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The Skeptical Environmentalist challenges widely held beliefs that the environmental situation is getting worse and worse. The author, himself a former member of Greenpeace, is critical of the way in which many environmental organisations make selective and misleading use of the scientific evidence. Using the best available statistical information from internationally recognised research institutes, Bjørn Lomborg systematically examines a range of major environmental problems that feature prominently in headline news across the world. His arguments are presented in non-technical, accessible language and are carefully backed up by over 2500 footnotes allowing readers to check sources for themselves. Concluding that there are more reasons for optimism than pessimism, Bjørn Lomborg stresses the need for clear-headed prioritisation of resources to tackle real, not imagined problems. The Skeptical Environmentalist offers readers a non-partisan stocktaking exercise that serves as a useful corrective to the more alarmist accounts favoured by campaign groups and the media.
An “essential” (Times UK) and “meticulously researched” (Forbes) book by “the skeptical environmentalist” argues that panic over climate change is causing more harm than good Hurricanes batter our coasts. Wildfires rage across the American West. Glaciers collapse in the Artic. Politicians, activists, and the media espouse a common message: climate change is destroying the planet, and we must take drastic action immediately to stop it. Children panic about their future, and adults wonder if it is even ethical to bring new life into the world. Enough, argues bestselling author Bjorn Lomborg. Climate change is real, but it's not the apocalyptic threat that we've been told it is. Projections of Earth's imminent demise are based on bad science and even worse economics. In panic, world leaders have committed to wildly expensive but largely ineffective policies that hamper growth and crowd out more pressing investments in human capital, from immunization to education. False Alarm will convince you that everything you think about climate change is wrong -- and points the way toward making the world a vastly better, if slightly warmer, place for us all.
Bjorn Lomborg argues that many of the elaborate and staggeringly expensive actions now being considered to meet the challenges of global warming ultimately will have little impact on the world’s temperature. He suggests that rather than focusing on ineffective solutions that will cost us trillions of dollars over the coming decades, we should be looking for smarter, more cost-effective approaches (such as massively increasing our commitment to green energy R&D) that will allow us to deal not only with climate change but also with other pressing global concerns, such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. And he considers why and how this debate has fostered an atmosphere in which dissenters are immediately demonized.
There are often blanket claims that the world is facing more problems than ever but there is a lack of empirical data to show where things have deteriorated or in fact improved. In this book, some of the world's leading economists discuss ten problems that have blighted human development, ranging from malnutrition, education, and climate change, to trade barriers and armed conflicts. Costs of the problems are quantified in percent of GDP, giving readers a unique opportunity to understand the development of each problem over the past century and the likely development into the middle of this century, and to compare the size of the challenges. For example: how bad was air pollution in 1900? How has it deteriorated and what about the future? Did climate change cost more than malnutrition in 2010? This pioneering initiative to provide answers to many of these questions will undoubtedly spark debate amongst a wide readership.
In this major assessment of leading climate-change skeptic Bjørn Lomborg, Howard Friel meticulously deconstructs the Danish statistician’s claim that global warming is “no catastrophe” by exposing the systematic misrepresentations and partial accounting that are at the core of climate skepticism. His detailed analysis serves not only as a guide to reading the global warming skeptics, but also as a model for assessing the state of climate science. With attention to the complexities of climate-related phenomena across a range of areas—from Arctic sea ice to the Antarctic ice sheet—The Lomborg Deception also offers readers an enlightening review of some of today’s most urgent clima...
The world has many pressing problems. Thanks to the efforts of governments, NGOs, and individual activists there is no shortage of ideas for resolving them. However, even if all governments were willing to spend more money on solving the problems, we cannot do it all at once. We have to prioritize; and in order to do this we need a better sense of the costs and benefits of each 'solution'. This book offers a rigorous overview of twenty-three of the world's biggest problems relating to the environment, governance, economics, and health and population. Leading economists provide a short survey of the analysis and sketch out policy solutions for which they provide cost-benefit ratios. A unique feature is the provision of freely downloadable software which allows readers to make their own cost-benefit calculations for spending money to make the world a better place.
Este livro é um resumo produzido a partir da obra original. A mudança climática é real, mas não é o fim do mundo. Não é sequer nosso maior problema ambiental. Michael Shellenberger tem lutado por um planeta mais verde por décadas. Ajudou a salvar as últimas sequoias ameaçadas do mundo, co-criou o que seria o predecessor do atual Novo Acordo Verde (Green New Deal), além de, juntamente com cientistas climáticos e ativistas, liderar uma ação bem sucedida para manter as usinas nucleares funcionando, assim evitando os famosos "picos de emissão". Porém, em 2019, enquanto se alegava que "bilhões de pessoas iriam morrer", o que contribuiu para uma ampla crise de ansiedade ― inclu...
Global warming has become one of the permanent concerns of our time, with ever stronger calls to combat it via drastic programs, like the Kyoto Protocol. In this highly controversial book, Bjorn Lomborg (author of the bestselling The Skeptical Environmentalist) claims that the arguments for such action are little more than scare mongering and exposes this wide range of disinformation. Global warming is happening. It's a serious and important problem and we need to deal with it in a responsible way. But in order to do so effectively, Lomborg argues we need to look at the cost and benefits of the proposed measures against global warming. He demonstrates that drastic, here-and-now measures is the worst way to spend our money. Climate change is a 100-year problem - we should not try to fix it in 10 years. This important book explodes myths and places the global warming debate into a broader view.
In this book leading economists evaluate how the world can best spend money to combat the world's biggest problems.
From Simon & Schuster, This Book Needs No Title is Raymond Smullyan's budget of living paradoxes—the author of What is the Name of This Book? Including eighty paradoxes, logical labyrinths, and intriguing enigmas progress from light fables and fancies to challenging Zen exercises and a novella and probe the timeless questions of philosophy and life.