Rating: 
Summary: Reactionary, Not Skeptical
Review: Here in the customer review community you are unlikely to find more articulate and well-written reviews than those for this book. These are often lengthy and passionate, from all sides of the political spectrum. With that in mind, one-star and five-star reviews may be from extreme thinkers. Two, three, and four-star reviews are likely to be from more moderate and analytical thinkers. I am concerned about the environment, though I lean toward the pragmatic and rational thinking of Sierra Club, rather than the self-righteous theatrics and polemics of Greenpeace. But I also know that environmental groups can exaggerate, usually because of the need for funding. I won't give this book one star because Lomborg has performed a valuable service in bringing the exaggeration of environmental doomsday theories to light. However, that's the only good thing about this book. Main points:1) You can see plenty of other reviews for an expose of Lomborg's faulty statistical methods, and especially *Scientific American* magazine. But even this misses the forest for the trees. You don't need precise statistics to know that there is environmental damage taking place at an alarming rate. You can see it all around you with your own eyes. Whether air pollution is 2.3 or 1.7 parts per million, the problem is still there. 2) Lomborg states repeatedly that he has environmental concerns, and that there are still serious problems, but things are actually getting better (at least statistically). There is merit to this position. However, things are getting slightly better because of the environmental awareness among the general population of recent decades - awareness caused by the very methods Lomborg criticizes throughout this book. 3) The fact that anti-environmentalists are likely to praise this book as "real science" in the face of thousands and thousands of other pieces of evidence that state the contrary is revealing. One single book that refutes the claims of thousands, and then is praised by certain groups as truthful and realistic, is unlikely to be impartial. 4) Despite Lomborg's repetitive claims to the contrary, he is not a skeptic. He's a reactionary. A skeptic refuses to believe something at face value and demands to see evidence, but then is willing to believe a position if the evidence is strong and foolproof. On the contrary, Lomborg has decided that he already disagrees with a position, extreme environmentalism, and proceeds to compile "evidence" that supports his viewpoint. This is reactionary politics, not a skeptical inquiry. This book suffers from a fundamental flaw, which is present at the beginning and prevents it from ever achieving the degree of believability that is Lomborg's goal. At the core, Lomborg is guilty of the exact same exaggeration and polemics that he's criticizing.
Rating: 
Summary: Measuring the difference between science and statistics
Review: Bjorn Lomborg has an education in statistics and is the head of the environmental agency in Denmark as we speak. He was elected to fill that position as the far right prime minister Anders Fogh Andersen was elected. He represents a very conservative philosophy concerning the future of the environment and one should be very cautious when reading that he is representing the environment at all. The book is a classic example of how and why people believe what they read. If it makes people feel better to believe that they can drive as many cars that suit their needs and not concern themselves with the water pollution that kills so many precious lives, then who can argue that. Their decision was made far before reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Scientists don't get funding when they say everything is OK.
Review: Well researched, well documented, and thoughtful. People who believe there are many environmental problems should look at the history of bad environmental predictions, notably in the 1970's the impending Ice Age and 1980's the horrible problems of Acid Rain. Acid Rain has proven harmless and now environmentalists predict Global Warming not an Ice Age. In another 20 years extreme environmentalists will be back to calling for an Ice Age after Global Warming fails them. Also, there is good reason for scientists to make extreme predictions ... $$$$. If everything is okay with the environment nobody will fund studies of the environment. The squeaky wheel gets greased and always will in the case of funding extreme ideas.
Rating:
Summary: be very skeptical of this book
Review: Where does this guy get his ethics? Obviously he does not have a profound love of mother nature or he would feel that losing one species of anything is irreversible and the cost can't be determined so easily. His main goal seems to be "maximizing profits" in this world of chaos. It's people like him that give humans a bad rap with mother nature. I'm studying biology at Western Connecticut State Univ. and am embarking down this path to help nature and man-kind. Think about this book and its ultimate purpose. I'm suprised Cambridge let this misconstrued cat out of the bag, but I bet all the fat cat politicians and big business are happy. Check out these reviews I researched. I'm too flustered to write my review for the whole book b/c I just had surgery yesterday morning! Anyhow, he has a bachelor's in experimental psychology from Harvard, an MBA from the University of Chicago, and, two years later, in 1961, a PhD in business economics from the same school. Real authority figure on nature, eh? Where I see mother nature as of paramount importance, he sees economical growth... Be skeptical like a good scientist and cut, paste and read all the following reviews provided and decide for yourself if this book is overall a negative or positive impact on humanity.
