Cool It

[Amazon Link]

A few weeks back I took Granite Geek to task for misrepresenting recent remarks by Bjorn Lomborg, famous thorn in the side for climate-change fearmongers, noting that GG paid a lot more attention to what Lomborg's adversaries allege about him than what Lomborg is actually saying.

It then occurred to me that I was kind of guilty of the same thing, never having read any of Lomborg's books. So I got on over the the University Near Here's library and checked this one out. It's good!

Lomborg, it should be noted, is not a global warming skeptic. He accepts the notion that increasing greenhouse gas levels is fueling an increase in overall global temperature. But he notes that the "solution" pushed by the mainstream warmists, drastic worldwide mandated reductions in CO2 emissions, is unwarranted. Such a policy is fantastically expensive, and not particularly effective in warding off the worst effects of warming.

Instead, Lomborg argues, we should concentrate on remedies with a better bang-per-buck (not just in the climate change area): fighting third-world malaria, HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, and a lack of clean drinking water. Some of these will have a positive effect on mitigating warming effects; they're all a lot cheaper, and will save more lives, than draconian CO2 restrictions.

I'm a little more skeptical than Lomborg on the anthropogenic warming story; certainly the recent Climategate revelations didn't help. I'm a lot more skeptical in Lomborg's blithe notion that shoving $N billion into one end of the R&D pipe will reliably produce innovations coming out the other.

That said, however, Lomborg is a welcome voice of sanity in the whole climate debate field. He's a calm critic of sensationalism and hysterical overstatements from Planet Gore; he's convincing that it's a perfect storm of bad science, bad politics, and bad economics.

Oh, and not to mention some very sick puppies. Lomborg's title Cool It is meant to apply both to temperature and intemperate rhetoric. Obviously some didn't get that message.

Last Modified 2012-10-02 2:11 PM EDT