Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage)
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) – Review
January 18, 2009 Ardsley, PA This is a quick, pleasant order of 164 pages with 34 full sides of notes and 41 leaves of bibliographical references. Chapter One outlines Mr Lomborg’s important position and his objective in this book (I paraphrase): 1. Global warming is real and man-made. 2. Focusing on doomsday scenarios does not result in clear policy. 3. We should strive for simple, smart and effective solutions to climate change. 4. Many extra issues that we face are far more important than global warming. Whichever side a reader drops on this issue, one will discover after simply reading this pleasant book that Mr Lomborg does a fairly complete job of presenting and supporting his positions. Chapt 2 reviews what are the effects of the earth warming. The reader will find that contrary to current accounts, these consequences are not all bad. Credible evidence proves that in fact cold kills much more people each year that excess heat. Chapt 3 reviews many subjects involving glaciers slowly melting, sea levels rising, severe weather, floods, disease and more. The attraction of general notes and a substantial bibliography is that the reader is free to investigate Mr Lomborg’s sources and thus able to make his/her own assessment of the data. Without a doubt contrarians will constantly find some point to snicker about. However, just the fact that these sources are presented shows a good contract of confidence in his presentation. In effect Mr Lomborg is really saying, ” Don’t take my word alone, check it out for yourselves.” Chapt 4 reviews some of the political perspectives on these issues. I enjoyed his observation that there has been the actual cost of the chance for “Sensible dialogue.” That is all too true with much of what passes for both politics and science today. Chap 5 is the final chapter. One of Mr Lomborg’s extra efforts evidently concerned a discussion/series of meetings he hosted among experts and like minded individuals which finitely generated what is titled “The Copenhagen Consensus.” This document is an attempt to prioritize contemporary problems and encourage policy makers to apply their effort where it will do the most good. Who in the world could find fault in such an effort? The famous economist Thomas Sowell defines economics as the analysis of the part of scarce resources that have alternative uses. Bjorn Lomborg makes this same point throughout this book. No where will you find Mr Lomborg effectively making a case that Global Warming is neither real, nor not due to industrialization; however, time and again he does his best to explain how the end result will not be all bad and does not require immediate, emergency, radical action. This is a worthwhile, well-researched, interesting book. Cordially, Joe Rooney