Bjorn Lomborg's "Cool It"

This is the second book, Cool It, by Bjorn Lomborg on global warming. In this book he takes the position that "yes, there is global warming, but let's make the most rational decision -- using economics -- that will benefit humankind". This book will be just as unpopular as his previous book The Skeptical Environmentalist because he does not toe the line that the alarmist insist upon.

Personally, I don't accept the modeling of the global warming crowd. I accept the principal of modeling, but as someone who used computers to model computer system performance I know how easily your assumptions can skew your results. I don't think the science is nailed down to the point where the models can be trusted. I accept that greenhouse gases imply warmer temperatures. Where I have problems is in the accuracy of the predictions.

The fundamental strength of Lomborg's argument is based on interviews he held with experts about priorities. If the priority is maximizing human welfare, then Lomborg is right to question the extremists of the global warming agenda. They are moral absolutists who say "climate change is such a disaster that all other issues pale in comparison". But Lomborg shows by careful reasoning that in fact these extremists build their case by only looking at negatives and never at positives. The are a one-issue crowd that is unwilling to consider alternatives or look at the bigger picture of human welfare. Here's how he puts it:

Global warming is happening; the consequences are important and mostly negative. It will cause more heat deaths, an iincrease in sea level, possibly more intense hurricanes, and more flooding. It will give rise to more malaria, starvation, and poverty. It is therefore not surprising that a vast array of environmental organizations, pundits, and world leaders have concluded that we must act to fix global warming.

The problem with this analysis is that it overlooks a simple but important fact. Cutting CO2 -- even substantially -- will not matter for much of the problems on this list. From polar bears to water scarcity, as we have seen, we can do relatively little with climate policies and a lot more with social policies.

If we claim that our concern lies with people dying from climate effects, as in the European heat wave in 2003, we have to ask ourselves why we are primarily thinking about implementing expensive CO2 cuts, which at best leave future communities warming slightly less quickly, still causing ever more heat deaths. Moreover, as warming will indeed prevent even more cold deaths, we have to ask why we are thinking about an expensive policy that will actually leave more people dead. ...

With Kyoto we can avoid about 140,000 malaria deaths over the century. At one-sixtieth the cost, we can takle malaria directly and avoid eighty-five million deaths. For every time we save one person from malaria death through climate policies, the same money could have saved 36,000 people through better antimalaria policies. Which should be our first mission? ...

Take hunger. Yes, global warming will probably mean more malnourished, but again tackling hunger through cliate policies is simply vastly inefficient. For each person saved from malnutrition through Kyoto, simple policies -- like investing in agricultural research -- could save five thousand people.

With all these choices, we have to ask over and over again, when choosing our generational mission, which policies should come first? We have become fascinated by the big knob of climate change and been sold the idea that if we can just turn this one knob, we can ameliorate most other problems in the world. Yet this is demonstratively false.

I found this bit about politicization of the science of global warming interesting:

Respected -- but skeptical -- climate scientist Richard Lindzen from MIT points out that

scientists who dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds diappear, their work derided, and themselves libeled as industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently, lies about climate change grain credence even when they fly in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.

This complaint of politicization is not isolated. If you look at Lomborg's Wikipedia page you can see how he was hounded by the global climate warming fanatics and "tried" by a science bureaucracy in Denmark and "found guilty" of using deliberately misleading data and reaching flawed conclusions. This was a purely political "decision" because upon appeal to a higher scientific bureaucracy, this "judgement" was annulled because of flawed claims and judgements by the lower level body.

This book is an absolute "must read" to get a balancing viewpoint to counterpoise to the ranting of the global warming catastrophists. I appreciate this book even though I don't accept the assumption it makes that "global warming is real". I think the science is too immature to make that claim. At best, I support the view that greenhouse gases are likely to raise global temperatures, but it is far from decided when and by how much or by what precise mechanisms. To establish huge political commitments on shakey science is foolish. Yes, I support more research, but I personally believe that the era of dependence on fossil fuels is coming to an end. In fifty years time, this hue and cry about "global warming" will have passed.