Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming | Bjørn Lomborg

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming | Bjørn Lomborg | A Reasonable Approach to Climate Change

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Cool It: The Skept...

	Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming Bjørn Lomborg Knopf, 2007 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 84 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A groundbreaking book that transforms the debate about global warming by offering a fresh perspective based on human needs as well as environmental concerns.

Bjorn Lomborg argues that many of the elaborate and expensive actions now being considered to stop global warming will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, are often based on emotional rather than strictly scientific assumptions, and may very well have little impact on the world?s temperature for hundreds of years. Rather than starting with the most radical procedures, Lomborg argues that we should first focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS and assuring and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply?which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and save millions of lives within our lifetime. He asks why the debate over climate change has stifled rational dialogue and killed meaningful dissent.

Lomborg presents us with a second generation of thinking on global warming that believes panic is neither warranted nor a constructive place from which to deal with any of humanity?s problems, not just global warming. Cool It promises to be one of the most talked about and influential books of our time.

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Sensible proposals for coping with the consequences of global warming

Bjørn Lomborg, an adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School and author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, has written another well-researched book. As he writes, "Global warming is happening, the consequences are important and mostly negative." He notes that the 2007 International Panel on Climate Change has predicted rises of 1.50C by 2050 and 2.50C by 2100, which will raise sea levels and increase malaria, starvation and poverty.

But, Lomborg argues, it does not follow that directly combating climate change through cutting CO2 will do most to maximise human welfare. Preventing disease, providing clean drinking water and feeding people could do more good more cheaply.

What are the options? We could, for example, spend $3 billion a year on mosquito eradication, medicine and mosquito nets: this would halve malaria incidence (2 billion infections and one million deaths every year) by 2015. We could spend $4 billion a year on helping three billion people to access clean water and sanitation.

Or, by contrast, we could do what the EU tells us and spend $84 trillion to cut CO2 emissions to 20% below 1990 levels, to ensure that the temperature rises by no more than 20C above pre-industrial times. Yet this hugely expensive effort would have only a tiny effect: it would be 2.480C hotter than now by 2100 instead of by 2098. And a 2.5% rise is only what the IPCC predicted would happen anyway! As a 2007 peer-reviewed study in the journal Energy Policy concluded, "the 20C target of the EU seems unfounded."

Lomborg shows that the consequences of global warming will not be as bad as they have been painted. For example, the IPCC predicted that sea-levels would rise by 29 cm by 2100 (the same as the rise since 1860), as against the 20 feet that Al Gore publicises. We could cope with this by better use of floodplains, more wetlands, stricter building policies and fewer floodplain subsidies.

Lomborg shows that global warming does not cause extreme weather events, which are anyway not curable by cutting CO2. The IPCC said of the Hollywood/Pentagon/Al Gore picture of a new ice age triggered by a shutdown of the Gulf Stream, "we can confidently exclude this scenario."

Fossil fuels have grown the industries that produce the goods we need and give us low-cost light, heat, food, travel and trade. As Lomborg writes, "a world without fossil fuels ... is a lot like a world gone medieval." So he argues that we need to spend far more on researching renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Directly cutting CO2 would be hugely expensive. Lomborg argues that we should do what is both cheaper and more effective - cope with the consequences of global warming rather than try to stop it at source. If he is right, we would maximise human welfare not by rolling back our civilisation's industrial advance, but by using our industrial ingenuity and know-how to prevent disease, provide people with food and water, and develop energy resources.

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A Reasonable Approach to Climate Change

This book is beautifully written, and can easily be read in a few hours.
The general idea the author presents is that while "Global Warming" is
real and problematic, there has been too much apocalyptic material written
spoken and propagated in the media. He is particularly hard on Mr. Gore
whom he feels has (among other things) predicted an unrealistic rise in sea levels. He is also hard on the Kyoto Treaty.
Mr. Lomborg is an economist, not a physical scientist. Many of his arguments
concern costs and benefits. He tends to produce "facts" and "figures" in a somewhat oracular manner - one supposes that the references he provides
substantiate these assertions. This is the price paid for a terse readable presentation.
I tend to agree with the idea that heroic measures to control carbon dioxide emissions are politically difficult if not impossible.
The author prefers to spend the money on other human needs where the benefits seem more in line with the expenditures : clean water, fighting diseases etc.
I found particularly interesting his idea that the benefits of global warming( fewer deaths from cold for example) might offset some of the bad effects. Here the oracular statistics were prominent- how could he state so surely the number of lives saved from hypothermia ?
I will continue to read Lomborg's work which is always interesting.

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Hype Down

The author, Danish scientist, Bjorn Lomborg throws some rational thought on the hype surrounding global warming. He points out that global warming is a real problem but he argues that the costs proposed to confront it greatly exceed the benefits postulated by programs such as Kyoto I or II. The book is interesting, informative, lively, often amusing and, happily, short. He covers so many interesting worries, including the disappearing polar bears, the rise in the oceans, the increase in global temperatures, the melting ice and argues that the potential disasters invoked are not likely to be as great as we fear. He argues that we can improve life for most people to a much greater extent at less cost by dealing with starvation, impure water, disease, and poverty using solutions that are already available to us. Even though he doesn't dispute global warming, his point of view has been viciously attacked by supporters of what has become the new mantra. If you saw V. P. Gore's Film, you should read this book and breathe a little easier still doing your best to reduce CO2's. Just don't panic. The polar bear is not going to disappear.

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Systematic Bias in Amazon Editorial Reviews

This is just a quick "meta-" review; a review of the reviews.

The Editorial review section leads off with the Reed Elsevier review, trashing Lomborg, followed by Tim Flannery "...an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist and *global warming activist*," [Wikipedia] again, trashing Lomborg. The Reed Elsevier folks, who apparently handle all the Publishers Weekly reviews, are notable for their Environmentalist bias, as well as a consistently Left bias in every other area in which I've sampled their reviews. If the "Editorial Reviews" section of Amazon.com is supposed to be in any way more authoritative or balanced than the reader reviews section, Amazon may want to look for a more objective source. In fact, many of the user reviews below appear to be better-researched and more objective than the professional lead pieces.

I have my issues with Lomborg opposite theirs. He has become a weak-middle advocate for sanity in the "Global Warming" debates, because he considers GW to be essentially settled science, minus the hysteria -- "let's just deal with it (GW) rationally." I don't agree with the concession, to disclose my bias, but let's grant his stance for sake of discussion.

The "models" and "studies" Reed Elsevier trots out (without name, content, or reference) that he supposedly "ignores" could be counter-posed to corrections to midleading temperature "corrections" where the NASA data shows no consistent upward trend, solar minima, and other issues that the GW advocates have marginalized or ignored outright.

The "Washington Post" review is not a "Washington Post Review," it's a slanted attack by an envirnomental activist with an agenda. Since it's not identified that way, it's dishonest.

Evidently, it's enough to disparage with a journalistic sneer to qualify as a qualified reviewer,now, so I respond in kind to the Reed people. Publishers Weekly -- get yourself reviewers that will review the book, not smear it and distort facts in order to push their own agenda.

And, again, Amazon's informed, intelligent user community demonstrates why the mainstream media are losing eyeballs, while the blogosphere grows and broadens in influence.

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