Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 11/19/2010 6:54:34 AM PST by WebFocus
Skeptics of cap-and-trade have found their cinematic answer to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in Bjorn Lomborg’s new documentary, Cool It.
Lomborg, 45, has an innocent-sounding résumé: He is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a Danish think tank that researches cost-effective ways for governments to spend aid money. However, the film begins with clips of scientists denouncing him as a traitor, a parasite, and an idiot. In one shot, Stephen Schneider, the late Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University, tells the camera crew that they’re “not helping the world” by publicizing Lomborg’s efforts.
Although Lomborg believes in global warming, he doubts cap-and-trade is worth its cost. His skepticism is particularly dangerous because he’s not a card-carrying member of the Flat Earth Society. He’s a former member of Greenpeace. He has been a vegetarian since the age of eleven. One time, he and his childhood friends tried to build a windmill so they could renounce fossil fuels altogether.
But when Lomborg started teaching, he stumbled upon Julian Simon’s book The State of Humanity, which argued that, notwithstanding the media’s warnings of Armageddon, human civilization actually had become safer over time. Incensed by Simon’s contention, Lomborg asked some of his students to investigate the book’s claims. After six months of research, they concluded that much of what Simon had written was true.
In 2001, this experience inspired Lomborg to write The Skeptical Environmentalist, in which he debunked many misconceptions about global warming. His book invited scrutiny from the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty, which declared him in breach of “good scientific conduct.” Later, however, Arthur Rorsch, a professor emeritus of molecular genetics at Leiden University, wrote an article in the Journal of Information Ethics that reexamined the book and found that although Lomborg had made some mistakes, he hadn’t been dishonest.
After this introduction to Lomborg — including an endearing but unnecessary tangent on his mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s — the film focuses on a lecture Lomborg gave at Yale University. Lomborg outlines his objections to Gore’s film and suggests different projects for developed countries to tackle. He thanks Gore for “putting [global warming] on the agenda” but warns that “the current approach” — that is, the worldwide agreement to cut carbon emissions — “is broken.” For instance, if every country actually implemented the 1997 Kyoto Treaty — which sought to cut emissions to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012 — it would have cost $180 billion per year and lowered the world’s temperature by only 0.0008 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.
The developing world, meanwhile, is home to great human suffering that — Lomborg claims — we can alleviate more effectively. Lomborg trots across the globe in his ubiquitous black T-shirt and blue jeans, highlighting these pockets of poverty. In Nairobi, Kenya, for instance, Lomborg visits a grammar school and asks the students what they would spend aid money on. A smattering say global warming, but most say health care. When Lomborg visits a well-to-do British school, by contrast, he finds the overwhelming majority of students concerned about global warming. Environmentalism, it seems, is a privilege of the rich.
Lomborg doesn’t condemn environmentalism; he just objects to shoddy arguments. For instance, he rejects the insinuation in An Inconvenient Truth that the greater damage caused by Hurricane Katrina relative to previous storms was the outgrowth of warming in the Gulf of Mexico. True, hurricane damage has increased over the past century, and warmer temperatures do make storms more intense — but the predominant reason for the greater damage is that more people live near the coast.
Lomborg also goes after Gore’s cuddly mascot, the polar bear. Yes, the melting of ice in the Arctic is bad for polar bears, but their population has increased dramatically recently. And had the Kyoto Treaty come to fruition, it would have saved only one polar bear per year. If governments really want to save polar bears, Lomborg reasons, then they should ban hunting them.
As the film ends, Lomborg offers his own policy proposals. He suggests the world spend $100 billion on research and development into renewable energy. Rather than waste money and stifle economic development by implementing a carbon-permit scheme, countries should make renewable energy cheaper. Lomborg mentions more outlandish ideas as well, such as whitening existing clouds to better reflect the sun’s heat. Yet his willingness to think outside the box is welcome.
If Lomborg’s film suffers one flaw, it is its overoptimism in suggesting that global poverty is much easier to solve than global warming. In the final scene, Lomborg is testifying in front of a congressional committee, whose chairman, Democratic representative Jay Inslee, smugly asserts the United States will take care of malaria and other diseases. With a mischievous smile, Lomborg asks, “Why haven’t you solved all these problems?”
We haven’t because, as the film shows, throwing money at a problem doesn’t solve it.
