So, does it feel hot out? For some time now, I have been frustrated by the lack of rational thought concerning global warming.
Finally, it seems there is a rational thinker out there.
His name is Bjorn Lomborg, the free-thinking Dane who, in "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (2001), challenged the belief that the environment is going to pieces. Mr. Lomborg is now back with "Cool It," a book brimming with useful facts and common sense. Yay for the guy in the middle!
I have been trying to figure this whole global warming hysteria thing out for some time, and frankly, I am annoyed by Al Gore and his Oscar and his heated mansion pool house, making hay by fear mongering about a flooded New York and too many hurricanes. All hell breaking loose. Help, Chicken Little!
Lomborg believes that global warming is happening, that man has caused it, and that national governments need to act. Yet he also believes that Al Gore is bordering on hysteria, that some global-warming science has been distorted and hyped, and that the Kyoto Protocol and other carbon-reduction schemes are a terrible waste of money. The world needs to think more rationally, he says, about how to tackle this challenge.
Mr. Lomborg starts by doing what he does best: presenting a calm analysis of what today's best science tells us about global warming and its risks. Relying primarily on official statistics, he ticks through the many supposed calamities that will result from a hotter planet -- extreme hurricanes, flooding rivers, malaria, heat deaths, starvation, water shortages. It turns out that, when these problems are looked at from all sides and stripped of the spin, they aren't as worrisome as global-warming alarmists would suggest. In some cases, they even have an upside.
Let me be clear; we need to be very careful stewards of this fragile earth. We also need to be rational, clear headed, and not absorb the latest CNN soundbites as if they are well researched truth.
Finally, it seems there is a rational thinker out there.
His name is Bjorn Lomborg, the free-thinking Dane who, in "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (2001), challenged the belief that the environment is going to pieces. Mr. Lomborg is now back with "Cool It," a book brimming with useful facts and common sense. Yay for the guy in the middle!
I have been trying to figure this whole global warming hysteria thing out for some time, and frankly, I am annoyed by Al Gore and his Oscar and his heated mansion pool house, making hay by fear mongering about a flooded New York and too many hurricanes. All hell breaking loose. Help, Chicken Little!
Lomborg believes that global warming is happening, that man has caused it, and that national governments need to act. Yet he also believes that Al Gore is bordering on hysteria, that some global-warming science has been distorted and hyped, and that the Kyoto Protocol and other carbon-reduction schemes are a terrible waste of money. The world needs to think more rationally, he says, about how to tackle this challenge.
Mr. Lomborg starts by doing what he does best: presenting a calm analysis of what today's best science tells us about global warming and its risks. Relying primarily on official statistics, he ticks through the many supposed calamities that will result from a hotter planet -- extreme hurricanes, flooding rivers, malaria, heat deaths, starvation, water shortages. It turns out that, when these problems are looked at from all sides and stripped of the spin, they aren't as worrisome as global-warming alarmists would suggest. In some cases, they even have an upside.
Let me be clear; we need to be very careful stewards of this fragile earth. We also need to be rational, clear headed, and not absorb the latest CNN soundbites as if they are well researched truth.
