Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) |  | Author: Bjorn Lomborg
Publisher: Vintage
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Rating:  120 reviews
Sales Rank: 23987
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 030738652X
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.73874
EAN: 9780307386526
ASIN: 030738652X
Publication Date: August 12, 2008
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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.
  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 Lomborgs 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, Lomborgs 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 books greatest value. Lomborg and Cool It are our best guides to our shared environmental future. --Michael Crichton (photo credit: Jonathan Exley)
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 consideredâthe Kyoto Protocol, for exampleâhave 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 âcoolâ 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.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 120
 A must-read for serious environmentalists October 20, 2009
Landon's Mom (Tacoma, WA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I started reading this book thinking I'd get a few chuckles over the manipulations of fact and common-sense that clearly show the need for drastic action today to curb greenhouse gas emissions. What I got instead was a thoughtful dissection of the issue that left me questioning many of my own assumptions. I now find myself asking far more questions when reading magazine articles or news stories on this issue. If you're serious about wanting to do the right thing for our planet and the children we bring forth to inhabit it, this is a must-read. Lomborg makes a strong case that the feel-good policies so popular today may actually harm both our planet and its people over the long run. His book hasn't changed my mind or commitment about environmental issues, but rather, it broadened my understanding of other effective ways to tackle the challenges of climate change.
Excellent book for policymakers in challenging the conventional wisdom on what to do regarding global warming October 17, 2009
Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (Irvine, CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bjorn Lomborg doesn't dispute that mankind is causing global warming in "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming." Having accepted current majority opinion on global warming, Lomborg move quickly on to discuss what should be done about it. His conclusion: adapt.
In adapting to global warming or "climate change," Lomborg isn't advocating giving up, but rather engaging in rigorous cost/benefit analysis. In doing so, he raises startling points: that global warming will actually save lives as many times more people die of exposure to cold every year than to heat; that the best way to "save" polar bears is not to hunt them, rather than shut down the world's advanced economies; that wealth allows for better adaptation to climate than poverty; and that current schemes to reduce the world's temperature (i.e., cap-and-trade) will not work at all.
As a policymaker who advocates modern nuclear power for a number of reasons (low emissions, reliability, fossil fuel replacement), I found Lomborg's book refreshing and well-written. That the environmental left's global warming prescriptions wouldn't actually solve the problem they purport to be worried about calls into question their motives - motives that have more to do with control of the economy and people's lives than the environment.
Reviewer: Chuck DeVore is a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2010, a California State Assemblyman, he served as a Special Assistant for Foreign Affairs in the Department of Defense from 1986 to 1988, retired from the Army National Guard as a lieutenant colonel, and is the co-author of "China Attacks."
Excellent for the General Reader, Nicely Slams the Hystericals October 8, 2009
Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I must acknowledge that I appreciated this book all the more for first having read Global Crises, Global Solutions as edited by Lomborg (37 contributors), but I do NOT recommend the latter book--read my summary review instead. This book I most definitely recommend for anyone of any age. By the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, this is now the most current and fluid means of coming up to speed on the relative importance of climate change versus other global crises such as infectious disease and a lack of access to clean water.
It is the best available critique of why cutting carbon emissions is NOT the best focus for remediation of global crises, and most certainly not the best way to spend our money. The cost benefit is simply NOT THERE.
I am impressed by the flow of this book and some of the bottom line figures:
1) Each dollar spent in Denmark of climate change yields less than half a cent in benefits for the world at large
2) If these funds were applied to reducing disease so as to increase human productivity, the returns would be enormous
3) Kyoto Treaty, if implemented perfectly, would delay global warming by SEVEN DAYS
4) Sea Level might rise by no more than five inches in the year 2050
5) Money spent on hunger EIGHT TIMES more beneficial to humanity than similar amounts spent on climate change.
6) $4 billion a year gives one billion people clean water and 2.5 billion people sanitation capabilities that reduce disease
7) Precautioinary principle cuts both ways--we can eliminate most traffic costs by reducing speed, but that reduction would come with other costs in the way of slowed commerce, etc.
