False Alarm
environmentalist" argues that panic over climate change is causing more harm than good Hurricanes batter our coasts. Wildfires rage across the American West. Glaciers collapse in the Artic. Politicians, activists, and the media espouse a common message: climate change is destroying the planet, and we must take drastic action immediately to stop it. Children panic about their future, and adults wonder if it is even ethical to bring new life into the world. Enough, argues bestselling author Bjorn Lomborg. Climate change is real, but it's not the apocalyptic threat that we've been told it is. Projections of Earth's imminent demise are based on bad science and even worse economics. In panic, world leaders have committed to wildly expensive but largely ineffective policies that hamper growth and crowd out more pressing investments in human capital, from immunization to education. False Alarm will convince you that everything you think about climate change is wrong -- and points the way toward making the world a vastly better, if slightly warmer, place for us all.
Stats for nerds
6recommend
13mentions
12people
2020–2026years
46% recommend54% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- No, it is a realistic approach to a problem which has been facing many places elsewhere in the world where it has been solved using engineering. It is far more apt to call climate doom predictions statements of religious faith given the history of engineering solutions to climate-related problems and the close resemblance of climate doom preachers to those deriving their prophecies from scripture.
Here's a few books on the subject which might be of interest for those who want to widen their view on the ever-changing climate. All of them have in common that they do not deny the climate is changing nor that human activities influence how it changes. Where they differ from the doom narrative is that they approach climate change in the way humans have dealt with other environmental problems to lessen or negate their impact instead of by preaching some grand narrative on how society should be run to avoid catastrophe.
Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger
https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Never-Environmental-Alarmi...
False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet by Bjorn Lomborg
https://www.amazon.com/False-Alarm-Climate-Change-Trillions/...
Unsettled (Updated and Expanded Edition): What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters by Steven E. Koonin
https://www.amazon.com/Unsettled-Updated-Expanded-Climate-Sc...
- I agree with you on several levels, what we call “exceptional” is entirely dependent on the metric we choose. Every species excels in its niche, and human exceptionalism is just our own preferred framing. It's fair to say it often functions like supremacism: a belief in our moral or functional superiority over other life forms.
That said, in a world of scarce resources and competition, tribalism and “team-thinking” are not bugs, but features, evolutionary tools for survival. From that lens, human supremacism isn’t a moral claim, but a pragmatic stance: of course we prioritize our own species. We are team human.
As for whether we're destroying the planet, it's a complex picture. I'd recommend False Alarm by Bjorn Lomborg, it pushes back against overly apocalyptic assumptions and argues that while climate change is real and serious, we're not necessarily headed for collapse. Doesn't excuse inaction, but does complicate the narrative.
- An enlightening book I read on this topic is "False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet" by Bjorn Lomborg.
The book explores the cost of: doing nothing to fight climate change vs doing everything to fight climate change vs doing something in the middle that optimizes global GDP (the book uses GDP as a "human welfare" metric).
My biggest take away from the book is that regardless of global temperature increases through the end of the century, global GDP is still projected to grow A TON. But because of the temperature increase, global GCP will grow _slightly_ less (like a few % less) that it otherwise would have. The wrong policies could cost GDP growth more than the temperature increase will.
- I'm fairly sure it is not. Climate change is actually a good example, it has been blown out of all proportions by both politicians as well as media which has led a large number of children and young adults to start worrying whether they will have a future at all before they will die from starvation/drowning/heat shock/fill-in-the-blanks. Slightly older young adults state they do not want to get children "since they will not have a future on a dying planet", all being egged on by "Extinction Rebellion"-like prophets of doom in the media.
They are your children so it is your responsibility to make sure they learn to separate panic porn and propaganda from believable prognoses on things like war, natural phenomena, changing climate and its ramifications and more. Get some books on the subject - Michael Shellenberger's "Apocalypse Never", Bjørn Lomborg's "False Alarm", Steven Koonin's "Unsettled" and read up on the facts and fictional narratives around the subject of the changing climate. If you are not in panic-mode they are far less likely to be pulled into the fable of a climate-induced eschaton. Teach them critical thinking skills - that is true critical thinking, not "critical theory" thinking which is actually the opposite of what I'm getting at. Help them on their way of navigating through the rapids of their formative years and they'll be stronger and more self-reliant on the other side.
- I've traveled through that land for years, in both Europe as well as north-America, because of my studies (majored in forestry) but mostly because I like to be out and about. I live on a farm in Sweden, a country which stands to gain a sizeable amount of profitable crop area if the envisioned temperature increase comes about. The same is, as said, true for Russia and, yes, Canada.
Get off the panic porn and broaden your mind. Read some other authors, e.g. Schellenberger's Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, Lomborg's False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet, Koonin's Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters just to name a few. Read them critically (as in "using your critical facilities", not "through the lens of critical theory") but keep your mind open for the possibility that those authors - environmentalists all of them - are on to something which has been covered under thick layers of ideology.
I won't link to those books, you can find them anywhere books are to be had. The library is a good starting point, otherwise some local book store.
- I have an oil furnace and two gasoline-powered cars, as do tens of millions of Americans, and I hope my bank is funding businesses based on their solvency, not a political agenda. The people who want to eliminate fossil fuels should read a book such as Bjorn Lomborg's "False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet" (2020).