Rating:
Summary: This book does not "pan out"
Review: I am a full time college student. In one of my courses the class was told to pick a section in this book with the purpose of finding Lomborg's sources and stating if his sources agree with what he has stated or if Lomborg was miss quoting or taking information out of context. Through hours and hours of research I have found that Lomberg will site three or more sources for one statement and then only one may be obtainable or relivant to what he is refering to. For example, when discussing the life expectancy in sub-sahara Africa due to the AIDS epidemic he gave one valid source, two sources that could not be found, and one source that was a page from a report by the U.S. Census Bureau from 1999 about "Family and NonFamily Households, by Race, Hispanic Origin, and type: 1980 to 1998". This is only one of many examples of errors and miss citations that my peers and I have found in his book. In a span of two pages and more than 18 citations I was only able to find 4 citations that were validated by the souces that he stated. Although I believe that there are many interesting points made by Lomborg I do not put much faith in his "facts" because you can not find many of his references. To that all I have to say is what is he trying to hide? If you are going to make statements about anything be able to back up those statements. If you are going to buy a book about the environment and the state of the world may I suggest Julian Simon's The State of Humanity. This book was very informative and all of the citations that I have checked make sense. Lomborg has used this same book as a source for his book.
Rating:
Summary: If you believe this I'll sell you the GW Bridge!
Review: I agree with everyone's reviews in the sense that questioning things is important, however, at what cost will these "skeptics" skirt around the real issues. Just because the human species is ridiculously afraid of change doesn't mean that you can make up data to validate not changing what is so OBVIOUSLY wrong! We have a problem on this planet. That is a FACT! There is NO WAY around this. We are a very improvident species who want nothing more than to make excuses for our actions. That is why this book is so dangerous! Good, keep going on the same track and we'll see the state of the planet when our children's children can no longer breath but hey, what do you care, right as long as Mr. Lomborg can tell you its all going to be okay. You'll be dead by the time it all comes crumbling down anyway, so who really cares. He sides with large companies, industry and placates the masses by telling everyone that it will all be okay, not to worry, the planet isn't all that important. It'll fix itself. He's right, it will fix itself when the human species is dead and gone because we chocked on our own incompetence. This is complete psuedo science. The very thing he preaches against! If you are going to go against the popular scientific environmental conclusions than at the very least, you could be objective about it. Oh, I guess the scientists who believe that the world is actually in a grave state, all have vested interests, right? Yeah, they all work for the oil companies and the oil companies want scientists to tell everyone that the planet is in danger. What a ...! What motivation would scientists have in telling people that we have environmental problems? The answer is NONE but hey, don't listen to the experts with no vested interests, listen to this guy spew more garbage out so you can all feel better about how you're not really being wasteful and we're not really ruining the planet. Maybe if the human species cared more about the things that actually mattered than lining their own pockets and lying to themselves to placate their feeble minds, then we would actually finally see the truth.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: Comprehensive and tremendously well written. You will enjoy learning a great deal
Rating:
Summary: Pseudo Environmentalism Blown Away
Review: As an Associate Professor of Statistics Lomborg could have fallen prey to the demonizing pseudoenvironmentalists or pandered to unregulated capitalism, but avoided both extremes. In my opinion he has done an astounding job of comprehending the broadest possible range of environmental concerns. The many reviews already posted on [Amazon] show an almost complete polarization between the environmentally brainwashed and the hardheaded skeptics. Many of the reviews indicate that this massive book was read only in part by many; I assure you I read it all, and that it took months.
