Bjorn Lomborg and Global Climate Change

I hope people will excuse me from raising another contentious question in here.

But what do the global climate believers and the global climate skeptics think about the global temperature projections in Bjorn Lomborg's book 'The Skeptical Environmentalist'?

I just finished the book, and it's clear that Lomborg has no use for what he calls 'The Litany'

I think there are two problems with Lomberg. 1) He played fast and loose with statistics. I'm not good enough at the specific domains to show where he stretched the truth, but my sense is that he stretched the truth without saying anything that he knew with certainty to be false. This looked like intentional deception to many critics. 2) He seems to be saying that the cost can be paid in dollars, as opposed to lives. Many environmentalists suspect that the human species could render itself extinct by abuse of the environment. The danger level of a possible extinction is much greater than the danger level of paying some money.

Redwalker - thanks for your reply. I include some of my own comments on it below. But in addition to what you focus on in your post, I was wondering specifically about Lomborg's projected costs from global climate change.

Lomborg is currently a hero of the anti-environmental right. Yet even he is saying that the economic cost of global climate change could amount to $5 trillion over the next century

I didn't make it clear in my post that I don't believe Lomberg's projection can be discussed seriously. If he means what he says, he is naive. If he is dishonestly telling the corps what they want to hear, he is deceptive.

I don't think the developing nations will pay costs in money. They will fail as states. The current status quo of planetary affairs, with nation states, central banks, etc. is not popular with many of this planet's inhabitants. They will not pay environmental costs with money. They will arm and start killing anyone who looks like an acceptable target.

So I think you're approaching the problem from an unproductive viewpoint

Red - I share your sense of what the 'money men' do, or want to do, to scientific debates over environmental issues. I would be inclined to distrust Lomborg simply because of the fact that his book is now being touted on Rush Limbaugh's web site. Limbaugh regularly calls environmentalists 'wackos,' and paints our concerns as laughable. So if he like Lomborg, or thinks he does, how good can Lomborg be?

I'm nevertheless impressed to see Rush Limbaugh's chosen candidate for environmental realism warning readers that global climate change DOES exist, and that it WILL cost huge sums of money to fix or to adjust to. I doubt that Limbaugh stresses this part of Lomborg's work much - but I think maybe we should.

As for your other questions, I'm reasonably well read, but I can't predict whether the impact of global climate change on the Third World will be to trigger the collapse of states or to simply perpetuate horrifying levels of poverty.

I tend to expect catastrophe, but I like the old Chinese adage: 'Prediction is a very difficult art, especially when it concerns the future.'

Lomborg and others have pointed