Bjørn Lomborg: $100bn a year needed to fight climate change

[swag]

Source: Guardian

The world's most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and "a challenge humanity must confront", in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby.

Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled "sceptical environmentalist" once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN's climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.

But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. "Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century," the book concludes.

Examining eight methods to reduce or stop global warming, Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pouring money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and more work on climate engineering ideas such as "cloud whitening" to reflect the sun's heat back into the outer atmosphere.


Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/30/bjorn-lomborg-climate-change-u-turn

[aquart]

1. Get it from Halliburton. They've got our cash.

[rug]

2. Wow, that's steep.

http://costofwar.com/

[Kali]

3. interesting turn around

I'd like to read more about that. The "thinking" deniers who like to use his work as back-up are going to be down to about 2 remotely credible sources now.

[bergie321]

4. Sounds like a lot

Until you realize that the US alone spends 7-10 times that much each year on military and intelligence spending.

[n2doc]

5. Sorry BL, we'd rather blow up people n/t

[hatrack]

6. Two-word response to you, Bjorny old boy . . .

The second words is "You". The first word is "Fuck".

[GliderGuider]

11. It it a little infuriating, isn't it?

10 years later he comes to his senses and recommends clean energy and a carbon tax...

:banghead: :nuke:

[hatrack]

24. Yes, but when the books aren't selling and Cato isn't buying the first-class air tickets . . .

I guess you do what you have to do.

[gratuitous]

26. It happens to the best prostitutes

One day, they're no longer in demand. Their looks have faded, and they don't command a thousand dollars a pop anymore. But a pro's still gotta make a living, and Lomborg is now in the parking lot behind the strip joint, offering blow jobs for 10 dollars a spasm to the college kids with blue balls.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. Maybe the industries that were subsidizing his "climate skeptic" shtick

cut off his allowance. :evilgrin:

[Turborama]

9. That's what I was thinking. Or maybe he just thought that doing this will raise his profile again

and he'd sell more copies of a new book if he switched sides.

[The2ndWheel]

8. People expect a return on their investment

The means profits. That means growth. That's how we got here. We're not going to invest our way out of this. The economy exists within the environment. Any growth in the economy, means a larger impact in the environment. Until we no longer exist in physical reality, we can't escape that.

[GliderGuider]

12. +1

Pre-zackly!

[Uncle Joe]

10. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, swag.

[Swagman]

13. Top climate change sceptic does U-turn

Source: news.com.au

AN ECONOMIST dubbed the world's most prolific climate change sceptic finally admitted global warming was the biggest threat to the world and called for a $US100 billion ($112 billion) fund to fight it.

Bjorn Lomborg previously accused scientists, campaigners and the media of exaggerating the rate of global warming and argued that resources should be spent on more immediate crises such as fighting malaria and Aids.

The Dane said a lot of money is being spent on climate change with very little being achieved.

But in a new book to be published next month he calls for a $US100 billion fund to tackle the problem and admits climate change is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today", The Guardian newspaper reported.

Mr Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pumping money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind and wave, solar and nuclear power and more work on climate engineering ideas such as cloud whitening which reflects the sun's heat back into the outer atmosphere.




Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/top-climate-change-sceptic-does-u-turn/story-e6frfku0-1225912567924#ixzz0yCQvsjI0

[SpiralHawk]

14. Wow. Just wow.

Ya gotta wonder if Rush DraftDodger Limbaugh (R - Propagandist) is next?

But then again, $40 million a year in Republicon corporate payola will probably keep dodging the truth, the way he dodged service to America, and keep him exclusively LOYAL to his lies.

[glinda]

15. Money rules his mouth.

[Kolesar]

16. Bjorn Lomborg's missing questions, by Howard Friel

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/aug/30/lombard-missing-questions-climate-change

...excerpt...

Now that the ongoing published science on global warming has veered sharply toward worst-case scenarios across a range of climate impacts, in Smart Solutions to Climate Change, a new volume edited by Lomborg, he writes: "The risks of unchecked global warming are now widely acknowledged" and "we have long moved on from any mainstream disagreements about the science of climate change". This is the lipstick, but the pig is still a pig. This is because Lomborg still argues in this book, as he did in the others, that cost-benefit economics analysis shows that it is prohibitively expensive for the world to sharply reduce CO2 emissions to the extent required by the scientific evidence: "Drastic carbon cuts would be the poorest way to respond to global warming."

