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False Alarm

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False Alarm : How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet (2020) by Bjørn Lomborg is Lomborg's latest book. The gay vegetarian Dane who accepts the IPCC consensus and proposes a carbon tax sets off some environmentalists like few others. His latest book is his second about Climate Change after 2007's Cool It. Lomborg's main points are that the impact of Climate Change is often exaggerated and that the current mitigation strategies are unwise.
It's worth noting that there are clearly already people who have written or given a rating to the book without having read it on Goodreads merely to slander Lomborg. It might be better to look at Amazon where reviewers are more likely to have actually read the book.
In False Alarm Lomborg extensively uses official data, IPCC results and other quality predictions about how much Climate Change has and is going to cost. This includes the work of William Nordhaus who won the Economics Prize in honour of Alfred Nobel for his work on Climate Change Economics.
Lomborg has updated his work from Cool It to include the latest results on how the impact of weather related disasters has reduced as a percentage of GDP over the past 40 years and also how the fatalities as a result of extreme weather have collapsed since the 1920s, going from 500K then to 25K today while global populations have increased from ~2B To 7.8B today. There is also fascinating data on how much US fire there has been from 1920 when records started being kept to today. Lomborg also points out that getting richer and adapting better to changes in sea level and extreme weather events works. For poor countries especially an extra thousand or two dollars of income per year enables much better climate resistance.
Climate Change has been seen as a problem now for over 30 years and so the strategies that have been employed since 1990 can now be examined. Here Lomborg looks at the how the various treaties have gone. The Rio, then Kyoto treaties promises and then the failed attempt at Copenhagen and now the raft of promises made in Paris are examined. Lomborg points out that carbon intensity hasn't even fallen. Germany's Energiewende is pointed out to be staggeringly expensive at hundreds of billions of Euros and due to a recent drive against nuclear is no longer even reducing emissions much. Lomborg makes the point that subsidies renewables has not gone well.
Lomborg proposes that a low carbon tax should be levied. He also proposes that far more money should be spent on energy research. He suggests spending on better energy storage, improved nuclear technology and as a last resort on climate engineering. Here Lomborg has changed his views on when climate engineering should be engaged in.
False Alarm is a very interesting read for anyone who wants a different take on Climate Change to that espoused by some environmentalists. Lomborg believes that Climate Change is happening and the recent changes are driven by human C02 emissions but the severity of the crisis has been exaggerated and humanity's ability to respond has been severely underestimated. He also points out that the current response to Climate Change is unwise and isn't working.

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Even though I do not agree with the author's opinion, this was an interesting book. The author's argument was laid out in a manner that made the reader understand their passion for the subject. I try to read books with different points of view from myself and this one was a really interesting one.

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Bjorn Lomborg made waves in 1990s with The Skeptical Environmentalist, bucking against the conventional wisdom of environmental alarmists. His new book False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet updates this message. Global warming and environmental issues are not easy issues, but Lomborg has a rather simple message.

First of all, Lomborg is not a "climate change denier" who hates science and rejects the mainstream scientific consensus that the earth is warming. His message is this: "climate change is real," and "global warming is mostly caused by humans," but "fears of a climate apocalypse are unfounded. Global warming is real, but it is not the end of the world."

Lomborg wants scientists and their willing accomplices in the press to dial back the panic, and put in place policies and strategies that will actually address problems related to global warming, not waste money trying to reduce carbon emissions. Most policies designed to address carbon emissions are exceedingly costly with minimal impact on temperature change. For example, on the question of rising ocean levels and the risk of low-lying areas being permanently flooded, Lomborg argues that the cost of building dikes and flood control measures is minuscule compared to losses from any potential flooding. Similarly, when a drought or famine occurs, many will respond by calling on reduced carbon emissions to address warming, but the impact of those measures is insignificant, and a much smaller investment can address poverty and food production in affected areas.

