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First there was Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans, then came Bjorn Lomborg’s False Alarm, and now Michael Schellenberger’s Apocalypse Never. All three authors sound the common theme that the hyper-green environmental activists who have captured, politicized, and monetized the concern for the environment have, as Lomborg explains, created a false climate alarm which has “costs us trillions, hurts the poor, and fails to fix the planet.” To varying degrees, all three authors come from a strong environmental activist background, which observation makes their public revelations even more noteworthy. Planet of the Humans, the recent film produced by Michael Moore,...

(Skip) Far from the “end of the world,” the impact of warming is what we’d expect from roughly a single economic recession taking place over the next half century. (Skip) If the world isn’t ending, and the impact of global warming by 2030 is much less than 0.2 percent to 2 percent of GDP, then we need to start comparing costs with benefits. This is the bread and butter of William Nordhaus, the only climate economist to win the Nobel Prize. His careful work over many decades shows that a globally ­coordinated, moderate and rising carbon tax could reduce temperatures...

It might seem strange to say it, but I am a global warming skeptic because of Carl Sagan. This might seem strange because Sagan was an early promoter of the theory that man-made emissions of carbon dioxide are going to fry the globe. But it’s not so strange when you consider the larger message that made Sagan famous. As with many people my age, Sagan’s 1980 series “Cosmos,” which aired on public television when I was eleven years old, was my introduction to science, and it changed my life. “Cosmos&88221; shared the latest developments in the sciences of evolution, astronomy,...

NEW YORK - When parts of Japan were devastated recently by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami, news of the human toll was quickly overshadowed by global fears of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant. The concern was understandable: radiation is very frightening. I grew up in Denmark at a time when fear of nuclear power was pervasive. But our latest nuclear fears have broader implications, especially for energy supply and our desire to shift away from reliance on fossil fuels. It is difficult to step back at the time of a natural disaster to gain a broader...

Bjorn Lomborg notes in a November 12 piece in The Wall Street Journal that the momentum for re-ordering the world in a decidedly socialist and wealth-confiscating direction by dramatically reducing carbon emissions to “save us” from “environmental catastrophe” seems to have slowed. And while Lomborg’s voice has been valuable for the non-alarmist side of this debate — his book, and now movie, “Cool It” has garnered worthy attention — many of us “skeptics” still have bones to pick with the amiable Dane. The WSJ today published a letter of response by Heartland Institute policy advisors J. Scott Armstrong of The...

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,...

There are a lot of people out there—unqualified, un-degreed, un-peer-reviewed people—who actively reject the consensus among climate skeptics. These people are rank deniers. These bold casuistry mongers should cause us grave concern. If they can refuse to admit something so obvious as skepticism of the accuracy of climate models, who knows what else this temerarious rabble would deny? You know which historical incidents I mean. Deniers! How they vex me! Listen: I and my fellow skeptics have taken great pains to present a coherent, logical picture of the vast uncertainties inherent in predictions of the future. We have written article...

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...

The plan we are most likely to adopt to address climate change will cost far too much and do next to nothing. The fight over the science of warming is over, yes. But the debate over the solution to global warming hasn't even begun. I. A False Choice On a family visit to Kenya long before he became president of the United States, Barack Obama declared that he wanted to go on safari. His Kenyan half sister, Auma, chided him for being a neocolonialist."Why should all that land be set aside for tourists," she asked, "when it could be used...

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...

In one of his first public policy statements as America’s president-elect, Barack Obama focused on climate change, and clearly stated both his priori ties and the facts on which these priorities rest. Unfortunately, both are weak, or even wrong. According to Obama, “few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change.” Such a statement is now commonplace for most political leaders around the world, even though it neglects to address the question of how much we can do to help America and the world through climate policies versus other policies. Consider, for example, hurricanes in...

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...

October 12, 2007, 0:00 a.m. Cold Water on Consensus Lomborg debunks. By Mona Charen Consensus can be wrong. So warned the New York Times in a science section piece on Oct. 9. “Diet and Fat: A Severe Case of Mistaken Consensus” reviewed the history of our belief that dietary fat was as big a health risk as smoking. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop declared as much in 1988. He was speaking not for himself but for the scientific community, which was nearly unanimous in fingering fat as the cause of heart disease and cancer. The trouble was, study after study...

...The U.N. climate panel expects only a foot of sea-level rise over this century. Moreover, sea levels actually climbed that much over the past 150 years. Does Mr. Gore find it balanced to exaggerate the best scientific knowledge available by a factor of 20? Mr. Gore says that global warming will increase malaria and highlights Nairobi as his key case.... Today Nairobi is considered free of malaria, but in the 1920s and '30s, when temperatures were lower than today, malaria epidemics occurred regularly. Mr. Gore's is a convenient story, but isn't it against the facts? He considers Antarctica the canary...

In the final minutes of the Hollywood doomsday spectacular The Day After Tomorrow, which opens in Britain at the end of the month, the US president makes a ludicrously over-the-top State of the Nation speech. It is a great deal less realistic than the performance by the undoubted star of this $125 million blockbuster of a film: a 100 ft high tidal wave that engulfs New York. Indeed, the film loses any credibility long before that. This is not because of any one of the far-fetched incidents that occur in the course of its 125 minutes. It isn't the flash...

The recent damage from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita shows that the U.S. is very vulnerable to climate catastrophes. Researchers point out that the North Atlantic has entered its active 35-year period; thus after 35 years of relative hurricane lull, we are poised for decades of violent weather. In the aftermath there is a strong political will and inclination to spend money.... [I]n the real world, most proposed programs are very costly and only some can be done. So we should start with the best ones first. Such prioritization has its intellectual footing in the global prioritization process initiated by the...

...The British Prime Minister wants President Bush to commit the U.S. to billions in debt relief to the world's poorest countries through a mechanism called the International Finance Facility, which the Administration rightfully considers a nonstarter. Mr. Blair also wants the U.S. to sign on to his views on global warming.... Instead, what Mr. Blair mainly got was a commitment from the Administration to release another $674 million in humanitarian relief -- most of it food aid -- for Africa, above the $3.2 billion per year it already provides.... [T]he brainchild of Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, the [Copenhagen] Consensus is...

In 2001, Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg enraged the environmental community by publishing his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist," which claims the planet is not in as dire a condition as many would have us believe. With the Kyoto Protocol aimed at curbing global warming set to take effect next week, Lomborg spoke with Examiner reporter Josh Wein to discuss his views on the world's problems. His new book, "Global Crises, Global Solutions," argues there are other, more pressing issues that deserve the world's resources. EXAMINER: With Kyoto set to take effect next week, we've seen a number of global warming headlines...