The Lomborg Deception

Tim Robbins

I am not sure what is the best forum for this, but here goes...

A few years ago I read 'Cool It' by Bjorn Lomborg and it seriously changed a lot of my views about climate change and the environmentalist movement. In summary, Lomborg is saying:

Bjorn Lomborg wrote:

Yes climate change is happening, but we are reacting to it completely irrationally in two respects:
1. If you put the problem in perspective with other humanitarian problems such as malnutrition, the numbers that die from these other problems is higher and the amount of lives we can save for the same amount of money is much higher for other humanitarian problems than it is for climate change. Ergo if what you want to do is save as many human lives as possible you should be putting the money to many other problems before climate change.

2. The way we spend money tackling climate change is not very smart. We should be spending more money investing in R&D than things like Carbon cutting.

I found his arguments compelling and more and more I am noticing a lot of the environmentalist movement is based on ideology rather than science. It's not a scientific question to ask where we should spend our money but a philosophical or political one. Yet, when anyone challenges an environmentalist about this they will argue that we should make climate change our number one priority because science says climate change is happening. I know climate change is happening but so what if science says climate change is happening? Science also says malnutrition and diarrhoea is happening?

Science doesn't tell you where money should be spent that's not the job of science. It recks my head the way so many environmentalists use science to validate their ideology. This is a misuse of science.

Anyone who saw the recent Duncan Stewart program will hopefully understand where I am coming from.

Now there's a book out entitled 'The Lomborg Deception' which is getting mixed reviews. Already Lomborg has rebutted the book in detail.

Has anyone read it or got an opinion of Lomborg they'd like to discuss?

Capt'n Midnight

I think the key point here is that if we don't try to slow down climate change we will be in for a rough ride in the future. There are several tipping points ahead, Amazon rain forest becoming scrub, methane-hydrates from permafrost and ocean beds , diversion of ocean currents. Half of all fossil fuel was burnt since WWII and now that China & co. are on board things will get better before they get worse.

There is the whole thing about crying wolf, but evidence from the past has shown that wolves do exist and comparitively recently the sahara was green (still crocs stranded in it) and Ireland was under several Km of ice. And hippos and lions frequented London at other times. - Most of the rich nations live in the temperate climate areas, these move most, the tropics are always hot, the poles always cold. and governments have always been Me Feiners. To help the poorer countries workaround climate change would require spending money over there, and we are cutting develpment aid as if there was no commitment to keep it consant (we actually promised to increase it)

Tim Robbins

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

I think the key point here is that if we don't try to slow down climate change we will be in for a rough ride in the future.

These argument lack all sorts of metrics. What do you mean by "rough ride"?
50,000 die or 1 million or ten million?

and governments have always been Me Feiners.

Can't agree with this. You have a political party whose raison d'etre is the environment who are currently in political power.

You also have a senion Minister specifically for the environment and way more international summits about climate change than any other humanitarian issue which millions more die from.

Have you read 'Cool It'?

Capt'n Midnight

Tim Robbins wrote: »

These argument lack all sorts of metrics. What do you mean by "rough ride"?
50,000 die or 1 million or ten million?


Can't agree with this. You have a political party whose raison d'etre is the environment who are currently in political power.

The green party are a small part of the government and it could even be argued that for some of the schemes the main beneficiaries are FF's construction industry friends


as for millions dying, that's just business as usual, until we improve life expectancy and provide education for the bottom two billion people on the planet they will continue to have more than 2.4 kids a lot of them will die.


the big problems are that politicians will spend the money at home and alternative technologies cost more in the short term - we have spent billions on improving roads , this will save a few hundred lives , maybe. Had we invested that money in public transport we could have cut emissions but we just dug a deeper hole. And now saying we should have given the NRA budget to do stuff like save lives in Bangladesh by supporting forestry in Nepal ?

We should ban the use of palm oil as a fuel because of the destruction of swamps in Indonesia (it will take another 100 years for most new plantations to replace the carbon libearted when they were set up)

We should ban the use of bio-fuels where the input from fossil fuel is more than 90% of the final energy yield. This would eliminate most bio-ethanol and a lot of bio-diesel. ( the reason I say 90% is they will fudge the figures and capital investment will also have inputs )


Yes it would be nice if all the money and effort that went into carbon reduction went in to improving the lives of our fellow man, but it ain't gonna happen and all we can hope for is the least worse achievable alternative. And sad to say it's based on a compromise of what politicians reckon their voters will put up with 'till the next election.

Tim Robbins

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

the big problems are that politicians will spend the money at home and alternative technologies cost more in the short term - we have spent billions on improving roads , this will save a few hundred lives , maybe. Had we invested that money in public transport we could have cut emissions but we just dug a deeper hole.

I think we get a little off the point here. The main purpose of investing in roads is not to save lifes but to improve economic output.

Capt'n Midnight

yeah slight OT there, but the govt announcement shows what is going on

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0726/economy.html we will be spending €39Bn on infrastructure

http://dochasnetwork.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/the-benefits-of-overseas-aid/

Earlier this month, when Minister Martin reported in the Oireachtas on his trip to Ethiopia and Uganda, he spoke of the “enormous progress” made in that country in the last 25 years. The Minister’s trip showed, again, that Ireland’s overseas aid programme is working, and that Irish aid is making real and lasting changes in the lives of some of the world’s poorest people.

The Minister’s trip is one more illustration that the ‘recipe’ to eradicate the worst forms of poverty – the eight “millennium development goals” – is working, and that 11 of the 20 countries making the most absolute progress towards the Goals are amongst the poorest countries in Africa.

Act Now on 2015 is an alliance of over 60 development NGOs working to ensure that Ireland commits 0.7% of GNI to overseas aid by 2015.



How much are we due to be fined over Kyoto BTW ?



Yes we should do what benefits most people, but the reality of the situation is that the politicans won't.


I've said many times that we don't need now energy sources, we just need a way to store energy. R&D into developing a cheap non-toxic, safe and reliable way of storing energy would solve a lot of problems to do with climate change and provide many benefits to people in places with less infrastructure. Solar panels provide electricity at $2 per watt (beats orbo and fusion , and not too far off the grid ) , 60% of the worlds population have a mobile phone at this stage and that number will grow, solar powered phones and base stations and cute little java apps means you can do really cool projects across a whole country at minimal cost. - Yes it's as simple at that , but no WE won't hand over the money :mad:

Kernunos

Well I will start off by admitting I have not read the book in question but I have to question whether the goal of the environmentalist movement is actually humanitarian?

Is the aim of the movement not the protection of the environment for the environments sake, rather than the people living in it. If it helps the folks there then all good and well but at the end of the day are they not trying to preserve the ecosystems areas being damaged by climate change.

I think that the focus on how climate change will adversely affect humans in a PR spin to help push through measures that in some cases are for the planets benefit, rather than ours.

mikhail

Kernunos wrote: »

Is the aim of the movement not the protection of the environment for the environments sake, rather than the people living in it. If it helps the folks there then all good and well but at the end of the day are they not trying to preserve the ecosystems areas being damaged by climate change.

I think that the focus on how climate change will adversely affect humans in a PR spin to help push through measures that in some cases are for the planets benefit, rather than ours.

Long term, the planet's benefit is ours too. It's only in short term thinking that the goals seem to be opposing.