Here's where the missing question comes into play, since Lomborg does not seriously address the fundamental problem of rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the absence of global greenhouse reductions: what will happen to the earth and human civilisation when atmospheric CO2 concentrations rise – essentially unchecked, if we followed Lomborg's recommendations – to 450 parts per million, 550ppm, 700ppm, 800ppm; and when the average global temperature rises by 2C, 3C, and 4C to 7C?

Climate scientists have set 350ppm and a 2C average temperature rise (from 1750 to 2100) as the upper range targets to prevent a global climate disaster. Since we are already at 390ppm and since a 2C plus rise is a near certainty, how does Lomborg's appeal to forgo sharp reductions in CO2 emissions reflect climate science? He argues that there are "smarter solutions to climate change" than a focus on reducing CO2. This is hardly smart: it's insanity.

If Lomborg were really looking for smart solutions, he would push for an end to perpetual and brutal war, which diverts scarce resources and public focus from what Lomborg accurately says needs more money, including some of the research and policy projects recommended by the contributors to this volume. There might even be a few hundred billion dollars left to invest annually in new energy and mass transit economies, and science-mandated CO2 reductions. We're only two questions short of achieving those goals. Sounds pretty economical to me.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/aug/30/lombard-missing-questions-climate-change

[cprise]

17. So, Now that climate denial is in the dustbin

...Lomborg is going to stump for the next most Wall St.-friendly ideas, which looks like geoengineering.

And just when geoengineering was starting to become roundly dismissed by scientists. Hmmm...

[NickB79]

25. It's all a stalling tactic to stay on coal and oil as long as possible

First they deny the planet is warming. Then they admit it is but that it is natural. Then they say humans are responsible but we should use geoengineering to address it rather than change our carbon-emitting ways. Anything to keep to the business-as-usual status quo.

[superconnected]

18. Noted anti-global-warming scientist reverses course

Source: Yahoo News

With scientific data piling up showing that the world has reached its hottest-ever point in recorded history, global-warming skeptics are facing a high-profile defection from their ranks. Bjorn Lomborg, author of the influential tract "The Skeptical Environmentalist," has reversed course on the urgency of global warming, and is now calling for action on "a challenge humanity must confront."

Lomborg, a Danish academic, had previously downplayed the risk of acute climate change. A former member of Greenpeace, he was a vocal critic of the Kyoto Protocol -- a global U.N. treaty to cut carbon emissions that the United States refused to ratify -- as well as numerous other environmental causes.

"The Skeptical Environmentalist," published in 2001, argued that many key preoccupations of the environmental movement, including pollution control and biodiversity, were either overblown as threats or amenable to relatively simple technological fixes. Lomborg argued that the governments spending billions to curb carbon emissions would be better off diverting those resources to initiatives such as AIDS research, anti-malaria programs and other kinds of humanitarian aid.

Lomborg's essential argument was: Yes, global warming is real and human behavior is the main reason for it, but the world has far more important things to worry about.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100831/sc_yblog_upshot/noted-anti-global-warming-scientist-reverses-course

[wtmusic]

19. Sounds like the path of some of our DU skeptics. nt

[caraher]

20. Lomberg's no scientist

He's an economist

I'm glad he's coming around, but he's not a noted scientist - he's an economist who sells lots of books. Or did.

[hatrack]

21. Correction, if I may - he's trying to sell lots of his NEW book.

:puke:

[Rage for Order]

22. I too thought that was a rather liberal use of the title "scientist"

Just having a doctorate degree does not make one a scientist

[liberation]

23. Economists are not "scientists" and this guy was no "skeptic"

Not knowing much about anything in a specific field, and yet having a contrarian opinion does not make these guys "skeptics." They simply have no clue what they are talking about and damned if they think that is enough to have them reconsider their own opinion. Science and nature are not "democracies" you do not get to choose what you believe given factual data.

If anything I am sure he is working on a new angle, now that the market for sceptic books is dying out given the magnitude of their hubris. I bet he can sell a lot of books from his tale of "redemption."

Degenerates the lot of them, his hubris if anything made it even harder the work of the people who knew what were talking about and tried to actually do something.

[cprise]

27. Lomborg was not a scientist

The last time I checked, he was a statistician.