Very average narration.

Good content but perhaps a little too focused on the economics of the problem.

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2 people found this helpful

Amazing book! Must read!

This book cuts through the BS and all the pretentiousness that surrounds the real problem of climate change. Lots of countries seem to be doing the same things again and again, applying the same policies in order to tackle environmental issues but with little to no real effect, which arguably is the definition of insanity. This book argues that we need to think better (and NOT to stop caring about the environment, like some suggest, misinterpreting the points of the book).

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Paradigm changing insights!

Just like everyone else, I thought the number one thing we needed to do was to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide we are pumping into the air at any cost. Bjorn Lomberg points out the fallacy of this monotheistic religion. I now have a much better understanding of what is required to reduce climate change and improve the lives of everybody on this planet.

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7 people found this helpful

Original and serious

Lomborg is unambiguously convinced that global warming caused by CO2 emissions is a massive and looming problem. He is also very sceptical about the current response - it has failed for 30 years, with CO2 emissions, as we all know, going up rather than coming down. He recognises the problem as seriously, say, Bill Gates, but says the response has got to be the most cost effective we can devise, and that current policies are hugely expensive, are not being adhered to, and are basically focussing much too much on the holy grail of net zero - we are not going to put the CO2 back in the toothpaste tube. The answer is to do what we can on future emissions (low hanging fruit, move away from coal, insulate etc. ) but mostly to adapt to rising temperatures until we can, longer term, get emissions down to zero by innovating on clean energy sources. He has a lot of data to support the idea that we have more time to plan than Extinction Rebellion suggest, wildfires are actually destroying less ground, floods killing less people etc. than a hundred years ago. His main message is that we should be adapting our homes and cities to be more resilient and pouring money into R&D rather than subsidising the roll out of nascent technologies that are only marginally useful at the current time (and will only have, at best, a marginal impact on rising temperatures).

It is refreshing to read because it says there is a solution, don't panic, the 'crisis' is real, but temperature should move at a sufficiently slow pace for us to innovate and adapt - as we did to avoid the looming 'population bomb' and mass starvation predicted in the 1960's. Certainly worth reading as a thoughtful critical take on the current headlong flight towards net-zero.

Narration professional.

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1 person found this helpful

Full of real life context

Understanding the reasons why current policies are disastrous and why the west self indulges while the developing world is held back.

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A bit wonky but super-important perspective

The over-arching theme of this book is as per the title, The global climate situation is real but is being overblown as a risk to humanity. Building dams to keep sea water out, inland dams to keep rain-water and a plethora of other initiatives that never get taken into scientific models, or do but those scenarios get left out in the hysterical press means that humans are in a very good place. Physically at least, and definitely compared to history when a good proportion of our ancestors would get wiped out by drought or flood induced famines. Fires, tsunamis, etc. all follow similar patterns. Heat maybe be rising by a celsius or two, but the falling price of air-conditioning means fewer and fewer people are dying of it every year. And so on and so forth.

The dodgeyness comes in some of the cherry-picking and stats. For example, an area I know well, solar energy he dives back to a 2015 example of a UN special project in India where the locals went nuts and were so upset and enraged by the feeble solar power and battery storage they received that the politicians ended up expediting their connection to the grid for 'real power'. The problem is 2015 is 2-3 doublings away in terms of total rollout and price reduction, so in 2020 solar and lithium battery storage can power fridges and more in rural tropical villages, and most importantly at a fraction of the price of connection to the grid. That said, it's not a perfect solution and I wouldn't swap my gridded connection in the UK for an isolated renewable and storage solution. Not yet. I assume he's made other similar forays in other chapters, but I'm not keen enough in each area to know if he's right or wrong, I've just seen attacks on Twitter about some of them.

What is certain is there's a lot to answer for in the modelling of doomsayers and their media click-bait brethren. This book is an important mental doorlock for anyone who wishes those negative forces to come bashing in.

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11 people found this helpful

other side to the climate coin

I wish this would air on public network. It's the opposite to scaremongering and showed that climate change is serious but that there is also a different side to that coin. I found the reasoning and arguments valid and well explained.

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1 person found this helpful

Great read

Really enjoyable read. I gained a great deal of knowledge and feel much more enlightened on the subject of climate change

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Eye opening

I picked this up as an uninformed person looking to expand my understanding of this global issue. So I picked two books with contrasting opinions. This book smartly addresses the issue by using logical arguments to and reasoning, backing them upwith measurements and continually seeks to understand the top and bottom ends of the effects in question. All in all a very thorough approach.

Conversely, the contrasting book, despite being a top rated book by all accounts, mostly used hypothetical without explaining how the conclusions or numbers were reached.

I believe I now understand while climate change is a serious issue, it is not yet out of our control or ability to change in a way that won't destroy civilisation as we know it.

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Brilliant, but tough as Audible

A must-read for anyone who has every queried the catastrophizing of the likes of Climate 'Crisis'. Well researched, with plenty of optimistic alternative approaches & solutions. My only niggle is just with this as an audiobook - there are clearly a lot of impprtant graphs and figures which is always difficult to convey without the visual - that isn't a fault of the author, more just a bittersweet reality of having to listen to great books like this on the go, but not having the time to sit and see the full data.

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1 person found this helpful