The Lomborg Deception; Setting the Record Straight About Global Warming

by Howard Friel; Foreword by Thomas E. Lovejoy

• ISBN13: 9780300161038
• ISBN10: 0300161034
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2010-03-16
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

In this major assessment of leading climate-change skeptic Bjorn 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 areasfrom Arctic sea ice to the Antarctic ice sheetThe Lomborg Deceptionalso offers readers an enlightening review of some of today's most urgent climate concerns. Friel's book is the first to respond directly to Lomborg's controversial research as published inThe Skeptical Environmentalist(2001) andCool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming(2007). His close reading of Lomborg's textual claims and supporting footnotes reveals a lengthy list of findings that will rock climate skeptics and their allies in the government and news media, demonstrating that the published peer-reviewed climate science, as assessed mainly by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has had it mostly righteven if somewhat conservatively rightall along. Friel's able defense of Al Gore'sAn Inconvenient Truthagainst Lomborg's repeated attacks is by itself worth an attentive reading.

Author Biography

Howard Friel is an independent scholar and author.  His previous books, The Record of the Paper and Israel-Palestine on Record, both of which were co-authored by Richard Falk, have focused on media criticism. He lives in Northampton, MA.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Author's Note	p. xi
Lomborg's Modus Operandi
2001: A Theorem's Odyssey	p. 3
On Polar Bears	p. 24
On Lomborg's Endnotes	p. 46
Lomborg's Theorem
Global Warming Is "No Catastrophe"	p. 69
On Melting Glaciers and Rising Sea Levels	p. 90
On Greenland and the Missing Figures	p. 117
The Penguins Sidebar	p. 127
On Antarctica and the Larsen-B Ice Shelf	p. 133
On Hurricanes and Extreme Weather Events	p. 148
Malaria in Vermont	p. 160
On Malnutrition	p. 168
On Water Shortages	p. 177
Journalism as Usual
Lomborg's Triple-A Rating	p. 183
How Wrong Was Lomborg?	p. 192
Notes	p. 207
Index	p. 251
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