The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming

On the trip to DC I read Bjorn Lomborg's new book. It is called Cool It - the Skeptical Environmenatlist's Guide to Global Warming. On the whole I think it is a real contribution to the discussion on this issue.

Lomborg has some choice lines in the book including these. "Kyoto unfortunately has become the symbol of opposition to a United States uninterested in the opinions of the rest of the world. Thus, Kyoto has received political resuscitation without being seriously questioned for its efficiency or achievability. And this is the real issue: Kyoto is at the same time impossibly ambitious and yet environmentally inconsequential. It attempts to change century old energy patterns in fifteen years, ending up costing a fortune and delivering almost nothing." Or "The last global warming fear was the inquisition," he then goes on to offer a bit of history about the burning of witches who were thought to have influenced changes in the climate during the period of the inquisition. The fervor that some of the proponents of the theories are almost Torquemadaesque.

Not surprisingly the book has generated a lot of heat but I also think it generates some light. Tim Flannery, for the Washington Post, hyperventilated a bit about the book, he dismissed Lomborg as a "darling of those who believe that markets should not be regulated and that concerns about the environment are overblown." Chris Mooney(BA English, but with a long record of writing about science issues) at Desmogblog commented "Lomborg seems to ignore worst-case scenarios and precautionary thinking. Although he spends much time discussing how societal changes--the moving of persons and property into harm's way--make us increasingly vulnerable to hurricanes, he fails to seriously consider the idea that when you add global warming to said societal changes, the result could be a double whammy." Jonathan Adler at National Review wrote a pretty positive review. Salon's review was basically negative. They comment "By ignoring the vast uncertainty underlying these forecasts, and every alternative outcome except his preferred "moderate" warming scenario, "Cool It" reduces to an uninteresting discussion of why folks alive today should choose 4.7 degrees of warming rather than 4.4 as the optimal outcome for our grandkids." MIchael Critchon, in his review, said the book "will further enhance Lomborg’s reputation for global analysis and thoughtful response. For anyone who wants an overview of the global warming debate from an objective source, this brief text is a perfect place to start." So the responses come out about where one would expect them to be.

The real question for me about global warming is what kinds of lenses we should use to look at the problem. The major proponents of the theories seem to argue that a good deal of the issues we face in this area are somehow cumulative. i.e. The issues are so interactive that unless we take their solutions evil stuff will occur. Like the economist that they emulate (Malthus) these kinds of predictive models are most often wrong - but more importantly the costs of coming up to the standards that many would have us do may exceed any bounds of rationality - even if the worst case does occur. Even with that, doing nothing does not seem like a good idea.

What I liked about Lomborg's approach is a clear headed approach to a complex issue where many people seem to want to express an opinion without a scientific basis. Does a 4.7 degree increase in temperature mean that all temperatures are going to go up by that amount or something different? Lomborg suggests the latter.

What are the suggestions that Lomborg has? First, he suggests that all of us take a deep breath. It is too bad that many of his critics did not do that. Second, he suggests that some small changes are going to be a lot more effective than the common wisdom. I am not sure I agree with all of his ideas but I think they mostly make a lot of sense.