Controversial environmentalist takes on global warming
Published Friday, April 18, 2008
Global warming is real, but the consequences aren’t nearly as bad as some scientists make them out to be.
So claimed Danish researcher Bjorn Lomborg Thursday night at a public lecture at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Lomborg has received both acclaim and criticism for his view that the effects of climate change are greatly exaggerated. Time magazine named him to its Time 100 list of influential people in 2004, and the UK newspaper The Guardian added him to its list of 50 People Who Can Save the Planet.
But his work, including his best-selling book “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” has come under fire from other scholars, and he was even investigated by Denmark’s Ministry of Science for “scientific dishonesty.”
Lomborg spent much of Thursday’s presentation refuting Al Gore’s hit documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” though he noted it was not because he was bashing Gore, but merely because of his visibility. Both men testified at a Congressional hearing last year.
The author conceded that the earth is getting hotter because of man’s actions, but questioned how dire the effects are. For example, it has been estimated that by 2050 there will be an additional 2,000 heat-related deaths in the United Kingdom as a result of global warming. While Lomborg said that is true, it doesn’t take into account that as many as 20,000 fewer people will not die because cold temperatures will not kill them.
“There are many and varied impacts, both positive and negative,” he told a packed crowd at the Davis Concert Hall. “We need to hear about both.”
In Gore’s movie, the former vice president states that sea levels could rise by as much as 20 feet in the next century, but Lomborg said that is only if all of Greenland melts as a result of climate change, which is unlikely. He estimates that globally, oceans will rise 1 foot in the next century, the same amount that they have risen in the past 150 years.
“This is not the end of the world,” he said. “This is a logistical problem we have fixed before.”
The author also encouraged people to look at the bigger picture of many topics. For example, he said that while the sea ice polar bears call home is in danger, their numbers have quadrupled in the past 50 years despite the fact that between 300 and 500 of the animals are shot every year.
“It seems to me that if you care about the polar bears, you should stop shooting them,” he said.
Lomborg criticized governments that consider reducing carbon emissions as the only way to prevent climate change. He offered several solutions to global warming in cities, including painting more surfaces white, adding water to more areas and giving people air conditioners. He called his ideas “comically simple.”
“Because we have a gun to our heads, because we’re panicked, we’re likely to make bad decisions,” he said.
Community Discussion
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Finally an environmentalist with some common sense and does not give the title a bad name. All you other extremist's should take lessons.
I wish that I could have been there. Sounds brilliant.
The news coverage of global warming is extremely lopsided. An unbiased stand would say that the jury is still out on whether or not global warming is truly a reality. My understanding is that this last year was actually a full degree COOLER globally, with significant quantities of "lost" polar ice restored, but one does not hear that trumpeted in the news. Certainly everyone wants a stable planet for future generations. However given the extreme costs of many measures and the equally extreme poverty of much of the world, we need to have compassion on our poor and consider the financial impact on HUMANITY now as well as in the future.
The one factor you never (or rarely) hear mentioned on the global warming issue is the impact the sun has on our temperatures. The Canadians have been recording the energy output of the sun since 1946, and have records online. The energy is called "solar flux", and is currently at what could be called "idle". Ken Tapping, Canadian astronomer, has expressed concern we could be entering a cooling period, since the sun's 10-11 year cycle did not begin its normal energy increase last March (2007), but instead has been relatively flat.
Before we destroy our economy with more restrictions on energy use and development, while developing countries keep building coal fired power plants (China surpassed the US in carbon output in 2006, not 2020 as was supposed to happen, per the UN), we need to make really, really sure we know what is actually happening, not just what certain influential individuals and the media would like us to believe. If, in fact, the Earth is entering a cold period, we need MORE energy, not less. What will happen to the price of heating oil as demand goes up?
http://www.drao-ofr.hia-iha.nrc-cnrc.gc....
http://ibdeditorial.com/IBDArticles.aspx...
The solution is obvious. Nuke the sun.
Wouldn't it be nice if Mr. Lomborg had the time to go to the grade schools,all the way to UAF and plumb up the global warming fear mongering EDUCATED FOOLS.....
Here is the truth about global warming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA7hAFBRl...
