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Blog of Adam Daifallah -- author, journalist, law student. Lover of politics, writing, golf, curling, fitness, fashion, bacon and maple products -- not necessarily (but probably) in that order. Partisan of the Anglosphere. Contact me via email at adam@daifallah.com. This summer I am joined by Keir Wilmut and Omar Soliman.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Cooling it
My former boss Jonathan Kay, who has been on a tear of late, is back again with more great stuff -- this time debunking the anti-Harper/pro-Kyoto tirades of Michael Byers, a UBC academic who is barely worthy of that appellation. To debunk Byers' hysteria, Kay invokes points brought up by Bjorn Lomborg in his hot new book (no pun intended), Cool It.
I saw Lomborg give a presentation about the book on Friday in Montreal. Here's the Coles Notes version: global warming is real and it is man made. That argument is over. Yes, we should try to stop it, but Kyoto sucks as a means of doing so.
He backs up his arguments with studies and facts, noting that, for example, many fewer people will die from the cold as a result of global warming than will die from the heat, resulting in fewer net human deaths each year. Lomborg tries to ween us off the greenhouse gas-reduction obsession and offers common sense prescriptions that would do much more for humanity and the planet such as investing more in malaria nets in Africa and making solar power cheaper. As Kay notes:
Reading Byers, I shudder to imagine that this is the level of analysis that informs our nation. One hopes that the people who actually make decisions about climate change in this country — Mr. Harper and his environment minister, John Baird, spring to mind — are also finding the time to read authors like Lomborg, who actually care enough about what they’re writing about to crunch the numbers. They are the real humanitarians.
Read the whole thing.
(Via Joanne's Journey.)
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 12:15 AM
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