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COPENHAGEN – Political rhetoric has shifted away from the need to respond to the “generational challenge” of climate change. Investment in alternative energy technologies like solar and wind is no longer peddled on environmental grounds. Instead, we are being told of the purported economic payoffs, above all, the promise of so-called “green jobs.” Unfortunately, that does not measure up to economic reality. The Copenhagen Consensus Center asked Gürcan Gülen, a senior energy economist at the Center for Energy Economics, Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin, to assess the “state of the science” in defining, measuring,...

Skeptics of cap-and-trade have found their cinematic answer to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in Bjorn Lomborg’s new documentary, Cool It. Lomborg, 45, has an innocent-sounding résumé: He is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a Danish think tank that researches cost-effective ways for governments to spend aid money. However, the film begins with clips of scientists denouncing him as a traitor, a parasite, and an idiot. In one shot, Stephen Schneider, the late Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford University, tells the camera crew that they’re “not helping the world” by publicizing Lomborg’s efforts....

Climate catastrophe? The end of civilization as we know it? The new documentary, “Cool It,” tries to cut through the fog of the alarmists and get some real answers. The film features among its scientists friends of Heartland Richard Lindzen of MIT, Freeman Dyson of Princeton and Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute.

This is a response to "Why Can't We Innovate Our Way To A Carbon-Free Energy Future?", a "Perspective" by Bjorn Lomborg that ran in this space a week ago. Bjorn Lomborg, author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" and "Cool It," is right about the need to focus on critical health and economic priorities. But he is wrong about human carbon dioxide emissions causing what is now being called "global climate disruption." By demonizing the gas of life, in league with Al Gore and Bill Gates, Lomborg commits several serious scientific errors. As independent scientists, with broad training in mathematics, physics, chemistry,...

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...

As part of ongoing efforts of some FReepers to help people prepare, I figured this is good info. Let's start with a simple question: What is the biggest cause of infant mortality worldwide? A) Accidents B) Malaria C) Aids D) None of the above The answer is D. None of the above. The worldwide number one cause of death in infants is diarrhea. This causes dehydration and can lead to convulsions, kidney failure, blindness, and coma. Diarrhea is also a very significant problem in adults, especially in third world countries where access to potable, clean water supplies is limited or...

On Tuesday night about 1,100 people participated in a sold-out global warming debate that, in the end, turned downtown Toronto's new concert hall at the Royal Conservatory of Music into a microcosm of a larger tranformation that is sweeping the world. The debate pitted two well known global warming activists of international repute against two well-known skeptics. The skeptics won, shifting the audience's support away from the drastic global warming action demanded by activists and toward the moderate reponse of the skeptics, a move that is rapidly becoming a trend everywhere. If global warming is a problem -- and many...

Former Danish statistics professor Bjorn Lomborg created a storm of controversy when he published The Skeptical Environmentalist , a 1998 work that was denounced by scientists for its cost-benefit critique of the Kyoto Protocol but also praised for its willingness to challenge environmental orthodoxy.

Obama's getting ready for the U.N. global warming conference. So is Bjorn Lomborg. The coming fight over climate change and energy policy may make August's health care reform row look like a playground scuffle. In June, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act by a razor thin margin of 219 to 212 votes. The central feature of the 1,428-page bill is a cap-and-trade program that would limit the emissions of carbon dioxide by American industry and consumers.The Obama administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress are pressing strongly to get ACES passed and signed...

Climate Change: The EPA has prepared a finding for review that global warming is a public health threat, the first step toward regulating the American economy down to your lawn mower.We are often told how the pursuit of alternative energy will help save the earth from climate change and create lots of green jobs. Advocates rarely use the phrase "global warming" any more because the earth is in fact no longer warming, and hasn't for a decade due to a decline in solar activity and other natural factors. They prefer the phrase "climate change" because it can cover a multitude...

Some business leaders are cozying up with politicians and scientists to demand swift, drastic action on global warming. This is a new twist on a very old practice: companies using public policy to line their own pockets. The tight relationship between the groups echoes the relationship among weapons makers, researchers and the U.S. military during the Cold War. President Dwight Eisenhower famously warned about the might of the "military-industrial complex," cautioning that "the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." He worried that "there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly...

