarily commanded much respect from other scientists); a media prone to hysterical headlines, outraged editorials and little understanding of even the basics of science or statistics; politicians eager for publicity or panicked into making hasty pronouncements that turn general disquiet into a panic. [Continued]

From the day that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon adopted it, in the middle of the 19th century, 'Anarchist' has remained a politically loaded term. A badge of honour or term of abuse, it is still a part of the political lexicon in the 21st century, long after the oft-predicted demise of anarchism as a movement and political philosophy. While membership of explicitly anarchist groups remains numerically insignificant, the influence of anarchism on the politics of anti-globalisation, animal liberation and other diverse protest movements is obviously significant. For those for whom anarchism is only dimly understood, Uri Gordon's 'Anarchy Alive!' aims to present a picture of contemporary anarchist theory and practice that is clear, accessible and engaging.

From the outset the author makes clear that there is a real and important difference between those anarchists who are members of the 'official' anarchist movement ? members of the various Anarchist Federations and Anarcho-syndicalist groups for example ? and those who identify as anarchists but are members of broader coalitions, such as the People Global Action and other anti-globalisation groups. While there is obviously some overlap, this difference between 'big A' and 'little A' anarchism is important in understanding the kind of anarchism that Gordon presents here. More importantly Gordon claims that this is a generational difference, that these new anarchists represent a new generation of political activists that has little do with previous generations of anarchists.

Where previous generations of anarchists have been fired class difference and economic injustice, this new generation of anarchists is the result of cross-fertilisation of movements and philosophies that had no overtly anarchist tradition. [Continued]

Nigel Calder, co-author of The Chilling Stars, responds to questions on the controversies surrounding his book, the film 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' and offers advice for the lay-person wanting to make sense of the competing theories of climate change. [Continued]

Scared To Death, Human Impacts On Climate and much more …