But the larger point is that the alarmists are simply wrong about the impact of global warming. "Deaths caused by climate-related disasters have declined precipitously over the past century." "Is extreme weather causing more damage to human life? The answer is a resounding no." "The incidence of flooding is not on the rise, nor is there any evidence that global warming has led to more floods." And when the media and scientists promote an alarmist perspective, it "leads to policies that while well intentioned, crowd out much more effective ways of helping people."

The ways we have tried to address climate change have not been effective. Lomborg concludes that "today's popular climate change policies of rolling out solar panels and wind turbines have insidious effects; they push up energy costs, hurt the poor, cut emissions ineffectively, and put us on an unsustainable pathway where taxpayers are eventually likely to revolt. Instead, we need to invest in innovation, smart carbon taxes, R&D into geoengineering, and adaptation." His perspective also places the human condition at the center. "We can improve the human condition far more by opening the world to free trade, ending tuberculosis, and ensuring access to nutrition, contraception, health, education, and technology."

Lomborg rejects mainstream responses to global warming while accepting the mainstream view that global warming is a real, man-made problem with serious consequences. He just wants the scientific and public policy decision makers to stop and examine the costs and benefits of policies they promote. To many are costly and ineffective. To him, the problem is not simply that resources are being wasted, but that diverting funds from "opportunities we have to improve life for billions of people" is "morally wrong." I wish I had confidence that U.S. political and thought leaders shared this perspective.


Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the complimentary electronic review copy!

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As an actuary, I was taught to make risk-based calculations into the future using a three-stage approach: assiduously gather all data; carefully analyze all aspects; and reach conclusions. "False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet" came to me with great promise because, like many non-scientists, I need to "judge" the massively complex science of global warming because ... well, because the fate of my grandchildren depends upon it. My political actions should be based on science and analysis, and certainly not "panicky." I'm using to reading polemics on the broad subject of climate change, and I enjoy polar views expressed with zest, but what bothered me immediately with "False Alarm" was that it purports to not be a polemic but to tell us what the science reveals, yet its methodology is clearly shallow and unscientific. What made my reading task even harder was that Lomborg, a political scientist (is it possible that his specialty has blinded him to proper analysis?), writes cleanly and cogently; I could easily have been swept up. But as I walked carefully through the text, it quickly became clear to me that my first precept - to assiduously gather data - was not being met, as the author nitpicks data points out of context, snipes away at the edges of climate science (one of his favored techniques, no doubt familiar from politics, is to use one scientist's discomfort with another's conclusions to invalidate the established scientific view; it staggered me to see him using quotes from IPCC reports to discredit "extreme alarmism" while never referring to IPCC's increasingly alarmed prognostications for the future of Earth and humanity under global warming; again and again, he did not absorb the IPCC data but cherry-picked random bits that appealed to his political message), decries alarmism, generalizes about humanity's historical ability to mitigate, and then concludes some vague, slow-paced action in the future will make things all right. Let me make myself clear: I wanted to find gems of hope in this book but inordinate time spent reading his elegant prose in depth failed to find anything but a travesty of process. No doubt well meaning, Lomborg has ignored most of four decades of scientific research, has teased out some interesting analysis that fails to elucidate what the science says, and has recommended no future action beyond reassuring mitigation platitudes. If only, I sighed to myself, he had called the book "Don't Listen to Science: Trust in Optimism" ... then I might have enjoyed the read and recommended it. But for a book that claims to explain the science (and economics, don't get me started on his work there), "False Alarm" is genuinely dangerous and I recommend you avoid it. Overall, I rate it 1/10 (avoiding 0/10 due to stylistic elegance).

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In this uncertain time of Covid19 - this book is helpful. Yes the Climate is changing, but it has been over hyped and used for people to exploit - in an effort to line their pockets - and also used as a weapon of fear, so that people pay attention and worry (thus sending them to the people exploiting it).
While this book is sometimes dry, it takes a non-biased look at Climate Change. The reader will walk away feeling more in control and better about our time here on this wonderful planet.

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Well-researched and verified investigation. Offers reality instead of rhetoric and common sense solutions. Should be required reading in high schools and colleges.
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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