Climate Villain Bjørn Lomborg Does U-Turn, Says Global Warming is a $100 Billion Problem

So, an economist has decided it's more important because other economists have decided it's important? I'm a skeptic but open to the idea (really concerned by the aura of dogma that surrounds it, and the fatuousness and hypocrisy of leading proponents such as Al Gore). Lomborg's circular reasoning though does nothing to advance the case for or against anthropogenic climate change.

Make a book about global warming when everyone is starting to backlash against it. Make a book about how GW is a lie when people start to think that GW is a real possibility.

Back and forth. Always appeal to the underdog.

Fortunately, the hysteria created by Rebecca Boyle and her ilk has been largely revealed as bunk, and the chances of any legislation foolish enough to contribute to her fantasies have diminished as quickly as the alarmists predictions have failed to materialized.

But keep on preachin' the faith!

Again, Money more important than ones conscious. Proves again that people can and will be bought out.

yea....it's readers like kstauff and his/her ilk who have it right.....isn't that correct kstauff? No such thing as global warming.....none at all. You did read the article right? The champion of global warming as a bunk has changed his mind and based on evidence and he now says it IS a problem.

Get you effing head out of the sand.

lnwolf41 You people miss the point, wheather he believes in global warming or not; you have to BUY!!!!!!!! his book so you know what to do. Because obviously no one eles knows how to do it. Thank the gods a number cruncher has the solution.
He's selling a book to make money, and people are falling for it.

I love pointing out factual errors, especially when the facts were so easily available to anyone who was willing to concentrate longer than it takes to read a 1-sentence soundbite.

Bjorn Lomborg never claimed that global warming wasn't a problem. Never. To put it in simpler words, from the beginning Lomborg believed and publicly stated that global warming is real and it's a problem.

What he did that incensed the global warmists is run the numbers and put it in perspective. His conclusion: "fixing" global warming was such an expensive proposition and yielded such a miniscule return on investment that we were far better served by spending money on easily solvable problems. He was--and still is--correct on that point.

Why he has decided that "solving" global warming is now worthy of spending vast sums I cannot say. It certainly isn't because more people believe it's a problem because in fact fewer now believe it's a problem.

The fact that the UN climate chief compared Lomborg to Adolf Hitler is hysterically funny given the fact that Lomborg has always been a true believer in global warming. The undeserved and ridiculous criticism is, however, symptomatic of the behavior of a significant portion of global warmists: if you question the data and the methods for deriving the alarming extrapolations--in other words if you question the "facts"--you are summarily dismissed as a heretic or worse. In the case of Lomborg, he agreed with the consensus; he simply questioned the economic reality of spending trillions of dollars for what could be shown mathematically to produce almost no measurable effect to slow global warming.

The reason why the East Anglia, Penn State, and IPCC scandals are such a big deal is because they revealed that the suppression of data, studies, and information that challenges the consensus that global warming is real; and that it's a looming apocalypse; goes all the way to the top echelons of the scientific community. The very people that are supposed to be impartial and unbiased scientists simply reporting the facts are shown to be in fact so passionately wed to their theory that they compromise the process of scientific discovery and dissemination of information.

To date, it has not been proven that humans are causing any significant warming of the planet, despite all assurances about the consensus of the scientific community. In fact it has not even been established that any recent warming is more rapid or higher than any other period in the climate record. The only place we see drastic warming and catastrophically rising sea levels is in flawed statistical studies and computer models that, however good and useful they are for research, still don't accurately model global climate systems with the degree of precision required for forecasting a warming planet.

Yes, the climate changes. But, it has never been a question as to why. If you believe that human beings can actually affect the temperature, you are dumb. There have been numerous studies comparing the Earth's temperature and solar flares. Why do you think this has been the hottest year on record? Maybe because it has been a year of unprecedented solar flares.

Oh just leave the weather alone. Whatever happens happens. It's natural whatever happens. Trying to reverse weather related events that mankind does is foolish and a waste of time. Just move the people away from the beaches they are too close anyway!

Aren't we still in the tail end of an ice age? Isn't having ice on the poles the exception rather than the rule for most of the history of the earth? Aren't politicians particularly the UN primarily schills for whatever large interests, conglomerates, big pharma, big oil, big mining, big whatever has enough money and influence to push an agenda.