Didn't even know this guy was giving a speech. Where was the campus on publicizing this event?? Would have loved to attended, I agree on almost everything mentioned in this news article...
Very interesting indeed.
I would need more facts and evidence.
Would like to see this guy's presentation too.
But still, he be whistling in the dark-that is possible too.
"Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) investigation:
On January 6, 2003 the DCSD reached a decision on the complaints against Lomborg. The ruling was a mixed message, deciding the book to be scientifically dishonest, but Lomborg himself not guilty because of lack of expertise in the fields in question:
Objectively speaking, the publication of the work under consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty. ...In view of the subjective requirements made in terms of intent or gross negligence, however, Bjørn Lomborg's publication cannot fall within the bounds of this characterization. Conversely, the publication is deemed clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice.
The DCSD cited The Skeptical Environmentalist for:
1. Fabrication of data;
2. Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
3. Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
4. Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
5. Plagiarism;
6. Deliberate misinterpretation of others' results."
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_...
This guy might be right, and I am glad to see someone with the guts to take a stand other than the Gore-worshipping outsiders who want to tell us how to live. The simple fact is that things constantly change. We wouldn't need calculus if that weren't a fundamental fact of nature. The poles on Mars are melting, too, so it is clear that something is causing heating in the solar system. People need to be alert and make life choices that promote their survival, but also to take advantages of change such as the possibility of a northern shipping route. This whole blame people and protect a pile of dirt doesn't make sense to me.
I was there last night. While his general point was valid it merely said that the proposed solutions need to be put thru a cost benefit analysis. He said, "Global warming is REAL and HUMANS are partly responsible. This is incontrovertible."
He just believes we can do little to relive it in the near term. He said the effect of our efforts would be so minimal that for the same money we can solve other problems in the world. This presumes two things; that we care enough to actually eliminate HIV/AIDS and malaria throughout the world (two of his biggest concerns) and more importantly that we are not near an actual tipping point where just a little more warmth will be way too much.
Another point raised was exaggeration and distortion by some environmentalists. A good point. I cringe when the terms weather and climate are used interchangeably. But he himself was exaggerating and distorting. I sincerely doubt his figures on cold and heat related deaths. He seems to be saying that there are 20,000 deaths a year in the UK from cold. That's exaggeration. He stated there will be only a one foot rise in sea level. Yet he was talking about the Maldives, a low group of islands near the equator surrounded by deep ocean. That one foot is substantially magnified by tides in areas with continental shelves, long narrow bays and fiords and higher latitudes. When asked about that he had no information. That’s distortion.
On average his idea of doing cost benefit analysis is useful and important. But remember he is not denying global warming just saying with the money we could get a "bigger bang for the buck" by doing other things. He is not saying to do nothing.
These comments are just more examples of how people hear what they want to hear, and believe what they want to believe, regardless of the source. This guy is a statistician, so he's trained in knowing how to make the data say what he wants it to say--and ignoring the data that goes against his theories. It's likely he is distorting the truth just as much as all of those "extreme" environmentalists you all love to hate.
Let's just keep on doing what we're doing, bury our heads in the sand, and say it isn't so. That will solve the problem. Ultimately, our problems will be solved when we pollute our air, water, and food to the point where humans can't exist on this earth. So lets think globally and act locally. We can start by continuing to pollute each others lungs in Fairbanks, and cry foul when someone has the nerve to suggest we clean up our act.
I cant wait to see this
http://www.expelledthemovie.com/home.php...
All you of global warming deniers and mitigators need to realize something:
It's true that the earth's magnetic field and ozone have both fluctuated before and have both caused natural warming and cooling over the milennia. What is NOT natural is ozone depletion. Never before in earth's natural history has natural produced chlorofluorocarbons which has cut giant holes in the ozone. As we throw tons of greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere we have to remember that when that effect has happened in the distant past due to volcanic outgassing, the ozone was always there to protect the earth.
2cold, me too.
Check this out
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/04/b...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwia...
All I want to know.
10 years from now when it finally concluded that Climate change is a natural event that cannot be stopped by simply reducing a small fraction of what may cause it and world economies have been wrecked and lives ruined as a result. Will we be able to sue the IPCC?
>Will we be able to sue the IPCC?
