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

by Bjørn Lomborg (Author)

Editorial Reviews

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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From Publishers Weekly
Lomborg, a political scientist and economist with a conservative approach to environmentalism, presents a work that's likely to garner as much acclaim and disdain as his first book, 2001's The Skeptical Environmentalist. This "Guide to Global Warming," while thoroughly referenced and convincingly argued, ignores many climate studies and assumes that climate change will continue at a steady rate (not necessarily the case). From this vantage, Lomborg suggests workable solutions beyond "hysteria and headlong spending," proposing a tax on CO2 "at the economically correct level of about two dollars per ton, or maximally fourteen dollars per ton" and that "all nations should commit themselves to spending 0.05 percent of GDP in R&D of noncarbon-emitting energy technologies." Gross simplification, however, leads to misleading generalizations and questionable arguments, such as Lomborg's claim that a reduction in global cold weather-related deaths that outweighs the rising number of heat-related deaths means global warming is good for humanity. Though he argues passionately, Lomborg's efforts seem more about pushing his opponents' buttons than facing honestly the complexities of global climate change.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1 edition (September 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307266923
• ISBN-13: 978-0307266927
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.9 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (115 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #92,160 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Clever Title, October 29, 2007

By	Glenn Yates (Nashville, TN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What you are getting from this review is a non-scientific analysis of the book, and a summation of the contents. While I taught a year or two of High School Biology in Cheatham County, TN, that probably isn't going to qualify me to sit on the International Global Warming Council anytime soon. I'll try and avoid the observation that it still probably makes me more qualified than a lot of people suddenly making careers out of Global Warming.

The book was not what I expected. I kind of thought, based on the controversy it had generated, that it would be a global warming denial book espousing the glories of capitalism and a desire to turn North America into the new Sahara. Well it is nothing of the sort. The book, whether you agree with the science or not, never argues that global warming is happening nor even that it results to varying degrees from human produced co2. What is argued is that there has become a political, and even hysterical component that has insinuated itself so in the discussion that it has overwhelmed all other argument. Any attempt at debate is met with howls that those bringing up objections are evil incarnate and should be fired, imprisoned, etc. It is an interesting debate technique, and nice work if you can get it, but I'm not sure it's an accepted debating format.

For all the balance the book brings, it probably won't warm hearts on either side. The need for redistribution of wealth is a recurring theme, and his arguments against Kyoto, etc, are more that they are an inefficient means to accomplish this goal, not that they are idealogically mistaken. Much of his analysis also relies heavily on the projection that the next 100 years will produce great wealth across the board. This strikes me as speculative, but then again what about the whole issue is not?

The book is extremely well documented, footnotes comprising almost as much volume as the treatise itself. And treatise might be the word, much is repeated and reiterated, and it has the feel of a lengthy article that was expanded to meet book-length requirements. It doesn't suffer too badly in spite of this, as the author writes pretty well and so much of the material is so outside media template information that it probably requires several presentations of the same facts.

All in all it struck me as balanced, well written, and very logical. One of his major points, that debate has been stifled unfairly, makes one reluctant to criticise for fear of proving his point, but be that as it may it seems a salient observation. It is a quick read, and I'd certainly recommend it as a work that cuts against the grain.

51 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific information and sensible proposals. Well worth reading., October 8, 2007

By	Craig Matteson (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

True believers won't like this book, but anyone who is willing to listen with an open mind and consider multiple points of view will find this book to be a breath of fresh air in the climate change / global warming clash. Bjorn Lomborg is a liberal, a vegetarian, an economist and a passionate environmentalist. Certainly, he is far left of me. He also is convinced that global warming is real, that mankind does have a role in creating it and making it worse, and that we do need to change the way we live in order to improve conditions for all life on the planet. So, why do I like him and find this book very much worth reading?

