The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World () is a book by Danish author and statistician Bjørn Lomborg. The book is controversial for outlining Lomborg's views that concerns and responses to environmental issues are overly pessimistic and unsupported. It was first published in Danish in 1998, while the English edition was published as a work in environmental economics by Cambridge University Press in 2001. In the book, Lomborg sets out what he calls a "litany" of what he considers overly pessimistic claims and policies about environmental issues, and challenges them using cost–benefit analysis. He argues that concerns over pollution, decline in energy resources, deforestation, species loss, water shortages and global warming are overstated, and focus should be diverted to poverty reduction and combatting diseases such as HIV/AIDS. The book generated great controversy upon its release. The veracity of Lomborg's assertions were criticised by the scientific community and environmental groups in Denmark and internationally, including negative reviews in Nature, Grist and Scientific American, and from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Positive reception in some popular media outlets contrasted sharply with this, and this combined with the ensuing debate aided the book's profile. Lomborg was formally accused of scientific dishonesty and was investigated by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty, which ruled that the book was scientifically dishonest but that Lomborg was innocent of wrongdoing due to his lack of expertise in relevant fields. The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation later criticised this investigation, but the Committee decided not to reinvestigate on the basis that it would come to the same conclusion. The book established Lomborg's international profile as a prominent critic of the scientific consensus on climate change. He released a follow up, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, in 2007. Background Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish statistician who worked at Aarhus University in the 1990s. According to Lomborg, he was inspired by an article in Wired where Julian Lincoln Simon was interviewed, in which Simon claimed that calculations he had conducted with publicly available data led him to conclude that standard doomsday conceptions of the state of the world were incorrect. In 1997, Lomborg decided to undertake a similar assessment with some of his students, and came to similar conclusions as Simon. Based on this, in 1998 four articles were published in Danish newspaper Politiken outlining his views and findings, which attracted