I know this is a bit early, but Merry Christmas everybody. I wanted to get that out of the way because with Christmas being near, my mind had been wandering back to last year's Christmas. As some of you may remember, last Christmas is when I announced the publication of my first eBook:

About two years ago, [Michael Mann] published a book titled, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Line . I promptly bought and read it, posting thoughts as I went. Those thoughts were highly negative. I thought, and still think, Mann’s book is a piece of utter dreck. I’ve long thought someone should respond to it. I’ve also thought someone should lay the hockey stick debate out in a clear and accessible manner. There is a great deal of material available on the internet. There are even some good books, such as The Hockey Stick Illusion. The problem is none of these are easily accessible to the average person. People don’t want to have to read a 400 page book to understand what is being talked about. People don’t want to have to spend hours and hours looking through old blog posts with no roadmap. People want a simple resource which lets them quickly catch up on the overall concepts so they can tell if they want to learn more. At least, that’s what I believe. I also believe waiting for “someone” to do something is a good way for nothing to get done. As such, I’ve decided to try producing a counter-narrative to Michael Mann’s book. You can find the first part of it here: http://www.amazon.com/Hockey-Stick-Climate-Wars-Introduction-ebook/dp/B00RE7K3W2/ It’s a bit over 10,000 words, and I expect to produce a second part of about the same length. My hope is people who read them will be able to fully understand the hockey stick debate without needing to know all the history, details and nuances which come with it.



I did wind up publishing that second part. You can find the two below:

Looking back on them, there are definitely things I think I could have done better. The cover art is one of them. I do like the simplistic design, but using default templates provided by Amazon will never give the best results.

Still, I have to say I'm happy with how they turned out. I did all the work for them on my own, with no editor, publisher or anything else. For someone who had never published anything in his life before, I think they turned out pretty well. Whatever aesthetic lackings they might suffer from, the contents hold up well and do a good job of conveying the central aspects of the hockey stick debate in a manner anyone can understand.

Which brings me to what I was pondering today. While I am content with how these two eBooks turned out, I never published another. I've been wondering if maybe I should have, and if so, what should it have been about?

I'm currently toying with the idea of trying to write another short eBook about how the "97% consensus" message came to be and the various issues surrounding it. I'm not sure if there's enough material or interest though, so figured I'd try and see what other people think. Plus, why not celebrate the soon-to-be one year anniversary of my first eBook?