— Brian Bolduc is a William F. Buckley Jr. Fellow at the National Review Institute.
I heard an interview with the writer on the radio. They guy’s postion was that Global Warming exists and we should offer up more reasonable solutions.
No thanks! It’s a lie.
The world is Warming at times and Cooling at times. It goes through climactic cycles. What we ought to ask ourselves is this — ARE WE HUMANS CAUSING IT?
Based on what I’ve read thus far, I would have to say “NO”.
There isn’t a darn thing we can do about it. All we must do is learn to adapt.
I read Lomborg’s second book, which is titled “Cool It!” just like the movie. He is a socialist, no doubt about it. And he doesn’t doubt that the earth is getting warmer.
He does doubt the Al Gore scare stories, and he doesn’t think there is a cost-effective way to stop the warming. So his solutions are to adapt to the climate changes and the slight increase in ocean levels which he believes will occur. And then impose more taxes on people (including a carbon tax of some sort) and spend the money for social causes rather than trying to change the weather. Of course, he would want all of the developed countries to foot the bill for this.
That was my impression as well. So why do all the conservative outlets feel the need to promote this film?
$$$$$$$$
Not one Global Warmer has bothered to inform the public where, exactly, Mother Gaia is in these cycles, which operate over 100s of thousands of years.
There are three cyclical factors:
(1) Earth's orbit around the Sun changes from the very nearly circular to the extremely elliptical. Right now, we are in a closer-to-the-sun phase
(2) The axial tilt cycle of the Earth changes to present different regions more directly to the Sun.
(3) Precessional cycles, i.e., the poles actually wobble, as does a spinning top. combined with axial tilt, this changes how much Solar Energy reaches us.
Milankovitch combined what we know of glaciation history with the Earth's position relative to the Sun. The theory has long since been substantiated For example, as European glaciers retreat, archaeologists discover many lost settlements from a warmer era. Oetzi the Iceman was running through an alpine forest, not a glacier valley!
In fact, relative to our position in the Milankovitch Cycle(s), glaciers probably ought to be melting at a FASTER rate than they actually are.
In addition, we are in a period of very moderate Solar Activity.
What it all means is that Earth is in a period during which seasonal differences in the hemisphere ought to lessen, mainly observable in warmer winters. The opposite would be true in the other hemisphere.
To ignore the Milankovitch Cycles and Solar Activity in any discussion of Climate Change makes that discussion specious. To allocate public money to "correct" them, insane.
www.scribd.com › Research › Science
Ought we to be aware of the changes in Climate and study them? O sure. But while we can react to them, we can't change them or stop them.
In the 1970's and 1960s, these same politically correct "scientists" were worried about "Global Cooling." What the left has done is succeeded in corrupting the public mind by conflating "Pollution" with "Dangerous Climate Change." "Pollution" is bad. Unfortunately for their case, it would seem it has nothing to do with global climate.
I will vote ...twice ... for the first Republican who has the nerve to say, as has said Vaclav Havel, the President of the former CzechoSlovakia, "Global Warming is nonsense."
My daughter went through the usual mandatory view of Al Gore’s INCONVENIENT TRUTH in her Junior class two years ago.
After the Gore propaganda film, they had to discuss and present ways we can all contribute in our daily lives to prevent the disaster that Gore was predicting in his film.
I just wrote a letter to the principal of her high school and asked him if he was going to balance the Gore film by presenting a mandatory view of the film ‘COOL IT’ in his school.
I’m not holding my breath for a positive reply...
National Review=conservative outlets feel=Compassionate Conservative=Non-Conservatives=
Progressive Republican=Mitt-a-Roney, Maverick McCain, etc.
Agreed. I think the radio interview that I heard was on Medved. Who I have a growing disdain for each day.
Lomborg doesn’t condemn environmentalism; he just objects to shoddy arguments. For instance, he rejects the insinuation in An Inconvenient Truth that the greater damage caused by Hurricane Katrina relative to previous storms was the outgrowth of warming in the Gulf of Mexico. True, hurricane damage has increased over the past century, and warmer temperatures do make storms more intense — but the predominant reason for the greater damage is that more people live near the coast.Let us not forget Al Gore in October 2005, shortly after Katrina struck the gulf coast, whining in a speech to a Sierra Club gathering that the Army Corps of Engineers didn't do a good enough job on the levees to protect N.O.
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