Bjorn Lomborg's "Cool It"

This is an excellent review of the madness of the Kyoto crowd with its unbridaled enthusiasm for Global Warming.

Lomborg makes the very cogent point that instead of spending trillions to limit the growth of carbon dioxide, you could spend billions and ameliorate people's lives. In other word, accomodate to the growth of greenhouse gases.

This leaves the Global Warming crowd apoplectic. But that is because they draw ridiculously exaggerated pictures of a runaway heat death of Earth. As Lomborg points out. The grim picture is a distortion. Lomborg admits that there is a greenhouse gas effect but argues with facts that the deletrious effects are over-dramatized.

This book is an excellent guide to how to rationally treat the future. Consequently it is a flop. The Chicken Littles don't want to hear that there are economic tradeoffs and rational choices. They want "generational challenges" and a true believer's absolute dedication. They want radical changes not adjustments that calculate a path between alternatives.

My personal view is that Kyoto's "commitments" to cutting carbon dioxide at huge costs to GDP is wrong headed. I believe -- based on no special knowledge -- that alternative energy will grow more cost competitive and a very large chunk of the economy will move away from fossil fuels and greenhouse gases will quietly decrease. My prejudice is that lots of big crusades is an exercise in tilting at windmills. The demanded result occurs over time because "its time has come". The radicals never accept this. They think their all-or-none worldview is the only way to go. But in reality they have simply caught the winds of a change and prematurely tried to bring the change about in a dictatorial way. If they focused on education and encouragement instead of ultimatums and threats, they would in fact hasten the future they want. Right now the Global Warming crowd would be far better off demonstrating for billion dollar investments in research in alternative energy rather than in the political "solution" of Kyoto which mandates quotas.