Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Vintage)

Product Description:
A startling book that reshapes the debate about global warming and offers a moderate approach to meeting its challenges.

Bjorn Lomborg argues that many of the elaborate and expensive actions now being considered—the Kyoto Protocol, for example—have a staggering potential cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, but, ultimately, will have little impact on the world's temperature. He suggests that rather than institutionalizing these programs to “cool” the earth's temperature 100 years from now, we should focus our resources on some of the world's most pressing immediate concerns, such as: fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS, and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply. And he considers why and how this debate has developed an atmosphere in which dissenters are immediately demonized.

Amazon.com Review:
Amazon.com Guest Reviewer: Michael Crichton
In his many science-themed bestsellers--including The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Prey, and most recently, Next--Michael Crichton has covered everything from genetically engineered dinosaurs to time travel to nantechnology run amok. Having cast his own views on the dangers and hysteria surrounding global warming with State of Fear, he turns his pen toward the often controversial Bjørn Lomborg and his latest book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming.

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Bjørn Lomborg is the best-informed and most humane advocate for environmental change in the world today. In contrast to other figures that promote a single issue while ignoring others, Lomborg views the globe as a whole, studies all the problems we face, ranks them, and determines how best, and in what order, we should address them.His first book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, established the importance of a fact-based approach.With later books, Global Crises, Global Solutions and How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place, this mild-mannered Danish statistician has steadily gained new converts.Not surprisingly, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming will further enhance Lomborg’s reputation for global analysis and thoughtful response. For anyone who wants an overview of the global warming debate from an objective source, this brief text is a perfect place to start.Lomborg is only interested in real problems, and he has no patience with media fear-mongering; he begins by dispatching the myth of the endangered polar bears, showing that this Disneyesque cartoon has no relevance to the real world where polar bear populations are in fact increasing.Lomborg considers the issue in detail, citing sources from Al Gore to the World Wildlife Fund, then demonstrating that polar bear populations have actually increased five fold since the 1960s.

Lomborg then works his way through the concerns we hear so much about: higher temperatures, heat deaths, species extinctions, the cost of cutting carbon, the technology to do it.Lomborg believes firmly in climate change--despite his critics, he's no denier--but his fact-based approach, grounded in economic analyses, leads him again and again to a different view.He reviews published estimates of the cost of climate change, and the cost of addressing it, and concludes that "we actually end up paying more for a partial solution than the cost of the entire problem.That is a bad deal."

In some of the most disturbing chapters, Lomborg recounts what leading climate figures have said about anyone who questions the orthodoxy, thus demonstrating the illiberal, antidemocratic tone of the current debate.Lomborg himself takes the larger view, explaining in detail why the tone of hysteria is inappropriate to addressing the problems we face.

In the end, Lomborg’s concerns embrace the planet.He contrasts our concern for climate with other concerns such as HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, and providing clean water to the world.In the end, his ability to put climate in a global perspective is perhaps the book’s greatest value. Lomborg and Cool It are our best guides to our shared environmental future.

--Michael Crichton

(photo credit: Jonathan Exley)

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Customer Reviews

Rating: - The Copenhagen interpretation of climate change
Lomborg's main points are very plain, and he conveniently summarizes them at the beginning of the book:

1. Global warming is real and man-made.
2. Claims about the dramatic consequences of climate change are exaggerated.
3. We need smarter solutions to climate change than Kyoto.
4. Many other issues are more important than global warming.

Part of Lomborg's analysis is true, but part of it is very misguided. Comparing the different chapters it seems to me ... Read More
Rating: - Accusations of Scientific Dishonesty
1. Here's one half of the story:

On January 6, 2003, the DCSD cited The Skeptical Environmentalist (Lomborg's previous book) for:

- Fabrication of data;
- Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
- Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
- Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
- Plagiarism;
- Deliberate misinterpretation of others' results.

2.Sounds like a serious criticism of Dr. Lomborg, doesn't ... Read More
Rating: - Would be scientific dishonesty . . . if there were anything scientific about it
The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty found Lomborg to have
1. fabricated data
2. selectively discarded results he didn't like
3. deliberately mislead with his use of statistical methods
4. plagiarized other sources
5. deliberately misinterpreted others' results.

Lomborg is up to this again, but the right-wing in the US still embraces him just as it embraces "intelligent design" or "creation science". Their pseudo-science serves their political ends.
Rating: - Assuming AGR is real, what's the best thing to do about it.
I found Mr. Lomborg's book, Cool It, to be an enjoyable and educational read.He discusses anthropomorphic (man made) global warming (AGW) from the standpoint that it is true.Although I am not convinced of this myself, it does allow him to write about AGW purely as an economic issue, without arguing about the science of climate and CO2's potential impact upon it.
He proceeds to discuss Kyoto's proposed management of AGR and the devastating effect it will have on the world's economy. The minimal ... Read More
Rating: - Lomborgism, or how I learned to stop worrying and love Global Warming
This seems like a good time to revisit Lomborgism, and this 2007 book written for the mass market is an excellent introduction. Everyone could benefit from reading it, but better apply the same skepticism with which Lomborg castigates the more lurid fringes of Global Warming apocalypticism.

This is an entertaining read, full of fascinating observations driven by the numbers, but it clearly errs on the side of minimizing global warming, given recent data. Take just two simple Lomborgisms: Polar ... Read More