Over-all the book concludes that we have lost the ability to have sensible dialog across economic, scientific, and political lines.
I like this book. There is a need to expand this dialog beyond economists (these are the guys that assume a can opener when presented with a can of food), but one has to give credit to the author for surviving a global witch hunt and having the last word on Gore's tombstone...."Hysteric showboat."
Other books I recommend:
The Future of Life
Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (Substantially Revised)
The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, and Terrorist Disasters
Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World
 Poorly written book September 9, 2009
EB
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
I got this book because I tend to the tree hugger / lower c02, etc. side of the spectrum. I wanted to find a book that laid out the other side coherently to be more well rounded.
My big problem with this book is his writing and case making style more than his content. Remember, I wanted to see the other side's content.
Some problems:
- He hates the Kyoto agreement. This isn't a problem by itself, but after a hundred mentions or so, my eyes glaze over at the repetion. He needs a lot more angles than to say it is financially inefficient. In my last sentence, I stated his position. He goes on for 160 pages.
- He makes false arguments. Let me make one up that is typical of his arguments: "Kyoto costs $1 to reduce 1 case of malaria. It takes $0.001 for a mosquito net that will reduce the same case." I have to take his arguments as accurate because I don't have the numbers, but he makes an argument of similar style time and time again. After a while, I got to feel Kyoto wasn't so bad because it fixed so many things a little bit. I'm sure that wasn't his intention, and he never addresses it. I'm not claiming this makes Kyoto cost effective, but he misrepresents its total value by examining only a small part of it.
- His numbers are inaccurate. "Such a program for LLA - involving planting 11M trees, reroofing most of the 5Mhomes, and painting 1/4 of the roads -- would have a onetime cos of ~$1 billion." This guy has never paid for a home roof (I have). Doing just the roofs at $1B would cost ($1B / 5M houses) $200 a house. This is a joke. And planting 11M trees and painting 1/4 of the roads? He never even looked at his numbers. I can't imagine what his other numbers hold.
I think this book could be an interesting book at 25 pages with a good editor, but I guess nobody buys 25 page books.
An important read among the global warming hysteria August 10, 2009
G. Perera (Perth, Australia)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Bjorn Lomborg's second mainstream book (The Skeptical Environmentalist, which I haven't read, was the first) is stunningly good.
I first came across Lomborg in his presentation at a TED conference, where he makes a compelling argument for not making global warming one of our highest global priorities. More recently, I watched him interviewed by Tony Jones on ABC's Lateline, and that prompted me to buy his book.
Lomborg has a simple point: Yes, global warming is a problem, but it's not a catastrophe; and we can help far more people (the same people who'll be most affected by global warming) far more effectively for far less money by doing other things.
Naturally, this approach makes him a target from policy makers, greenies, politicians and others who've jumped on the global warming band-wagon - especially those who see a carbon tax as the only option. But he seems unfazed, and sticks to his simple - and compelling - message.
For example ...
Yes, global warming will mean more people will die from malaria in the next 100 years. But for a fraction of the cost of taxing carbon, we can prevent a lot more people dying from malaria in the next 10 years.
Yes, global warming will cause more floods. But for a fraction of the cost of taxing carbon, we can do more to prevent flood damage.
Yes, global warming will affect poorer nations more than wealthy nations. But for a fraction of the cost of taxing carbon, we can make those nations wealthy enough to manage those problems.
He's most compelling because he doesn't try to make other people wrong (except blatant scaremongers, like Al Gore). Yes, he says, the climate scientists are right in warning us of the dangers of global warming. And yes, they will say it's an urgent problem to fix. And yes, in an ideal world with unlimited resources, we'd address all the problems. But in a world with scarce resources, we prioritise. And he's saying we're prioritising wrongly.
He's not a "global warming denier" (although some critics wrongly say he is), so don't read this book if you want to read that global warming isn't real, or isn't human-made. Do read this book if you want a better perspective on the whole global warming issue, especially if you currently think it's the most important issue facing the planet today. According to Lomborg, it's not - by a long way.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 120
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