Under the Bravado, Cool It Is a Complex and Exciting New Documentary

Bjorn Lomborg has been called a global warming denier, a traitor, an idiot, and a parasite, mostly because he wrote a best-selling book (printed in English in 2001) called The Skeptical Environmentalist that infuriated climate change activists across the globe.

The Skeptical Environmentalist sought to convince its readers that claims about the causes and impacts of global warming were either greatly exaggerated or outright false. The accusations that Lomborg was a "global warming denier" were justified then, but are not anymore.

Today, Lomborg is on a rampage trying to convince us how to invest in alternative energies. He's irate that we're currently spending $250 billion on green energy initiatives that will reduce global temperatures by only "one-tenth of a degree by the end of the century."

If you Google Bjorn Lomborg's name you'll see that the man sounds like a broken record stuck on the same song: Al Gore and environmentalists are trying to scare the sh*t out of us about climate change, and their "hysteria" not only "blocks clear thinking," but (worse?) misdirects billions of dollars into alternative energy projects that won't even begin to solve the problem.

"We're wasting our money on the people who shout the loudest." Thus begins an exciting new documentary on Bjorn Lomborg's quest to refocus our attention on funding new alternative energy development projects. The film promises to show how Lomborg, in stark contrast to loudmouth environmentalists, is a clear-thinking rationalist with new answers about how to combat global warming -- if only people would listen.

But Lomborg, and the filmmaker, Ondi Timoner, start off the film with some scare tactics of their own. As the opening credits roll, we see pictures of the earth drawn by children, and hear their voices saying, "The animals and trees are going to die, and the whole world is going to be underwater or a desert." They're accusing Al Gore of fear-mongering, and this is how the film begins?

The trailer of Cool It does some fear-mongering of its own

But once that chord has been struck, the film moves quickly into showing us a variety of exciting new ways to create alternative energy. Many of the methods the film explores are both innovative and affordable, like "urban cooling," which involves painting rooftops and other black surfaces white, or "water splitting," which is a kind of artificial photosynthesis that stores solar energy in fuel cells.

But some of the methods Lomborg explores sound absurd, like the one that proposes to float a hose attached to a series of balloons fifteen miles into the stratosphere to release a cloud of sulphur dioxide to diffuse the sun's rays. This idea was modeled on a volcano that went off in Iceland in 1783, that made the following winter disproportionately cold. In the film, we hear an enthusiastic scientist tell us that to implement this sulphur-spraying hose would not only be quick and affordable, but that a two-inch hose would cool an entire hemisphere.

I don't have the expertise to say whether or not these experiments will work, but I will say that it was a lot of fun watching the film explain them to me. This is the part of the documentary that's worth watching. The whole song and dance about how Al Gore is a propagandist -- and especially the claims that humanity as a whole is doing better and better every year -- strike me as both presumptuous and dangerously unproductive, but if you can get past that bluster, you're in for a treat.

 

Comments

[OneVoiceInACrowd]

03:41 PM on 11/17/2010

I haven't watched the movie, maybe I will (convince me?). However, it seems to me that the ideas mentioned above have all been around for quite some time. Using solar energy to crack the water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen and then storing the hydrogen for re-use later in a fuel cell, well is a great idea and there are already people doing this- the issue is the feasibility of making millions of fuel cells, although bloom energy seems to have found a way to do it cheaply. Painting roof tops and asphalt white is right out of Sec Chu's play book. So is the launching of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere (although this mitigation effort nor that of the white asphalt address the acidification in the oceans issue one iota.)

So maybe he is bringing awareness to these ideas, ok great, but seems to me Al Gore brought awareness to the entire issue as well. Seems more plausible to me that he is just regurgitating ideas for attention. Well looks like he has another 15 minutes of fame.

[sabelmouse]

12:54 PM on 11/17/2010

just because it's funny
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/oct/21/bjorn-lomborg-cool-it-review

[Minolta]

12:39 PM on 11/17/2010

I'm not sure anyone really believes in man caused global warming anymore. It was a great tool for socialists which is why they so fanatically embraced it and wrapped it around their entire agenda.

