| Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (Vintage) | 
 enlarge | Author: Bjorn Lomborg
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (97 reviews)
Sales Rank: 8667
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 030738652X
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.73874
EAN: 9780307386526
ASIN: 030738652X
Publication Date: August 12, 2008
Release Date: August 12, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A startling book that reshapes the debate about global warming and offers a moderate approach to meeting its challenges.
Bjorn Lomborg argues that many of the elaborate and expensive actions now being considered?the Kyoto Protocol, for example?have a staggering potential cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, but, ultimately, will have little impact on the world's temperature. He suggests that rather than institutionalizing these programs to ?cool? the earth's temperature 100 years from now, we should focus our resources on some of the world's most pressing immediate concerns, such as: fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS, and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply. And he considers why and how this debate has developed an atmosphere in which dissenters are immediately demonized.
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 Bjorn Lomborg and his latest book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming.
  Bjorn 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 92 more reviews...
 "Skeptical" is a good title word October 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Bjorn Lomborg is an intelligent man. He does get a lot of things right. But be wary of his fact-twisting and deception with numbers. Many of the quotes used are taken completely out of context. For more information, check out this link:
http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/coolit.htm
 Cool it, the Sceptical Environmentalist's guide to Global Warming October 16, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I think this book by Prof. Lundberg is quite well written. I enjoyed reading it. He admits that, yes, there is global warming, but no, unlike the global universal consensus, spouted by Al Gore and his acolytes (and not open to discussion) there is ample evidence that this may be a natural phenomenon. Not only that, there may be a positive aspect to global warming, which the doomsday predictors conveniently never mention.
I am glad I purchased this book, and would like to recommend it to anyone who has not succumbed to Gore's siren song: "do you wish to be known as one of those who made life for your children and grandchildren impossible".
Government is the solution ! September 30, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
With the financial system collapsing due to deregulation, greed and irrational hubris, this short book is the latest fad for all who believe government is a problem, not the solution.
Granted, Lomberg admits, "humanity has caused a substantial rise in atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels over the past centuries, thereby contributing to global warming."
His solution? Let's cure AIDs, malaria, hunger and poverty first. Dealing with what we know rather than facing unknown unknowns is a noble approach that has motivated mankind for centuries. When people did not know how to cure smallpox, to cite an example, the alternative was to make the king and nobles uselessly rich and let most peasants live without clean water, sewage disposal and other basic necessities. The impact of global warming is as unknown today as was the cause of smallpox two centuries ago.
Today we need a president in the style of Abraham Lincoln who believed government can do things collectively that people cannot do individually. He was far more rational than modern fools who say taxes are only a form of "greed" and the true key to a better community is personal riches grabbed by any means possible.
Keeping these two ideas in mind, this book is a good analysis of the global warming debate. It is concise (164 pages of text, the rest is notes and sources), beautifully intelligent, blue skies clear and skeptical. No great idea should exist without rigorous challenge, questioning and alternatives. Think of the impact had some "Lomborg" 25 years ago offered similar questions about Reagan's rush to financial deregulation.
Lomborg doesn't deny global warming (the t-shirt mentality says "Al Gore didn't invent the Internet; he did invent Global Warming"). Instead, he suggests cost effective solutions such as carbon dioxide taxes. He'll properly infuriate climate change doers, doubters, deniers and dimbulbs.
Consider: What if Henry Ford was as concerned about pollution as he was about inventing the Model T and the moving assembly line? Or, what if horses were still the favoured means of transport for goods and people? A brilliant innovation may create a problem, but every solution must be dealt with in the context of the problem it solved.
Consider: Bottled water is sold because some people fear "polluted" municipal water. But, what if today's "natural" water was similar to that of 200 years ago when it might contain smallpox (instead of chlorine?) and other bacteria?
Consider: Lomborg raises a string of relevant issues that every intelligent person should consider before plunging into any climate change debate. All in all, this is a fine introduction to pollution, climate change, hype, hysteria and hope.
Consider: As with the financial industry, government is a solution and not the problem.
An incredibly important book September 23, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Well researched and thoughtful. Bjorn Lomborg extracts the issue of global climate change policy from the layers of emotionalism and hysteria in which it is usually wrapped with the skill and precision of a surgeon. In cool, measured logical steps on the basis of well-established research, he elegantly illustrates how best to craft a climate change policy for the real world.
A much welcome, balanced and clear-headed argument September 23, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is excellent in that it is neither written from the point of view of an alarmist nor of a denier. This middle ground is sadly lacking from the climate change debate in this day and age. Non-economists might find the constant cost-benefit analysis somewhat hard to fathom, but there are very few hard-to-understand parts.
Obviously, the science used to justify Lomborg's claims have, and will continue to be, challenged. Nevertheless, it is useful just to point out the danger of climate change hysteria that predominates the media.
My only problem with this book is the disproportionately large section at the back of the book denoted to notes. While this is necessary, it means the book is substantially shorter than it appears. I enjoyed the book and a little disappointed that so much of it is bibliography. But I still highly recommend it.
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