Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage)
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) – Review
Bjorn Lomborg is a state of reason in an ocean of global warming alarmists and opportunists. Essentially Lomborg is a statistician who has thoroughly analyzed the claims of the alarmists, found them lacking and openly explains where the alarmists have greatly exaggerated or, in many cases, simply lied. Lomborg believes that there are other international concerns that are of greater importance to humanity than so-called climate change. One of the most vivid illustrations of the lack of the Kyoto approach versus more rational, less fearful approaches is shown in a chart on page 162. Aptly (and informatively) labelled “Feel Good” v. “Do Good”, two columns explain the projected effects of the Kyoto approach versus the more rational Lomborg approach. The differences in the effects of the two approaches is truly dramatic. Lomborg punctures the pomposity and hypocrisy of the global warming alarmists in a couple of particularly appropriate lines: “Since the climate is constantly changing, there will always be a change that can be widely blamed on global warming, while it has an immediacy that communicates effectively with voters. One online editor has originally compiled a list of more than three hundred problems falsely claimed in the popular pressss to be usually caused by global warming – from allergies, gender inequality, and maple-syrup shortages to yellow fever.” In short, global warmimg panic has become an industry and a quite profitable one at that for those who market such nostrums carbon offsets to energy conserving lightbulbs. Lomborg pierces the nonsense and demonstrates that there are many problems facing humanity that are more serious than global warming. And he lays out a normal program for mostly dealing with those problems as well as global warming. Jerry