Review: COOL IT–The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming

5 Star, Economics, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions), Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Science & Politics of Science, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity
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5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for the General Reader, Nicely Slams the Hystericals
October 8, 2009
Bjorn Lomborg
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

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