Lomborg set out his philosophy clearly: Most of us desire to increase the quality of life for the greatest number of people. We do not advocate eugenics. We accept that there will never be enough money to do everything that governments might like or be asked to do. Priorities should be set to maximize the benefits of the decisions that are made. As well or badly as we have done, we could easily do better. Much of "The Litany" on present and predicted disaster is not based on facts, and is done to attract funds to the agency or organization or author of environmental alarms. The disparity in results of expenditure to gain lifespan are staggering: from <$30/life-year saved from requiring smoke detectors in homes to $20 billion for further tightening benzene emission at rubber tire plants (Table 9, p340). Lomborg uses many sources, including peer-reviewed, to conclude that human caused global warming will be much less than the most dire predictions, and that it may cost less to deal with it than to attempt, perhaps in vain, to prevent it. He acknowledges that the warming we have had in the last 100 years is for warmer nights in arctic regions, which are very welcome to the local residents. The failed predictions and/or false premises of Rachel Carson, Lester Brown, Claude Martin, David Pimentel, Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore and others are neatly punctured. That said, there are a few important errors which could be corrected in future editions. The common chrysotile asbestos is not toxic in other than massive amounts to non-smokers (pp184,229,335); only the other forms not commonly used in the US are toxic. (See Dixy Lee Ray, Trashing the Planet, Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway,1990.) Low-dose radiation from Xrays, gamma rays and radon is actually beneficial, and does not follow the "linear-no-threshold" relationship (pp183,231,247,337,340) . (See Dixy Lee Ray, Trashing the Planet, Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway,1990; Mortazavi, SMJ, , 31 Aug 02.) Contrary to p321, cold fusion has been replicated in at least 6 laboratories (See Charles G. Beaudette, Excess Heat: Why Cold Fusion Research Prevailed, South Bristol, ME: Oak Grove Press, 2000.) The role of water vapor as a greenhouse gas is underplayed (pp258-324). (See Lomborg's ref. to Lindzen, 2001 and S. Fred Singer, Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warmings Unfinshed Debate, Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute, 1999.) Despite these few errors, and provided that the references above are available to compensate for them, I cannot recommend this book more highly, whether for general edification or as a text for college courses in economics, environmental science, political science and toxicology. The wonderful rationality of Lomborg's outlook, especially including consideration of the costs of doing anything or nothing, direct and indirect (see Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson, New York, NY: Arlington House, 1979); and his courageous debunking of alarmist nonsense, naming the names, should earn him well-deserved fame and fortune.
Rating: 
Summary: Skeptical enviromentalist, faithful neo-liberal
Review: The Skeptical Enviromentalist is a superb book on statistics and geography that pole-vaults over politics, history and economic analysis and somehow lands on some very dodgy public policy. Although our sensitive Norweigen has impeccable green credentials, he ends up sounding suspiciously like a neo-liberal apologist towards at the end of the book. This is due to a sleight-of-hand trick at the heart of this book and it is all the more seductive given some of the excellent analyses that can be found in the book. For a vast range of statistics, this book is one of the most informed book that I have ever read : a flabbergasting range of figures is covered from measurements of natural resources, indices of health, birth rates, deforestation, chemical toxicity. Using easy-to-follow prose and backed by a veritable mountain of statisitcs, the book carefully and patiently explains how many of these statistics are obtained. The explanations in many cases are some of the best I have seen.