For what, causing us to realize more efficient (and in the long run) cheaper ways to do business?
>and world economies have been wrecked and lives ruined as a result.
Yes, clearly this group of hundreds of "Dr. Evil" scientists from around the World have joined forced to destroy civilization as we know it. Run, run for the hills - they're coming to ban your truck and woodstove!
Wow, ignorance truly knows no boundaries....
mrderik,
Maybe you haven't heard that due to rising cost of corn for instance may cause many to go without food....unintended consequences of trying to avert that which will not be averted by co2 management....when there are far more factors then this causing the current warming trend that even now seems to have abated this year...
Your right on about the ingorance or people ignoring such facts...
The global warming hypothesis was a godsend to the New Left. It provided a means of attacking industry and capitalism through the one great essential to modern life, energy. Anyone who questioned the dogma was subject to insults and threats, including the appalling crudity and tastelessness of being likened to the holocaust deniers. All realistic proposals to develop workable sources of energy are bitterly opposed by the green network, while patently stupid ones, such as wind turbines, are sustained by regulation and subsidy, with the added bonus of bringing down the free market. There are related areas of activity, such as biofuels, which not only threaten the world with greenflation but also starvation.
Above it all towers the figure of Al Gore, hyper-hypocrite and monster of monetary concupiscence. If just occasionally he turned up on a bike rather than his private jet (or waived the six figure fee for his repetitious diatribes, or engaged in debate rather than diktat) he might entertain some credibility among the reasoning few. It is, however, in the nature of the faithful that they turn a blind eye to the defects of their demagogues. Perhaps the one fact that restores one's faith in humanity is that the blanket coverage of the propaganda has failed to stir a majority of the populace, though in the new age majorities have no power.
Global warming has now got to the stage where it is only maintained by media self-censorship. If the general public ever got to know of the scandals surrounding the collection and processing of data, or that there has been no detectable warming for the last decade, the whole movement would be dead in the water; but they don’t, so it isn’t. It has become the most powerful myth in human history, sending much of the world into a downward helix of economic decline. It is a tenuous hypothesis supported by ill-found computer models and data from botched measurement, dubiously processed.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/zealots.htm...
The evidence
There is no scientific theory linking carbon dioxide to the “runaway” global warming that is the basis of the calamitous predictions. The contribution of the gas to the making of a comfortable planet by the greenhouse effect is well understood, modest and self-limiting. It is only turned into a terror by computer models. These are worthless; depending as they do on extensive guesswork about the ill-understood mechanisms and interactions involved in climate, and involving so many tunable parameters and feedback factors that they could produce any desired result by appropriate tweaking. A quarter of a century ago, before science came under firm bureaucratic control, such models would have been laughed out of court.
The putative experimental evidence is equally dubious. It all sounds very impressive and scary, but on close examination tends to dissolve like the morning mist in the light of the sun. It is only recently that a small troupe of volunteers with few resources has begun a serious audit of the claims. The much vaunted “high-quality” sensor network turns out to be ramshackle almost beyond belief; the processing of the data involves inapplicable methods, glaring errors and unexplained adjustments, which all mysteriously turn out to exaggerate the desired effect. There is a morbid and obsessive secrecy among the practitioners that is quite contrary to the open nature of the scientific method, which prompts the question “What have they got to hide?” Details of publicly funded “research” are kept, quite illegally, from the public who fund it; and only the claimed results, inevitably apocalyptic, are exposed. Such data that have been wrested with great difficulty from their creators almost invariably turn out to be subject to serious dubiety.
Carbon has been framed for purely political purposes.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/Carbon.htm
http://www.oism.org/pproject/GWReview_OI...
ABSTRACT A review of the research literature concerning the
environmental consequences of increased levels of atmospheric
carbon dioxide leads to the conclusion that increases during the
20th and early 21st centuries have produced no deleterious ef-fects upon Earth’s weather and climate. Increased carbon dioxide
has, however, markedly increased plant growth. Predictions
of harmful climatic ef fects due to future in creases in hydrocarbon
use and minor green house gases like CO2 do not conform to
current experimental knowledge. The environmental effects of
rapid expansion of the nuclear and hydrocarbon energy industries
are discussed.
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