Barron's: Bjorn, what do you think will be the outcome of the negotiations to curb global warming this December? Lomborg: The participating nations will again agree to spend quite a bit of money to cut carbon emissions and again achieve virtually nothing. We already tried that twice -- in Rio in 1992, and in Kyoto in 1997. Both of these treaties failed. We will see a lot of posturing, but presumably this isn't about having a lot of environmental ministries or even presidents and prime ministers come out and claim credit for making costly commitments that we won't be able...

WE are often told that tackling global warming should be the defining task of our age — that we must cut emissions immediately and drastically. But people are not buying the idea that, unless we act, the planet is doomed. Several recent polls have revealed Americans’ growing skepticism. Solving global warming has become their lowest policy priority, according to a new Pew survey. Moreover, strategies to reduce carbon have failed. Meeting in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, politicians from wealthy countries promised to cut emissions by 2000, but did no such thing. In Kyoto in 1997, leaders promised even stricter...

By his own admission, Danish statistical professor Bjorn Lomborg never set out to take on the environmentalist movement. A member of Greenpeace, Lomborg happened to read an interview with the late Julian Simon, who'd made a career at disproving the doomsaying of environmentalists. Seeking to disprove Simon's conclusions in books like The Ultimate Resource 2, Lomborg instead -- to his great surprise -- confirmed all but a few. His work resulted in 2001's The Skeptical Environmentalist. The Skeptical Environmentalist may be the most complete refutation of what Lomborg refers to as the "Litany," his name for the chronic complaints...

Bjorn Lomborg on the priorities that should come before global warmingWhere in the world can we do the most good? That is the basic question addressed by the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank founded six years ago by the Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg. To answer the question, the center periodically convenes panels of leading economists, who weigh and prioritize the solutions experts have proposed to the world's biggest problems. Lomborg, a boyish 43-year-old, first burst onto the intellectual scene in 2001 with his best-selling book The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. There the former Greenpeace...

The "Finished Science" about global warming, as per Big Al and James Hansen, will be the hot topic at the up-and-coming energy conference the governor has scheduled for September. Representatives from city councils across Kansas will go, paid for by their cities. They will have a two-day brainwashing, come back to their respective cities and have reams of things we have to do to rein in a "speculative" problem. The Center for Climate Strategies to the rescue, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius hired this group to organize and access Kansas' problem. The Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy advisory group is the first...

In his latest [book], "Hot, Flat, and Crowded," Thomas L. Friedman makes it clear that he wants to improve conditions for mankind. "I start from the bedrock principle," he writes, "that we as a global society need more and more growth." But because of climate change (hot), ever-more people (crowded) and higher material aspirations of all in a competitive global economy (flat), he believes that the world's growth is leading us toward catastrophe. Mr. Friedman, a columnist for the New York Times, describes this threat in the grimmest of terms. We should expect disasters "of a biblical scale," humans are...

When it comes to all things "green", common sense seems to have been abandoned. Our failure to think clearly about such matters would be amusing if the potential consequences were not so serious. Consider the recent "lights out" campaign that supposedly should energise the world about the problems of climate change by urging citizens in 27 big cities to turn out their lights for an hour... -Nobody, it seemed, wanted to spoil the party by pointing that the event was immensely futile, that it highlighted a horrible metaphor, or that it caused much higher overall pollution. -Ironically, the lights-out campaign...

Time Managing Editor Richard Stengel writes how climate change is threatening man's ability to kill polar bears. By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute 9/25/2007 Now we must save the polar bear – so that we can kill it? In the October 1 Time Magazine – an issue that is dedicated to “who owns the Arctic” – Managing Editor Richard Stengel compares two Arctic regions that have been affected by the warmer swing in temperatures in the northern regions of Norway and Canada. Stengel reported on two different Arctic attitudes based on what two Time reporters are telling him. In...

To the prospect of more killer storms like Hurricane Katrina, of rising sea levels that inundate coastal regions where hundreds of millions of people live and farm, of more frequent deadly heat waves, of alternating droughts and floods that will devastate agriculture, and of rampant insect-borne diseases, Bjorn Lomborg has the same taunt that President George W. Bush offered to Iraqi insurgents in 2003: bring it on. Lomborg, a political scientist in Denmark, became a conservative darling in 2001 with the publication of his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist." Contrary to the apocalyptic pronouncements of green groups, he argued that human...

