Global Warming and Common Sense (NY times review)

From LA Times http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-cool-it-20101112,0,273 7605.story

Just how inculcated the precepts of filmmaker Davis Guggenheim's Oscar-winning "An Inconvenient Truth" have become is laid out in the artwork and answers of a classroom of articulate elementary school kids in Britain that Timoner uses to open the film. Their hand-drawn paintings of an Earth mostly covered by water, dying penguins and massive deserts pretty much sum up the current consensus on the toll of unchecked global warming. Their solutions will sound just as familiar: recycling, carbon offsetting, hybrid cars, a lot of light bulb replacement and, as one puts it, "I pray a lot."

The one site with deranged commenters, NY Times.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/cool-climate-film-takes-o n-truth/

Reason Magazine: Bjørn Lomborg fights the forces of climate hysteria in the new documentary Cool It.
http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/11/some-really-inconvenient-truth

The Danish environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg is not one of these people [alarmists]. True, he does believe that global warming exists, that human beings are at least partly responsible for it, and that something must be done. But in his two contrarian books, The Skeptical Enviromentalist (published in English in 2001) and Cool It (2007), Lomborg argues that the strategies employed over the last two decades—the speculative ecological horror stories, the vast siphonings of money into the cause—are outdated and ineffectual. Like the late free-market environmentalist Julian Simon, whose theories launched his own journey away from alarmism, Lomborg believes that human ingenuity is the key to planetary improvement. And now, in Ondi Timoner’s provocative new documentary, also called Cool It, Lomborg travels the world to make that case in a most persuasive way.

Just like all cults, the Greens demonize reason.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/253579/cool-dispassionate-reaso n-brian-bolduc

Lomborg, 45, has an innocent-sounding résumé: He is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a Danish think tank that researches cost-effective ways for governments to spend aid money. However, the film begins with clips of scientists denouncing him as a traitor, a parasite, and an idiot. In one shot, Stephen Schneider, the late Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University, tells the camera crew that they’re “not helping the world” by publicizing Lomborg’s efforts

Another great review. Too bad the film was not widely distributed. Hope TV picks it up.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/9960/

So, if the world is going to get warmer, what’s the solution? On the one hand, we have the schizophrenic responses of greens, scientists and policymakers who either believe we must have hairshirt solutions involving significant cuts in living standards (as Neil Davenport discusses elsewhere on spiked today) or we must accept that it’s too late and anyone with any sense should take to the hills to live in a teepee. On the other hand, there are those – usually pejoratively labelled ‘climate deniers’ – who believe the problem is grossly exaggerated, many of whom see the entire discussion as a way to introduce state socialism by the back door.
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The great benefit of Lomborg’s work in recent years is that he categorically refuses to treat the issue of climate change as a moral crusade, instead approaching it as a practical problem. This distinguishes him both from greens, who use the climate-change problem to hector humanity about its hubris and force us all to live meeker, less stuff-filled lives, and also from many in the sceptical lobby, who seriously believe that in taking on environmentalists they are battling against a great big conspiracy of socialists disguised as polar bear-loving hippies. As climate negotiators in Mexico waste another two weeks – and an awful lot of money on flights and hotel bills – banging their collective heads against a brick wall, a policy proposal that puts its faith in humanity’s ability to innovate and to solve problems seems a far better option than trying to grind out a miserable deal to limit development.