I leave it to experts to quibble with the technical errors that any book of this size surely contains. As for attacks on this book being biased - well of course, every book that is written on such large topics will be biased. The important questions are what are the biases, and how well they are hidden. Although well-heeled to the intrincacies of statistics, Lomberg is completely at sea about politcs, history and economics. In short, Lomberg actually believes that the world market is one big happy efficient free market, hidden hand and all. This would not be such a grave problem if Lomberg didn't paper over the cracks in his analysis. For instance, at the start of crucial section on energy, Lomberg says that the price oil has continually dropped. Lomberg implicitly assumes that the free market drove down the price of oil and extrapolates that through the rest of the chapter into our heavenly free market future. Left out is the political-economic question of the relationship between abundance, extraction costs, national governments and their influence on the price (try Adam Smith's majesterial Wealth of Nations for a good discussion). However, if you're even remotely interested in international politics, you will know that the control of oil has been one of the mainstays of US national policy for the last 50 years. The whole analysis of oil prices is missing the most important element of all - the United States Armed Forces. American air-bases in places from Saudi Arabia through to the Gulf of Mexico (and what about that little international war we had in the 90's) affect oil prices. Shell Nigeria's execution of Ogoni activists protesting against the devastation due to the oil operations is, in Lomberg's analysis, an example of the ways that free enterprise can extract oil more cheaply. In the discussion of lifespans, there is a rather curious omission: statistics from warfare. It seems interesting that one of the most bloodiest centuries recorded fails to register a passing mention in the section on various ways to die. Concentrating on average lifespans and birthrates is only half the story. For instance, in England during the WWII, lifespan increased because war-time nationalisation improved living standards for the poor whilst at the same time, the male population was being decimated (see Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom). Lomberg seems hardly aware that the 1950-1970 is generally considered the most prosperous economic age in the last 200 years and that statistics that starting from the 1970 will miss the calamities of the Great Depression, and all Depressions before that. Following the World Bank's lead (who serve financial interests above all), almost all discussion on prosperity is based on the Gross National Product. Lomberg's analysis on prosperity will never see depressions because it misses out one half of any financial equation. While I have no problem with macro indices like the GNP, Lomberg conveniently evades all discussion of debt. As anyone in business can tell you that earnings look good when costs aren't counted (just ask Kenneth Lay) and GNP looks damn good when there is no debt - private, public and national. Furthermore, GNP includes money made from speculation, which is not productive capital at all. As for the analysis of hunger and food, Lomberg isn't aware that hunger and starvation isn't actually caused by lack of food. Amartya Sen, who has studied this problem intensively, shows that it's the inability to pay for food that causes hunger and starvation. Consequently, Lomberg misses the whole thrust of the hunger problem - first world agricultural subsidies, trade tariffs and agricultural monopolies. We already have enough food to feed everybody, just that most of it is given to cows. So the whole argument about increased food production is a non sequiteur. Actually, I find that 3/4 of this book is well-argued and convincing. Lomberg does an effective hatchet job on the, really, quite hapless Lester Brown. However, I find that everything Lomberg says that involves a price tag, rather suspect. The picture he paints is geographically and demographically convincing, but economically, Lomberg's picture is way rosier than other theorists would paint. As such, you don't get to see the economic malaise in world trade and you won't get an idea of the kind of shock treatment that is needed to achieve Utopia. Finally, we can see how far Lomberg has sold his soul to free-market ideologues by turning to the section on Global Warming. It is almost excruciating to read his (perhaps overly) detailed dissection of climate models, where, often in the very same sentence, he blithely accepts every projection of free-market economic models. Whilst it is true that climate modelling is one of the bug-bears of the physical sciences, economic modelling is the bug-bear of the social sciences, if not the biggest bug-bear of them all. It would have helped if Lomberg questioned even one of the assumptions in free market models. The fact that he doesn't should tell you something, skeptic or not.
Rating:
Summary: A Refreshingly Different Viewpoint
Review: I can personally vouch for many of the claims which Lomborg makes in this paradigm-shattering book. In the first Earth Day in 1970, while in high school, I was taught, among other things, that, within 10 years or so, the human race would be dying off en masse from overpopulation, depletion of resources, and the polluted environment. Here it is 2002 and none of these predictions have come true--not even close. Instead of a population bomb (Ehrlich), we have stabilization of world population. Instead of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, Lomborg points out that such things as food supply and basic sanitation are enjoyed by a larger and larger fraction of the world's population. Thirty years of oil only means that we have found reserves for the next thirty years. It does NOT mean that we will be out of oil thirty years from now! And, far from being some puppet of corporations, Lomborg remains left-of-center politically. A great book!
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