The report on climate change by Nicholas Stern and the U.K. government has sparked publicity and scary headlines around the world. Much attention has been devoted to Mr. Stern's core argument that the price of inaction would be extraordinary and the cost of action modest. Unfortunately, this claim falls apart when one actually reads the 700-page tome. Despite using many good references, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is selective and its conclusion flawed. Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalized, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off. The review correctly points out that...

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1810738,00.html Climate change can wait. World health can't With $50bn, we could make the planet a better place but money spent on global warming would be wasted Bjorn Lomborg Sunday July 2, 2006 The Observer A city council has a £10m surplus, which it wants to allocate to a good cause. Ten groups clamour for the cash. One wants to buy new computers for an inner-city school. Another hopes to beautify a park. Each puts a persuasive case for the benefits they could achieve. What should the councillors do? The straightforward answer might seem to be to divide the cash...

My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today. Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/11/021113070418.htm Source: Texas A&M University Date: 11/13/2002 Pacific Ocean Temperature Changes Point To Natural Climate Variability COLLEGE STATION, November 12, 2002 - Analysis of long-term changes in Pacific Ocean temperatures may provide additional data with which to evaluate global warming hypotheses. "Abrupt changes in water temperatures occurring over intervals of up to 25 years suggest that global warming may result as much from natural cyclical climate variations as from human activity," said Benjamin Giese, oceanography professor in the College of Geosciences. "Climate models constructed here at Texas A&M University were used to analyze ocean surface temperature records in the tropical...

Copenhagen Consensus Putting the world to rightsJun 3rd 2004 | COPENHAGEN From The Economist print editionWhat would be the best ways to spend additional resources on helping the developing countries? Some answers IN RECENT weeks The Economist has been following and supporting the Copenhagen Consensus project—an unusual, ambitious and, some have argued, misguided attempt to set priorities among a range of ideas for improving the lives of people living in developing countries. Starting on April 17th, we began publishing, both in print and on our website*, reviews of essays commissioned by the organisers from leading economic researchers. Each of...

Press Release March 12, 2004 Scientific Dishonesty Committee Withdraws Lomborg Case The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) today announced it would not reopen the case concerning Bjørn Lomborg's book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist". In December 2003 The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation completely rejected the DCSD finding that "The Skeptical Environmentalist" was "objectively dishonest" or "clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice". The Ministry, which is responsible for the DCSD, found that the committee's judgment was not backed up by documentation and was "completely void of argumentation" for the claims of dishonesty and lack of good...

I made a posting to a website Denmark's Ministry of Truth where I cited a quote by former Colorado Democrat Senator Tim Wirth where he said What we've got to do in energy conservation is to try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. Shortly afterwards I received an e-mail from a Danish journalist saying he might want to use that quote...

amazon.com has just posted my new review of Bjorn Lomborg's book "The Skeptical Environmentalist." (I submitted it 11 days ago, but they just posted it today.) At the end of my review on their website it asks "Was this review helpful to you?" Please go to the website and vote on my review. Thank you! Here is my review: Doomsayers are afraid that you might actually read this book June 8, 2002 Reviewer: grundle2600 Since Bjorn Lomborg's book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" was published in the United States last year, a lot of people have been very critical of Lomborg and...

Bjorn Lomborg is author of the book "The Skeptical Environmentalist." Since the book was published in the United States last year, a lot of people have been very critical of Lomborg and his book. That's fine. Healthy debate and disagreement over important issues is essential to the preservation of a free, open, democratic society. Some of Lomborg's critics have politely raised legitimate disagreements about some of Lomborg's statements, such as on Lomborg's statements about global warming, the amount of public land that's covered in forest, and the size of wild fish populations. However, even these polite and civil critics have...

The Skeptical Environmentalist Replies Recently Scientific American published "Misleading Math about the Earth," a series of essays that critized Bj¿rn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist. Here Lomborg offers his rebuttal. After Scientific American published an 11-page critique of my book The Skeptical Environmentalist in January, IÕve now been allowed a one-page reply. Naturally, this leaves little space to comment on particulars, and I refer to my 32-page article-for-article, point-for-point reply at www.lomborg.org and on the Scientific American Web site (www.sciam.com). I believe many readers will have shared my surprise at the choice of four reviewers so closely identified with environmental...

The article is too long to post here. http://www.reason.com/0205/fe.rb.green.shtml