Global Warming

July 9, 2009 12:19 PM

Are there any books in the global warming debate, written after 2006, that provide counter arguments to Bjorn Lomborg's views in Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming or Nigel Lawson's An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming?

I am a lay person who needs to read a couple recent (post-2006 copyright) accessible, scientifically/economically respected, well-written, well-reasoned books from the point of view that humans-are-causing-global warming-and-must-reduce CO2 at all costs. Lomborg's and Lawson's books seem to make reasonable arguments on the other side, i.e. that the world is warmer, but not problematically so; humans can adapt; that huge sums of CO2 reduction trillions would be better spent solving problems of a warmer planet.

posted by Elsie to science & nature (4 answers total)

Not a book, but Scientific American covered Lomborg pretty extensively back in 2002. May be of interest to you regardless.
posted by zachlipton at 1:00 PM on July 9, 2009

Also not a book, but this site might interest you, it addresses some of the flaws in Lomborg's books, mostly on The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001) but also in Cool It.
posted by Bangaioh at 1:56 PM on July 9, 2009

Joseph Romm, Hell and High Water.

Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe.

An introductory post a few months ago by Romm on ClimateProgress:

The single biggest failure of messaging by climate scientists (until very recently) has been the failure to explain to the public, opinion makers, and the media that business-as-usual warming results in impacts that are beyond catastrophic. For these impacts, terms like “global warming” and “climate change” are essentially euphemisms. That is why I prefer the term “Hell and High Water.”

Business-as-usual typically means continuing at recent growth rates of carbon dioxide emissions, which we now know would take us to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide greater than 1000 ppm....

The scientific community has spent little time modeling the impacts of a tripling (~830 ppm) or quadrupling (~1100 ppm) carbon dioxide concentrations from preindustrial levels. In part, I think, that’s because they never believed humanity would be so stupid as to ignore the warnings and simply continue on its self-destructive path. In part, they lowballed the difficult-to-model amplifying feedbacks in the carbon cycle.

Romm goes on to summarize current predictions from the scientific literature on the impact of a business-as-usual increase in CO2. To start with, by 2100, average inland temperatures would increase by about 14 degrees F.

On the cost side, the overall economic cost of limiting CO2 emissions would be modest.
posted by russilwvong at 2:57 PM on July 9, 2009

Positive proof of global warming ;)
posted by caddis at 9:24 AM on July 17, 2009