But now it's gone. The public voted that out on Nov 2. Now there will be no carbon tax, no redistribution of wealth, no insane destruction of our economy to "even the global playing field".

[OneVoiceInACrowd]

03:42 PM on 11/17/2010

Is that what you use for every issue you don't agree with?

[Robert David Steele]

08:42 AM on 11/17/2010

This is a really great post and I am quite pleased--and a little ashamed of myself for being so hard on him in reviewing his first big book. Like Al Gore, he made some mistakes with data and got hit hard with it, but unlike Al Gore, he's kept his scientific integrity and was never about making himself wealthy. He may be our best antidote to Maurice Strong's climate carbon fraud. The bottom line is that we need public intelligence in the public interest, because both governments and corporations are straight up fraud-buckets. Below URLs are all related to your work.

http://www.phibetaiota.net/2002/01/the-skeptical-environmentalist-measuring-the-real-state-of-the-world/

http://www.phibetaiota.net/2009/10/review-the-resilient-earth-science-global-warming-and-the-future-of-humanity/

http://www.phibetaiota.net/2010/07/?p=27027 [reviews on climate change]

http://www.phibetaiota.net/2010/07/?p=27036 [reviews on environmental degradation]

[Hunter Stuart]

09:01 AM on 11/17/2010

Thanks for the links, will definitely check them out when I get a second. As for Lomborg "never about being wealthy," well, that might be pushing it a little! He definitely seems to relish the attention that his campaigning brings and I'm sure that's not the only thing he enjoys about his lecture tours..haha..and YES, when you read the blogs he definitely seems off on certain points. Thanks for sharing your thoughts...

[Raleigh Latham]

10:23 PM on 11/16/2010

Bjorn Lomborg documentary is a pathetic, disgusting presentation meant to stall action on climate change. Lomborg counts on people not paying close attention to what he’s saying, not having any interest in hearing what actual climate scientists have to say, and, frankly, not even being interested in using Google for, say, one minute to learn that Lomborg is full of something, but it ain’t common sense.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/11/16/cool-it-and-plausible-deniability/#more-37038

Climate change is an extremely urgent problem which will put all of human civilization and life on earth in danger, but there are solutions which Lomborg does not even talk about.

[Hunter Stuart]

02:49 AM on 11/17/2010

So you don't think ANY part of the documentary is constructive? Have you seen it? It goes into solar and wind energy and several other innovative ways to generate alternative energy and to cool urban areas and the planet.

Admittedly, Bjorn loves the attention and his motives are questionable, but you have to admit he's raising awareness, even if it's his own strange brand, that includes raising awareness about HIMSELF.

[BasketWeaver]

04:07 AM on 11/17/2010

"Climate change is an extremely urgent problem which will put all of human civilization and life on earth in danger."

The only people that quotes like this will appeal to are people that already worship at the altar of climate change guilt. The rest of us roll our eyes.

[Robert David Steele]

08:46 AM on 11/17/2010

Agree. The best list of high-level threats to humanity is that of the panel that included Dr. LtGen Brent Scowcroft, USAF (Ret), which places environmental degradation third after poverty and infectious disease--the poor do more damage to the environment than do corporation. Within environmental degradation, climate change is less than 10%, and within climate change carbon is secondary to mercury and sulfer. What we have right now is headliners doing stuff that loosely-educated people accept at face value. We need public intelligence in the public interest, with crowdsourcing providing a form of integrity that corporations and governments are incapable of representing. IMHO.

[Hunter Stuart]

08:56 AM on 11/17/2010

Yeah, but climate change isn't a matter of guilt...or maybe it partially is. But he's right that it IS an urgent problem. The people who don't believe it's happening are getting fewer and fewer. Whereas the people who study the climate, and undertake to learn the most about it, are the ones most convinced and alarmed by global warming. I'm not an expert, but I defer to the experts in matters like this.