The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy is a great new book by climate scientist Michael Mann and cartoonist Tom Toles.

This book serves many purposes. It includes an overview of the basic science of climate change and human caused global warming. It has a compendium of many of the key science deniers, and a description of the well known taxonomy of science denial (“It’s Not Happening!”, “OK, It’s Happening but It’s Natural”, “It Will Take Care Of Itself”, “It Will Be Good For Us”, etc.). The authors discuss the war on climate science, and of special interest because it isn’t discussed enough, the prospects (which are poor) and the problems (which are very serious) of geoengineering as a means of addressing climate change.

And, everything is well documented with detailed notes and references at the end, including some to my own writing on the topic!

This is not like a cartoon guide to a topic (though those guides are great), but is mainly text richly illustrated with Tolees’ often ironic and biting cartoons. The text is well written and very accessible but at the same time authoritative.

And the book will prove its own need. Just visit the amazon reviews of this book and you’ll see, I suspect (give it a few weeks for the deniers to mass on the borders of reason and charge in).

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in climate change and global warming. Teachers discussing this issue in class may want to have a copy of it handy, especially to prepare for denialist charges and complaints, but also, for the basic science. Activists will find the material on what to do about climate change, at several levels, interesting and helpful.

The book is available now for pre-order.