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Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming Hardcover – September 4, 2007


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A groundbreaking book that transforms the debate about global warming by offering a fresh perspective based on human needs as well as environmental concerns.

Bjorn Lomborg argues that many of the elaborate and expensive actions now being considered to stop global warming will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, are often based on emotional rather than strictly scientific assumptions, and may very well have little impact on the world’s temperature for hundreds of years. Rather than starting with the most radical procedures, Lomborg argues that we should first focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS and assuring and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply—which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and save millions of lives within our lifetime. He asks why the debate over climate change has stifled rational dialogue and killed meaningful dissent.

Lomborg presents us with a second generation of thinking on global warming that believes panic is neither warranted nor a constructive place from which to deal with any of humanity’s problems, not just global warming.
Cool It promises to be one of the most talked about and influential books of our time.
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The Amazon Book Review
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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.



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)

Review

“Brimming with useful facts and common sense. . . . [Lomborg presents] a calm analysis of what today’s best science tells us about global warming and its risks. . . . His analysis is smart and refreshing, and it may bridge at least one divide in our too divided culture.” —Kimberley Strassel, Wall Street Journal

Cool It is a highly valuable contribution to the climate-policy literature. In clear and concise prose, Lomborg diagnoses the problems plaguing contemporary climate policy, injecting a needed tonic of realism and common sense into the climate debate. And for that very reason, it is sure to make Lomborg’s critics hot-under-the-collar.” —Jonathan Adler, National Review

“A reasoned addition to the debate about what to do about climate change. And it is sure to provoke just as much controversy as his last book.” —
Esquire

“Bjorn Lomborg is the best-informed and most humane advocate for environmental change in the world today. . . . [He] is only interested in real problems, and he has no patience with media fear-mongering. . . . 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, Amazon.com

“Bjorn Lomborg’s rational and compassionate suggestions would save more lives, preserve more wilderness and have a better chance of eventually halting man-made global warming than hysterical catastrophism, global treaties, and high-minded energy rationing. Read this ingenious book.” —Matt Ridley, author of
The Origins of Virtue

“Lomborg affirms that the planet is warming, but questions why so much of the policy debate is framed around the idea of imminent catastrophe. This book dares to offer straightforward new thinking about how best to respond. Indispensable.” —Clive Crook, associate editor,
Financial Times; senior editor, The Atlantic Monthly

“At last we have a book that puts the hype of global warming into perspective.  Bjorn Lomborg’s eye-opening book,
Cool It, examines and meticulously documents climate change’s effects and proposed solutions. An extraordinarily timely and supremely useful book.” —John Naisbitt, author of Megatrends

“Brilliant! A devastating critique of the prevailing climate change hysteria. This book provides an overwhelming case for re-assessing where exactly our policy priorities should lie if we are genuinely concerned with world welfare rather than with making noble—if futile—gestures that, at best, make us feel good but actually do a lot of harm.” —Wilfred Beckerman, professor emeritus of economics, Oxford University

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Alfred A. Knopf
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 4, 2007
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 253 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307266923
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307266927
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.1 x 1.5 x 7.75 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #442,803 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Bjørn Lomborg
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Dr. Bjorn Lomborg is an academic and the author of the best-selling "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It". He challenges mainstream concerns about development and the environment and points out that we need to focus our limited resources and attention on the smartest solutions first. He is a visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School, and president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center which brings together top economists, including seven Nobel Laureates, to set data-driven priorities for the world.

Follow him on twitter: bjornlomborg

Lomborg is a frequent commentator in print and broadcast media, for outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, CNN, FOX, and the BBC. His monthly column is published in 19 languages, in 30+ newspapers with more than 30 million readers globally.