Excellent for the General Reader, Nicely Slams the HystericalsI 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
