Cool It!

I had to dig around in the garden/nature section of my local Barnes & Noble to find it, but find it I did, Cool It, The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming by Bjorn Lomborg.

Regular C-SM readers know I keep a copy of Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist by my desk because it is an excellent source book for deflating Greenie shibboleths from shrinking rain forests to species extinction.

The new book annunciates Lomborg's position, and mine. Believe what you will about anthropomorphic global warming -- Lomborg believes it's real -- our focus should be improving the world and humankind, not cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

I just cracked the book in the bath and it's a beaut; short, fast-reading and fact-drenched, so if the topic interests you, BUY THE BOOK. Here's an excerpt:

In its "standard" future scenario, the [United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] predicts the global temperature in 2010 will have risen an average of 4.7 degrees from the current range. But nobody actually lives at the global average. ... Moreover, global warming increases cold temperatures much more than warm temperatures, thus it increases night and winter temperatures much more than day and summer temperatures. The reality of climate change isn't necessarily an unusually fierce summer heat wave. More likely, we may just notice people wearing fewer layers of clothes on a winter evening.

Did you know that? With all the reading I've done on global warming, I didn't. Think for a bit about the policy implications of that fact ... if the policy makers would only accept the fact, instead of buying into the hysteria.

Here's an idea -- instead of buying one copy of Cool It, buy two and send one to the wayward politician of your choice. Myself, I'm going to send one to Schwarzenegger.