536

When I just finished this book, I wanted to marry Bjørn Lomborg. Finally someone speaks my mind. Not only about global warming *chuckle* I mean, climate change per se, but also in context with other immediate problems we're (as humankind) facing. But as usual, when I just love a book too much, especially nonfiction book, I try to tone it down a little by reading bad reviews of it. I'm too lazy to do a synopsis so I just copy it from wikipedia:

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming is a book by the Danish statistician and political scientist Bjørn Lomborg. The book is a sequel to The Skeptical Environmentalist (first published in Danish in 1998), which in English translation brought the author to world attention. Lomborg argues that many of the elaborate and expensive actions being considered to stop global warming will cost hundreds of billions of dollars without the same return on investment, often are based on emotional rather than strictly scientific assumptions, and may have very little impact on the world's temperature for centuries. Lomborg concludes that a limited carbon tax is needed in the First World as well as subsidies from the First World to the Third World to help fight ongoing humanitarian crises.

I agree with Lomborg's main points. Global warming/climate change is real and is a problem (well actually I'm still trying to find out, but for the sake of argument, just put it like that). Even so, there are both negative and positive effects of it. With a true economist point of view, he argued that we have to take the most of the positive effects and minimize the negative effects. And despite the alarmists', well, alarms, climate change is not as apocalyptic as 'the end of the world as we know it'. In fact, there are lots of more immediate problems with greater impacts than climate change, such as diseases and malnutrition (and if you think that global warming make diseases such as malaria become easier to spread, Lomborg had his argument, which I agreed, but it's a little bit complicated to write it here). Furthermore, he argued that most of the negative effects can be tackled by other alternatives at the cost much lower than reducing CO2 (or simply 'Kyoto').

And of course, as a (sort of) scientist, I'm totally agree with more fund for R&D on low carbon energy ::evilscientistgrin::

Anyway, the one and two stars reviews also have point. He's not convincing enough. Well, this is not a textbook but sometimes I think he could do better to make his data look more solid.

The title of the book is meant for the policy maker as well for us laypeople, but I think the main target are the alarmists. Come to think of it, maybe I love this book because it countered Al Gore so many times. When I first watched An Inconvenient Truth some four years ago, I thought it was a very good movie with a strong message. As I got older and wiser, I can't stomach the movie anymore. It's simply horrible. It mixes facts with guesses and moral superiority. And as a (one-time) documentary filmmaker, I know which parts are total craps. Really. Can't. Stomach. It.

So I don't want to marry Bjørn Lomborg anymore (even before I read this). But I still think it's a good book. I gave it four stars in goodreads. Go get it. Or get an economist boyfriend and have him get the book #sleepytalk

Nighty night, folks.