I just finished this book: Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media, written by Patrick Michaels.

I was expecting this book to disprove global warming, but that isn't Michaels's intent at all.  The most important word in the title ended up being "Distortion".  As Michaels points out, there are a lot of blanket statements and uneducated claims made about climate and global warming in scientific journals and mass media publications, and I think this book helps educate the reader so that they can weed out those bad reports or at least know what holes to look for in the "facts". 

What I really liked about the book was the large number of newspaper articles, scientific journal publications, legislation, and TV news reports that Michaels's referenced.  In the articles he references, he points out gaping holes in data and facts and literally destroys them with counter-attacks of better data.  For example, Michaels references articles that use 3 to 5 data points as evidence that temperature or precipitation are changing in one direction, but then responds with 100-200 data points that support a change in the opposite direction.  The best takeaway from the book is that there is a lot of bad reporting out there.  The book helps identify common holes in data and reporting.

What the book does not do is reference any good reporting on global warming.  As the book's title suggests, Michaels focuses on the distortion.  He never argues that all reporting on global warming is distorted.  I think this is a very important distinction to make while reading the book - as when I bought the book I expected Michaels to completely disprove global warming.  He doesn't go near that topic, and only focuses on the weak global warming reporting and scientific work that has been done within the past few decades. 

The book's thesis is to point out how this distortion is allowed to happen in the scientific community and what needs to be done to change it.  When I bought the book, I wasn't really interested in those aspects.  Rather, I wanted to read about data, data, and more data.  Michaels definitely delivers with the data, but after understanding that the focus was on the Distortion I got a little bit tired of reading about the bad reporting and the vast amounts of data.  In the end I became more interested in how scientific peer review processes could be improved or how the paradigm of scientific research and funding needs to change to prevent bad reporting and research - but only one short chapter is devoted to that topic. 

I'd argue that everybody interested in climate change should read this book.  For those who believe global warming is a big problem, it will help them seek truth in their own research and guide them away from gaps in their data.  For critics and skeptics, it will help them find those gaps in other researcher's data.  And if you believe Michael's main point that today's scientific research paradigm is fundamentally flawed, then this book might be a call to arms to help change that paradigm - regardless of your stance on climate change.