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Title: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming
ISBN: 0307266923
Author:
Bj??rn Lomborg
Publicate Date: 2007-09-04
Publish: 2007-09-04
List Price: $21.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $10.75
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $8.75
Amazon Merchant Price: $14.28
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| Customer Review: |
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1: he has the right idea
He has the right idea in that we need to be looking at climate change in terms of costs and benefits. Not in terms of the hysterics that we are force fed daily.
Are all his facts and numbers correct? I don't know. I've seen some webpages that have gone through point-by-point and refuted Lomborgs claims. Lomberg supposedly has rebuttals (though they're in Danish).
Regardless I like and buy the gist of Lomborg's argument: there are things we can do in the short run to mitigate the adverse effects of global warming. These measures are vastly cheaper than Kyoto and high carbon taxes (for one, let's not subsidize people to live in hurricane prone areas...duh). Expensive carbon taxing can make us much worse off than global warming. Killing our economies is not the answer. In the long run, Lomborg proposes that sufficient R&D could give us solutions to our energy needs. Thus we should fund R&D on a massive scale.
The author takes anthropogenic global warming to be a given. Whether he actually believes that to be the case or is just making the claim for the sake of argument, I'm not sure. However, this is not a book about whether anthropogenic GW is true or not - it's about the costs and benefits of stopping GW.
This book is 'footnoted' but not in a convenient or transparent way. And I think this is awful. You have no idea where footnotes are unless you peer into the Notes section in the back. I have no idea why this is done.
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2: Convincing But Needs Paleontological Perspective
In COOL IT, Professor Lomborg approaches the global warming controversy by admitting that global warming is real, may in fact be caused in part by recent human activity, but no, global warming is not the End Of Days as predicted by Al Gore. Lomborg takes the hydra-headed Green Peace monolith of global warming and analyzes it in ways that have caused some environmentalists to tag him and others of his ilk as climate deniers, the operative word "deniers" meant to resonate with those who seek to assail true Holocaust deniers. Lomborg suggests that recent attempts to reduce the amount of CO2 in the air as exemplified by the failure of the ratification of the 1997 Kyoto Protocols cannot work as hyped because the cost is too high and the benefit is too low. When I first began to read about Kyoto years ago, I believed the hype that we today are too selfish to reduce our standard of living so that our children and grandchildren can live on a planet with moderate, life-sustaining climate. It was only recently that I learned the United States had good reason to refuse to ratify Kyoto. Lomborg succintly summarizes these reasons as follows: (1) The cost to implement Kyoto would be so staggeringly high that no nation would willingly agree to subsidize the attempt. (2) The benefit would be so miniscule that given the cost of the buck, the "bang" is unacceptable. (3) Lomborg urges society to consider the novel idea that global warming might actually be good for many societies that would benefit from higher temperatures. and (4) there are more efficient ways to alleviate human suffering other than by tossing trillions of dollars down the financial black hole of a global warming that has been appropriated for political agendas by the left. Lomborg's conclusion that we need to focus on R & D as the key is a compelling one. I have a criticism that Lomborg might seek to address in future editions. His entire analysis is relentlessly optimistic only because he considers recent human history vis a vis global warming. What of global warming's very long history of plaguing life on earth over the last few hundred million years? In UNDER A GREEN SKY, Peter Ward considers how global warming has been the catalyst for several mass extinctions, the most severe of which concluded the Permian Period some 230 million years ago. Ward notes that the very oceans turned toxic, pumping noxious fumes into the air until the skies above became tinged with green. If Professor Lomborg were to consider the unhappy lot of the Permian reptiles, his thesis of optimism concerning global warming might then be more palatable. Still, COOL IT is required reading, if for no other reason than to counter the annoying Al Gore and his phony Pultizer.
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3: Cherry Picks Facts, Doesn't Understand the Science
This book seemed reasonable until I started investigating what climate scientists think. For a more informed opinion, see Hell and High Water: Global Warming--the Solution and the Politics--and What We Should Do. Also, read Joseph Romm at ClimateProgress web site and for some real meat go to RealClimate web site. You can look up the actual web site addresses in Google.
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4: Thoughtful Action
The author believes in Man-caused Global Warming. However, rather than reflectively go along with the majority of that group, he demonstrates that their course of action will do little to stem the warming.
He concludes that the better approach is to use the same (or less) amount of money to help people in the developing world. The overall increase in human welfare will then allow the people to adapt to the warmer world.
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5: Excellent Book
This book is very well thought out and documented. I totally enjoyed it...especially the fact that global warming will actually result in a net saving of lives rather than loss.
Also, I enjoyed the practical economic solutions such as not encouraging building near the seashore. Time to stop state and federal government flood (& wind) subsidies for expensive beach homes.
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