False Alarm cover art

False Alarm

How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet

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False Alarm

By: Bjorn Lomborg
Narrated by: Jim Seybert
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About this listen

 An “essential” (Times UK) and “meticulously researched” (Forbes) book by “the skeptical 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 Arctic. 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. In a new epilogue, Lomborg brings the story up to date, showing the ineffective and costly environmental policies of the Biden administration.

False Alarm will convince you that everything you think about climate change is wrong. It points the way toward making the world a vastly better, if slightly warmer, place for us all. Economics Environment Environmental Economics Politics & Government Science Inspiring Solar System Pollution Climate Change Science

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Critic reviews

"Lomborg does not lack solutions. In False Alarm, he advocates a range of cost-benefit tested policies to address both climate change and global poverty.... Lomborg does a service in calling out the environmental alarmism and hysteria that obscure environmental debates rather than illuminate them."—National Review
"Meticulously researched, and well worth a read."—Forbes
"An important book. Mr. Lomborg is a long-standing environmentalist regarded as a heretic by hardliners in the movement because he is an optimist who says that humanity is not doomed."—Iain Martin, The Times (UK)
"The best way to deal with global warming is to increase global prosperity.... The choice we face, Lomborg writes, is between a human future driven by fear and one driven by ingenuity. On that, he is exactly right."—The Bulwark
"Lomborg's most basic premise remains that there are better ways to alleviate human misery than spending taxpayer subsidies than on panic-driven, political non-solutions to a changing climate. Few would argue with that goal."—American Thinker
"Lomborg brands climate change warnings as alarmist, and argues that a massive reduction in fossil fuels would exacerbate global poverty, in this detailed account.... Lomborg is careful to back his cost-benefit analyses of climate policies with surveys and statistics."—Publishers Weekly
"[Lomborg] follows his previous critiques of climate change policy...with a hard-hitting analysis of failing strategies for addressing what he acknowledges is 'a real problem.'...A serious, debatable assessment of a controversial global issue."—Kirkus
"Bjorn Lomborg's new book offers a data-driven, human-centered antidote to the oft-apocalyptic discussion characterizing the effect of human activity on the global climate. Careful, compelling, and above all sensible and pragmatic."—Jordan Peterson, author of 12 Rules for Life
"This is a very important and superbly argued book. Those who have been persuaded that climate change is not happening, and those who think catastrophe is imminent should both read it and know they can rely on Lomborg's meticulous analysis to put them right. The rest of us can be alarmed by his relentless revelation that the world is spending a fortune on making the plight of the poor and the state of the environment worse with foolish and expensive policies."—Matt Ridley, author of How Innovation Works
All stars
Most relevant
The over-arching theme of this book is as per the title, The global climate situation is real but is being overblown as a risk to humanity. Building dams to keep sea water out, inland dams to keep rain-water and a plethora of other initiatives that never get taken into scientific models, or do but those scenarios get left out in the hysterical press means that humans are in a very good place. Physically at least, and definitely compared to history when a good proportion of our ancestors would get wiped out by drought or flood induced famines. Fires, tsunamis, etc. all follow similar patterns. Heat maybe be rising by a celsius or two, but the falling price of air-conditioning means fewer and fewer people are dying of it every year. And so on and so forth.

The dodgeyness comes in some of the cherry-picking and stats. For example, an area I know well, solar energy he dives back to a 2015 example of a UN special project in India where the locals went nuts and were so upset and enraged by the feeble solar power and battery storage they received that the politicians ended up expediting their connection to the grid for 'real power'. The problem is 2015 is 2-3 doublings away in terms of total rollout and price reduction, so in 2020 solar and lithium battery storage can power fridges and more in rural tropical villages, and most importantly at a fraction of the price of connection to the grid. That said, it's not a perfect solution and I wouldn't swap my gridded connection in the UK for an isolated renewable and storage solution. Not yet. I assume he's made other similar forays in other chapters, but I'm not keen enough in each area to know if he's right or wrong, I've just seen attacks on Twitter about some of them.

What is certain is there's a lot to answer for in the modelling of doomsayers and their media click-bait brethren. This book is an important mental doorlock for anyone who wishes those negative forces to come bashing in.

A bit wonky but super-important perspective

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The same UN scientific data are read by an honest mind as those who used them to generate horrendous headlines, and yet yields very different conclusions when appropriate caveats are applied. Climate change IS an issue, as is health, education, safe energy, environmental engineering. Each need to be handled with care and a virtuous desire to see all people thrive. My only difficulty is the economic modelling- if we are still to pound out relentless growth as the capitalist model suggests, when is enough enough? The link between the darker desires of the human heart, the economic system and the experience of life need more honest exploration if we are to build a fairer world.

At last some rational and balanced thinking!

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To be read for no other reason than to bring some degree of balance to the discussion. As with so many other issues, main stream media is the information corruptor.

Essential reading

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Really convincing argument that we need to shift climate policy toward adaptation and not solely focus on carbon reduction, which is costing insane amounts and accomplishing virtually nothing.

Important and convincing

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Dr. Lomborg makes an extremely important contribution to the debate about how to deal with climate change. This is NOT a "denier" book, it is about how to respond in the most rational way to the real problem of climate change.

Informative, interesting and extremely important

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