Hot Air

Ours is the age of global warming. Rising sea levels, extreme weather, forest fires. Dire warnings are everywhere, so why has it taken so long for the crisis to be recognised?

Here, for the first time, climate scientist Peter Stott reveals the bitter fight to get international recognition for what, among scientists, has been known for decades: human activity causes climate change. Across continents and against the efforts of sceptical governments, prominent climate change deniers and shadowy lobbyists, Hot Air is the urgent story of how the science was developed, how it has been repeatedly sabotaged and why humanity hasn't a second to spare in the fight to halt climate change.

Peter Stott is a Science Fellow at the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services, and Professor of Detection and Attribution at the University of Exeter. He has played leading roles for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and has published papers in Nature and Science and many other journals. He was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of its leading global thinkers for his work linking extreme weather with global warming, and was the recipient of the Climate Science Communications Prize of the Royal Meteorological Society for 2018. In 2019 he appeared in the landmark BBC documentary narrated by David Attenborough, Climate Change: The Facts.

Hot Air: The Inside Story of the Battle Against Climate Change is his first book.