The debate about climate change is hotter than ever, no matter what climatalogical changes are actually taking place. And now there's a new book to reckon with. Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming is written by Bjorn Lomborg who, in 2004, was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He's written for many publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist, and is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School. And he initiated and runs the Copenhagen Consensus, a conference of top economists who come together to prioritize best solutions for the world’s challenges.

Amusingly but not surprisingly, the comments at B&N and Amazon from reader-reviewers are at wild extremes, no doubt driven by the writers' points of view. In fact, the book urges that the discussion - and resulting actions - must become more rational rather than persisting with the extremes of "it’s a hoax" and "the world is ending tomorrow." To borrow from the publisher's description, the book argues that many of the elaborate and expensive actions currently being utilized to stop global warming will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and often are based on emotional rather than strictly scientific assumptions. Furthermore, and worst of all, many - if not most - of these actions will have very well have little impact on the world’s temperature. He argues that we really need to focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as malaria and HIV/AIDS, and that we need to gain and maintain a safe, fresh water supply - which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and save millions of lives within our lifetime. He laments that the debate over climate change has stifled rational dialogue and killed meaningful dissent. In particular, he asserts that the current yelling and panicking do not establish a constructive place from which to deal with any of humanity’s or the globe's problems, not just global warming. Amen.

In a post today, Seablogger writes about an idea to add pipes to the oceans in order to raise cooler water from the bottom of the seas. He is a long-time, educated, serious and informed student of weather and climate. As for the pipes, it seems evident even to relatively-uninformed me that it's impractical and silly, but Seablogger adds that the most significant argument against it is that "There is absolutely no proof that “global warming” is causing harm at present [because] the fact remains that warming improves the lot of humankind overall." How's that for throwing out something to think about?! He adds that "More people die of cold than heat. A warmer world would be more benign. Climatalogical optimum is probably five to ten degrees warmer than the present temperature." In addition, he says "there is no evidence of anthropogenic warming" and "the actual amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere by humans is trivial, compared with the vast greenhouse of water vapor we inhabit."

Put all that in your pipe (heh) and smoke cool it.

Labels: blogs (others'), reflections, warming, weather