Because he is sensible in the arguments he makes. Rather than beating the drum of gloom and doom, he looks at the evidence, looks at what we can realistically do, and what it is we can do that will have the most effect. He also pokes holes in the overheated bag-of-wind arguments of the drowning polar bears (more die from hunting), the 20 foot sea rise (it is rising, but no more in the coming century than in the last), and the benefits of Kyoto (basically an attempted $16 trillion tax on the United States that would, after a century, delay global warming by a few years). And he nicely points out that the devastation in New Orleans was NOT because of global warming or because of the hurricane itself, but because of poorly maintained levees and destroyed wetlands that would have provided some protection. He is also right in pointing out that there has been NO increase in the violence of the storms. The critics will point to the vastly increased costs of the storms. But those costs have their roots in the fact that more people are living in these risky areas (partly because of increased wealth and partly because of government subsidies to those experiencing losses in these areas) and are building more costly structures in areas that people mostly avoided in the past.

His emphasis on what we can do that will have the most positive effect for the money spent is terrific. For example, changing the kinds of building materials we use, the amount of concrete and asphalt versus the opening of green space in our cities all make good sense, as does the helping of people in the developing world with micronutrients and controlling malaria. The list of items that experts and politicians recognize as the most pressing issues and the most useful for the money spent (see pages 44 and 162) is most instructive regarding reality versus hype.

Frankly, I think Lomborg calls himself the skeptical environmentalist because it sounds better than the sensible environmentalist. However, he really is sensible and worth listening to whether you end up agreeing with his prescriptions or not.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

236 of 290 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ignore Current Victims, Concentrate on Future Victims?, September 9, 2007

By	T. LAWSON (Vancouver, BC, CANADA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

All Bjørn is saying is that we're doing a heck of a job ignoring our current catastrophes. Anyone remember the Katrina victims? Anyone remember that AIDS hasn't been cured yet? You might want to just sit back, take a breath, and get your priorities in a row.

Before you go and save some lives from the year 2100, you might want to look around and save a few here in 2007. This is like people from 1907 trying to help us with breast cancer. No one knew what a gene was in 1907! I'm sure that the people of 2100 will have both the technology and the smarts to come up with something better than anything we could do.

But change IS happening. The ball is rolling. Things are becoming different. We are on a much better trajectory now than we were ten years ago, as far as cutting pollution is concerned. Nothing we do additionally is going to have much effect, so let's get our priorities straight and save our current victims, our homeless, our hungry, our crappy healthcare system. This is what Bjørn is saying.

The way the environmentalists are attacking Mr. Lomborg is appalling. "Methinks thou dost protest too much." The way they attack his character is like a dog protecting his bone. In this case the bone is a company that sells carbon offsets to the gullible, illiterate fans of eco-celebrities. Do you think Sheryl Crow is sitting at home reading the IPCC report? No, she's playing her guitar. She gets her global warming news from the same place that you do...Access Hollywood.

I'm sure that every negative reviewer here has not even read the book. This is obvious because your arguments for global warming being real are his same arguments! He's not saying it's not happening, he's saying that it's not as horrible as people are being led to believe and that we may have a few years to nip it in the bud, but not by throwing money at various environmental firms. We need to find the companies that are going to get the job done right, and right now it is not Joe Bob's Carbon Offset Emporium at PO Box 119, Santa Barbara, California.

There are too many fishy environmental companies popping up all over the place, so be wary of where your carbon offsets are going. Better yet, let the free marketplace get the technology up to speed while you send your money to AIDS research and building new homes. That's where you can really do some good.

And as far as Michael Crichton is concerned, he might be a novelist, but he's also a brilliant intellect that knows how to read scientific journals. The only thing he doesn't have is an agenda. Crichton is not covered in oil money. He's not trying to sell you anything but novels. Al Gore co-owns a carbon offset firm and an environmental consultancy firm. This is like a cat salesman trying to convince you that you've got a rat infestation. The environmentalists fear that this is their last big chance to have all of their wishes come true, so they're fighting hard to keep you scared. Don't be afraid. Everything will be okay. The only rats that you have are the ones at your door trying to sell you cats.