bjorn lomborg

Keeping Priorities Straight

by Ryan Young on October 23, 2009

in Economy, Environment, Global Warming, International

Bjørn Lomborg, head of the Copenhagen Consensus, brings some much-needed common sense to the global warming debate. Reporting from Vanuatu, he finds that many of the locals haven’t even heard of global warming.

Torethy Frank is one of them. She has other priorities, such as escaping crushing poverty: “Torethy and her family of six live in a small house made of concrete and brick with no running water. As a toilet, they use a hole dug in the ground. They have no shower and there is no fixed electricity supply.”

You can see why the two degrees of projected warming over the next century are not at the top of her “problems to solve” list. I would argue that ending global poverty should be a little higher on ours. Certainly higher than global warming.

Policy Peril Segment 3 – Hurricanes (updated 8/19/09)

by Marlo Lewis on July 30, 2009 · 5 comments

in Global Warming, Odds & Ends

Is global warming making hurricanes more destructive? Did global warming contribute to the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina? Would Kyoto-style energy rationing help avert future weather-related catastrophes?

Well, just ask Al Gore! In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore claims there’s a “strong new emerging consensus” that global warming is increasing the duration and intensity of hurricanes (AIT, p. 81), he depicts New Orleans as a global warming victim (pp. 94-95), and the threat of increasingly powerful storms is a major part of the alleged “climate crisis” that Gore proposes to solve by restricting our access to carbon-based energy. [click to continue…]

Compare and Contrast

by Iain Murray on May 26, 2009 · 2 comments

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, Regulation

Bjorn Lomborg, November 2007:

…although it may seem almost comically straightforward, one of the best temperature-reducing approaches is very simple: paint things white. Cities have a lot of black asphalt and dark, heat-absorbing structures. By increasing reflection and shade, a great deal of heat build-up can be avoided. Paint most of a city and you could lower the temperature by 10C.

Steven Chu, May 2009:

Professor Steven Chu, speaking at the opening of the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, for which The Times is media partner, said this simple and “completely benign” approach to “geo-engineering” could have a vast impact at low cost. By lightening all paved surfaces and roofs to the colour of cement, it would be possible to reduce carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world’s cars off the roads for 11 years, he said.

I ask you to compare and contrast because one of these men is an “evil delayer” (or worse), and the other a planetary savior.  Yet the savior is now adopting a policy advocated for two years by the “delayer.”

Perhaps there is hope for the global warming debate yet.