It's not that I don't like ice. I like ice very much. Icy winds, freezing sleet, snow blowing in my face. I'm not being facetious I do actually like that, it would upset me to never have that again. But all I'm saying is when there is this much money, power and control and so many are saying the only solution is something that will gain them more and more. Just let's all be careful we're not selling ourselves into tyranny because they scared us enough.

We all know there are influential idealogies out there that want to control the means of production and so all things that humans do, have, think, say. Just saying let's just all play this smart rather than let fear and hatred of the other "team" control us. Let's us play this for us, not them playing us for power, for money, for the world.

Sir, He is no Climate Lex Luther!!! He sounds more like a Dr. Evil.... and has just found another way for the World to Pay him his $100 billion dollars......

One last thing. The reason some of this doesn't make sense is your assuming cap and trade will hurt big oil, and large conglomerate corporations. So obviously anyone for cap and trade is against big oil etc. It seems like two opposing teams, but it's not, its one.

Big oil and everything big else knows oil is limited and will run out someday. The uber rich own oil, they have a piece of the greenhouse trading houses, they also own the broken down factories and tree farms that will receive the "green" credits. They will make 3 times the money for the same finite resource. And you will thank them for saving the earth.

This won't hurt them, it will help them. It will hurt us. And probably not help the problem this proposed "solution" is sold to fix. Does that make sense, that powerful climate change pushers are bought out and are actually intimately tied to the big oil etc. that we are told are the enemy. It's a way to convince you to accept something you wouldn't accept otherwise.

For example if you were told to limit your free speech you would say no. But if it's sold as stopping "hate" speech, you might accept it. But the hate can be defined as anything they wanted to limit you from saying in the first place. It's a trick. In the recent kenyan election for a new progressive constitution politicians opposed to it were arrested for hate speech. It's a way to shut people up and accept what they wanted you to accept anyway.

@Mycellium...
"For example if you were told to limit your free speech you would say no. But if it's sold as stopping "hate" speech, you might accept it. But the hate can be defined as anything they wanted to limit you from saying in the first place. It's a trick."

D@mmit...dont give the politicians any ideas!

This man is just a salesman.

At least he'll get dinner and conference invitations again.

Hasn't the earth been warming up since ooo I dunno the Ice Age?

Whether or not humans are causing climate change is irrelevant. We are polluting the Earth, and these have a detrimental effect on our bodies and lungs. Unlike climate change, this affects everyone, not just ppl in the shores, or near the beaches, etc. www.candidablog.com

What in the world is PopSci doing re-running an article from the daft Guardian? This is a British newspaper so far to the left as to be of laughing stock material to most Americans. It's never met a socialist view it didn't like. Its articles on science, such as they are, are typically loaded with over-reaching and nebulous left-wing jargon and claims. What is going on? Who on the PopSci editorial staff authorized this reprint?
Sorry, can't take it seriously, given the source.

Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it.

Except Lomborg and Al Gore. They use it to sell books.

All those books are printed on paper from trees that can no longer extract CO2 from our suffering atmosphere once they are cut down. And the East Anglia crowd who have generated thousands of pages of email and questionable statistics, not to mention all the news articles about this nonsense. That may significantly accelerate the AGW, thus proving them right after all!

Thanks guys, for solving the carbon problem in your own unique economic ways! Everybody must do his part to prove that AGW is real!

I, myself, am buying and burning Gore and Lomborg's books. That way I can double my carbon footprint and help them prove it's true. And then I'm buying futures in carbon credits so I can sell them back to Al Gore.

Global warming is a crock of SH^T.

Global warming is a total myth funded by the Elites....they want to limit human production as to keep all of the resources themselves...WAKE UP the earth has been warming since the ice age....GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT REAL and the science proves it.

BTW if they care about the enviroment, why not clean up the island of garbage as big as texas floating in the pacific?

Having read "Skeptical Environmentalist" cover to cover I found this article a bit of a shocker. So I researched and found that Lomborg really hasn't changed his position much at all. I will add that his faith in public entities is a bit dismaying though. They will collect .5% of money and honestly spend it on green tech (sigh).