"False Alarm:
How Climate
Change Panic
Costs Us Trillions,
Hurts the Poor,
and Fails to
Fix the Planet"
by Bjorn Lomborg
(Basic Books, $30)
"Lukewarmers" are the worst
climate alarmists because
they try to sound reasonable
with a compromise position.
They basically say
climate change
is a serious
man made problem
that must be solved,
but there's no emergency.
That's wrong.
The climate on our
planet has been
improving since
20,000 years ago,
when Canada,
Chicago and Detroit
were covered with
ice glaciers.
Those glaciers were
melted by 10,000
years ago, and climate
reconstructions claim
the climate was slightly
warmer than now.
Climate change
is what
our planet does.
And has done
for 4.5 billion years.
We know from ice
core studies that
we tend to have
a few warmer
than usual
than usual
centuries,
followed by
followed by
several cooler
than usual
centuries.
than usual
centuries.
The current
warming trend
started in the
late 1600s.
Burning fossil fuels
didn't start that warming,
and we have no idea
how much of that
warming was caused
by man made CO2.
We have no idea
what the future climate
will be, nor can anyone
declare that future
global warming
MUST BE bad news
... after past warming
has been good news!
A Danish political economist
named Bjorn Lomborg published
his first book on the environment,
The Skeptical Environmentalist,
in 2001.
The book argued
that environmental
organizations,
including
Greenpeace,
overhyped
environmental
problems.
It was a best-seller.
A decade after praising
The Skeptical Environmentalist,
Rolling Stone placed Lomborg
on a list of “12 Politicians and
Execs Blocking Progress
on Global Warming,”
along with Rex Tillerson
and the Koch brothers.
False Alarm,
by Lomborg,
argues that
environmentalists
have exaggerated
climate change
in pursuit of
an ideological
agenda.
Lomborg rejects
that we have
only twelve years
to stop climate change
... and that climate change
threatens human extinction.
Both claims are wild,
science-free, leftist
speculations based on
meaningless computer
games.
Lomborg argues
“climate change is
a moderate problem
in a sea of problems,
big and small.”
More important to him
are childhood malnutrition,
gender inequality, and
infectious disease.
Gender inequality ?
In False Alarm, Lomborg
advocates a carbon tax,
research into
geo-engineering,
“dramatically ramping up
spending on green R&D,”
and various mechanisms
for international aid
to boost economic growth
in low-income countries
to “make people richer.”
Lomborg pours cold water
on the overheated rhetoric
of climate activists.
That's the good news.
But he completely fails
to persuade people
that global warming
has been a problem
for the past 325 years,
or that future warming,
(assuming the warming
trend continues),
will be harmful at all.
The actual warming
since 1975 has been
mainly in higher colder
latitudes, mainly during
the six coldest months
of the year, and
mainly at night --
how harmful are
warmer winter nights
in Alaska ?
If you want to talk about
climate solutions,
then you must first
prove there is
a climate problem.
Asserting that
you KNOW
the future climate,
which is not true,
and that the future
climate HAS TO BE
bad news, is not
real science.
"Lukewarmers" and
other climate alarmists
claim they KNOW the
future climate,
after 50 years
of proving computer
models can only
make WRONG
climate predictions.
They claim
the ever changing
climate on our planet
was "normal" in the
1700s, and any change
since then is bad news.
That is complete nonsense !