Yes, it’s just a book, but it’s a book that is going to have an impact on the public debate. Look at the sales numbers for this book: On September 23rd at 7:05 PM EDT, Amazon.com reported that Cool It was the 85th most popular book of all the books the company was selling at that moment.

And the book topped Amazon’s lists for books in these 3 important categories of public debate over global warming:
#1 in Books > Science > Earth Sciences > Climatology > Climate Changes
#1 in Books > Outdoors & Nature > Environment > Conservation
#1 in Books > Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Political Science > Public Policy

This website is focused on Lomborg’s book because the book shows us what arguments the opponents of taking action on global warming think are the most effective in today’s world. By teasing out these arguments, we can “reverse engineer” the millions of dollars in polling and market research which right-wing think tanks have done to discover the rhetorical weak points in the public debate over global warming.

Lomborg represents a new generation of deniers. The first generation denied that global warming was happening at all. When too much evidence came in, 2nd generation deniers appeared. They argued that global warming was happening, but that human activities had nothing to do with. The evidence has overwhelmed this position. Now we have Lomborg pioneering a 3rd generation denial argument. He says global warming is happening, human activities are at least in part responsible, but that the threat of global warming is over-rated, and might even be good for us.

I am only interested in Lomborg as a metaphor, and as a marketing vehicle.  I have no interest in demonizing him, since he is really only a role player in a drama which dwarfs the roles of all but a very few key decision makers, who fall into two not mutually exclusive groups: first, the people who manage the flow of funds to think tanks to produce the appearance of intellectual rigor for global deniers; and second, the people who manage the flow of funds to elected officials and candidates who act to prevent or slow down action against global warming. To the extent that there is personal information about Lomborg on this site, it has to do with his role, not his personality or his personal morals.

I believe that the overwhelming and ever-increasing body of scientific knowledge shows that global warming is taking place, that human activities are increasing the rate of global warming, and that the failure to stop global warming will cause large, unpredictable, and potentially devastating changes in the atmosphere and on the earth. As for my own environmental and political policy background, I was vice president for communications at the Worldwatch Institute in the late 1990s, research director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and interactive media director at the Democratic National Committee. I was active in the antinuclear power movement in New England in the late 1970s (the Clamshell Alliance), and the nuclear freeze movement in the early 1980s. In 1982, I won the National Council of Teachers of English George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language for Nukespeak: Nuclear Language, Myths, and Mindset, a book I co-authored for Sierra Club Books with Stephen Hilgartner and Rory O'Connor.

I base my views on the overwhelming scientific consensus that global warming is a very serious problem. This consensus has become stronger as more data have come in, as demonstrated in the most recent updates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC’s reports are based on input from a broad range of disciplines and go through a rigorous peer-review process, a process that is inherently conservative, in the sense of eliminating extreme examples on which there is no scientific consensus.

The fundamental misleading argument in Lomborg’s analysis is his assertion of a phony “center” or “middle” occupied by the clear-thinking author, surrounded to his left by people who want to take immediate action against global warming (“extremists”), and to his right by people who deny that global warming is happening (“deniers.”). The metaphor suggests an old-time balance beam, with Lomborg balancing carefully in the middle between equal but opposing forces.

But in science, one is looking not for balance, but for the best possible explanation of the phenomenon at hand. If the evidence suggests that global warming is happening, then in the end, there is no “center” no “middle” position. Lomborg’s use of this metaphor has the effect of confusing his readers, because only a small number of scientists disagree with the IPCC consensus that global warming requires our species to make an unprecedented effort to stop before we cause irreparable damage to the entire planet.

For this one, I’m going to ask you to read a piece I wrote in 2002 while I was at the Worldwatch Institute, when Lomborg had just burst onto the scene with the publication of his first book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Lomborg took on almost all of the major environmental issues at the time, claiming that his reading of the data (he was a statistician) revealed that the planet was in much better shape than the environmental groups would have us believe. Scientists from the various fields blasted Lomborg’s claims. Scientific American even put out a special issue taking Lomborg to task. Click here to read “Media Sheep: How did The Skeptical Environmentalist pull the wool over the eyes of so many editors?"

The image of polar bears setting out in the open ocean towards ice floes too far for them to reach has become the most emotionally powerful image of global warming and the horror of the massive extinction of species that global warming will accelerate.

Given the power of the drowned polar bear metaphor, Lomborg had to disarm this image first to protect the rest of his arguments.

Lomborg cites studies showing that the number of polar bears has increased from 5,000 in the 1960s to 25,000 today, a gain he attributes to “stricter hunting regulation.” As sea ice disappears, polar bears “may eventually decline, though dramatic declines seem unlikely.” He quotes a single Canadian government polar-bear biologist, who tells Lomborg that polar bears “are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at the present.” And as for the photos of floating dead bears, “Actually, there was a single sighting of four dead bears the day after ‘an abrupt windstorm’ in an area housing one of the increasing bear populations.”