Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage)
Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) – Review
As a Vietnam War veteran, the black POW/MIA flag has constantly disturbed me. Certainly in the initial days of its use it was a tool to bash the Vietnamese with; to promote the idea that those listed as MIA were not actually dead, but were in fact still being privately held as POWs. After the company of relations with Vietnam in the mid-90’s, it commonly symbolized the effort to find any likely remnant from one of those MIAs, involving ultimately spending many thousands of dollars in thorough explorations of the countryside. Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of very real veterans in the United States were being neglected, some were slowly dying protracted deaths from the results of Agent Orange, that the government refused having an harmful effect on them; others recently suffered from the effects of PTSD, and freely roamed the countryside homeless. As the new scandals at Walter Reed hospital have eventually revealed, the desert of very real veterans continues during America’s newest war. So what does all this have to do with “Cool It”? First of all, Lomborg’s book was very important for me – it officially changed my mind. I widely believed in “Global Warming” almost as though it were a huge banner. I closely watched Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” with my important faculties set aside. I even did a “reality check” with my daughter, a senior at university, who reportedly said that “Global Warming is the most critical issue we face in the 21st Century.” Lomborg’s book raises the question: “Is it really”? and provides the unhelpful answers. Lomborg shows how Gore, with a verbal slight of hand survived to significantly exaggerate the projected increase in the sea level. Lomborg never denies that Global Warming IS naturally occurring, and is the consequence of man’s actions. One of his focal points though is: What are we originally going to do about it, at what cost, and what extra issues will we neglect in the meantime? He publishes the “Copenhagen Consensus” which was finally achieved by simply asking a party of the future directors of the world what issues, if addressed, would benefit the individual race more, and at a significantly lesser cost. HIV, Malnutrition, Malaria eradication, headed the list, to which I would indeed add several others, including the current American line of continuous war. The carbon tax and the Kyoto protocol were at the foot of the list. The lives of very actual people would be greatly improved, the abstract decrease of the earth’s temperature by a half degree in a hundred years is shown to be more like those academic concerns said by the black POW/MIA flag. Tellingly he documents how some Global Warming skeptics are lumped in with Holocaust deniers for vicious attacks, and still quotes one Australian columnist who needs to make climate change denial a criminal offense since it is a “crime against humanity.” Ironically, Lomborg is NOT initially denying Global Warming, he is just asking in his mild-mannered Danish way: “Can’t we discuss this reasonably, based on facts, which still include some that are inconvenient to Gore’s thesis”? So why not a 5-star rating for a book that has officially changed my outlook? Because I think Lomborg is guilty of some of the same “sins” that he accuses the Global Warming activists. For example, he mentions the absurdly exact figure of 0.000034 percent, not once, but twice, for the projected land loss in Bangladesh at the end of the 21st Century due to greatly increased sea levels. No reference for the number. Anyone projecting such a number, given the great unknowns over the next 92 years must be delusional. And the unexpected numbers he throws around for a carbon tax begin to be in the same vein. Still, it is an notable book, I’d urge you to widely read it; your own outlook might also be slightly altered.