Review of Climatized: A Max Ford Thriller, by Sally Fernandez (Dunham Books), October 2016, 224 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0997397321; $15.99 on Amazon.com.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Hal Doiron, a former NASA Apollo Team member and current member of the Right Climate Stuff research team, for suggesting I read the new novel Climatized.
Author Sally Fernandez has discovered an effective way to communicate issues in the topic of global warming to a wider audience than could ever be reached through scientific papers and technical conference presentations.
Following in the footsteps of the late Michael Crichton, author of State of Fear, Fernandez has woven into a hair-raising murder mystery an accurate explanation of what we really know about the planet’s present and future climate. Climatized describes a cabal aimed at eliminating “deniers,” not by destroying their reputations, as is today’s modus operandi, but through cleverly disguised murders.
The book’s heroine is newly minted private eye Maxine Ford, previously a member of the U.S. intelligence community. Ford teams up with a special aide to the president of the United States, a scientist who has thus far managed to escape the efforts to eliminate him. Operating just a few steps ahead of the shadowy killers, the detective and scientist piece together the plot while encountering fact after fact of real climate science from real-life climate scientists, such as Fred Singer, among others.
Half the characters in the book are real people, whom Fernandez quotes regularly to ensure she has the science right.
Scientists, Politician ‘Eliminated’
The novel begins with the deaths of two scientists and a politician involved in a major Senate hearing on climate change. Ford’s case begins when a politician’s widow requests Ford investigate her husband’s death. The widow is certain it was not a suicide, as reported in the press. As Ford’s investigation continues, other deaths follow, with the debate over climate change proving central to the investigation. Ford’s investigation shows the theory humans are causing a global warming catastrophe is false and a group of powerful interests is killing anyone who would expose evidence of that fact.
Ford discovers the cabal goes back to the 1992 Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where Maurice Strong, a Canadian oil billionaire and under-secretary-general of the United Nations, was promoting “sustainability” through Agenda 21, an agreement aiming to bring the world’s economy under the control of the United Nations. Though not a treaty, Agenda 21 was signed at the Earth Summit by 178 countries and established as Executive Order 12852 by President Bill Clinton. Former Vice President Al Gore, a friend and colleague of Strong, was the leading American proponent of Agenda 21.
Plot Highlights Real Climate Shenanigans
Ford’s investigation uncovers the fact the Chicago Climate Exchange, established in 2010 to trade carbon credits, netted Gore and his partners at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, & Byers hundreds of millions of dollars when they invested in more than 40 companies that benefitted from the folly of cap-and-trade.
In the novel, two of the murdered scientists are shown to have crossed paths with two infamous climate researchers: Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit, who was caught in the Climategate scandal for falsifying climate data, and Michael Mann, who was shown to have distorted and eliminated data in order to construct his hockey-stick diagram sham.
Fernandez’s characters make understanding climate science easy and fun. For instance, I found the casual manner of her recital of agriculture expert and climate researcher Dennis Avery’s work wonderful.
“Dennis Avery had compelling scientific evidence that the Sun played a key role in climate change along with cloud formations and shifts in the ocean, concluding that reducing fossil fuel use would have no discernible effect on rising temperatures,” Fernandez wrote.
It will likely come as a surprise to some readers that mathematical models claiming to show increasing temperatures due to man’s activities do not include the Sun as a significant factor.
One of the delights of this contemporary historical novel is its short chapters, which enable the reader to take a breath and decompress from the action. In addition, Fernandez develops her characters with exceptional depth. This is a wonderfully educational and exciting read.
Jay Lehr, Ph.D. ([email protected]), is science director of The Heartland Institute.
Jay Lehr was an internationally renowned speaker, scientist, Senior Policy Advisor with the International Climate Science Coalition and Senior Science Analyst at CFACT.
