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Showing posts with label Bjorn Lomborg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bjorn Lomborg. Show all posts
Dec 14, 2015
Paris and the Poor
Rich countries that try to meet their Paris commitments will spend huge
amounts of money replacing cheap, higher-emissions energy sources with
expensive, lower-emissions sources. This will harm the poor and do
nothing for the climate.
read the rest here
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read the rest here
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Nov 2, 2014
IPCC Links New Report to Sneering Stephen Schneider
An organization whose reputation is in tatters links its new document to a rude, intolerant, highly politicized climate crusader.
read the rest here
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Oct 20, 2013
Think You Know Greenpeace? Look Again
An urgent public health crisis exists. An effective, humanitarian response is available. But rather than pitching in and helping to save lives, Greenpeace is attacking the aid workers.
read the rest here
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Jun 18, 2013
The Green Jobs Fairy Tale
Politicians, having blindly parroted environmentalist rhetoric about green jobs, look increasingly foolish.
Read the rest here.
Read the rest here.
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Jan 22, 2013
Greenpeace's Vision for America: Unemployed, Broke, Miserable
Greenpeace thinks President Obama should destroy lives now. Because of
an ill-defined, generalized risk of climate change sometime in the
future.
Read the rest here.
Read the rest here.
This blog has relocated. You can sign up to receive an e-mail each time a new post is added under the "Email subscription" bar a little below the photo.
NoFrakkingConsensus has a Facebook page.
Jun 4, 2012
Poverty Pollutes: Lomborg on the Rio+20 Conference
The current United Nations response to environmental concerns is doing more harm than good.
Read the rest here.
Read the rest here.
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NoFrakkingConsensus has a Facebook page.
Feb 8, 2011
Is Everything Really Getting Worse?
David Suzuki says the planet is in “far worse shape” today than 50 years ago. But a growing library of exhaustively researched books claim the opposite.
Read the rest here.
Read the rest here.
This blog has relocated. You can sign up to receive an e-mail each time a new post is added under the "Email subscription" bar a little below the photo.NoFrakkingConsensus now has a Facebook page..
Feb 11, 2010
Just One Cotton-Pickin' Minute
A column appeared in the Toronto Star (Canada's largest circulation daily) yesterday, under the ridiculous headline: "Questions for climate change skeptics."
It should have been titled: Questions for asleep-at-the-wheel journalists.
The Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) currently finds itself mired in scandal over erroneous glacier info, frequent use of material produced by green advocacy groups (not to mention newspaper and magazine clippings), patently false claims regarding the non-existent link between climate change and hurricanes, etcetera, etcetera.
After bloggers performed a good deal of the spade work concerning these matters, reputable UK newspapers are finally calling for the resignation of the IPCC's chairman - and urging that its findings be subject to an audit.
Yet the Toronto Star, which appears to have done absolutely nothing to inform its readers about these controversies (despite UK papers reporting on them non-stop for weeks) doesn't feel it should be held accountable. Rather, its senior political columnist, Carol Goar, thinks it is skeptics who now deserve to be peppered with questions.
"Suppose the scientific consensus on climate change is wrong," she began yesterday's column. Suppose arctic ice melts naturally, that greenhouse gases pose no risk, and that climatologists are misguided in their concerns about "rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers, longer droughts [and] more violent storms."
Doesn't it make sense "to set tougher emissions standards for the vehicles that pollute the air we breathe" anyway, she asks. Doesn't it also "make sense to stop burning up and selling off non-renewable resources as if there were no tomorrow?"
Now wait just one cotton-pickin' minute. Everyone thinks fighting pollution is a good thing. Most of us also believe in using natural resources wisely.
But those are not the measures media outlets such as the Toronto Star have been telling us we need to adopt. On December 7th, 2009 - that's 66 days ago - the Star was one of 56 newspapers worldwide that jointly ran the same alarmist climate change editorial [full list here]. The Star took the unusual step of printing said editorial on its front page [photo here], beneath large type that declared:
As Bjorn Lomborg points out, however, "nobody emits C02 for fun." Emissions occur when we use energy. Energy refrigerates and cooks our food. It keeps us warm. It gets us to work and to church. It powers our hospitals and lights our schools. It is required to design, manufacture, and transport virtually every consumer good. In other words, it makes our world go round.
People who slip into energy poverty start burning books and furniture to protect themselves from winter's merciless bite. They perish from both the cold and their inability to access medical and social services. Their children are denied the opportunity to attend an arts school across town, because the cost of a transit pass is beyond their means.
This cramped, small, meagre, miserable existence is what the Star's editorial board told us was absolutely necessary 66 days ago, when it was urging us to "shop, eat and travel" less, and telling us we'd have to get used to paying more for energy while using it sparingly.
Near the end of her column yesterday, Ms. Goar acknowledges that:
This is marvelous news. It means that a lot of little kids have been told a lot of scary stories about ghastly things that might not happen, after all.
Now what really needs asking is this: How did the Toronto Star manage, within a period of 66 days, to go from telling us our very survival was at stake due to global warming to arguing that, well, fighting pollution is a good idea anyway?
Where are the soul-searching examinations of how this happened? Where are the front-page mea culpas? Where are the solemn promises to be more critically-minded (not to mention open-minded) in the future?
It isn't climate skeptics who have some explaining to do.
..
(Full disclosure: my first regular gig during my 10-year stint as a journalist was a weekly opinions-page column in the Toronto Star that ran from 1992-1996. It was a great job, I was lucky to land it, and it paid the handsome sum of $200 a week.)
..
>> What she said about the climate bible 3 months ago
>> Time magazine's controversial glacier expert
>> Systemic failure: invasion of the drama queens
>> Science says: hop on one foot
It should have been titled: Questions for asleep-at-the-wheel journalists.
The Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) currently finds itself mired in scandal over erroneous glacier info, frequent use of material produced by green advocacy groups (not to mention newspaper and magazine clippings), patently false claims regarding the non-existent link between climate change and hurricanes, etcetera, etcetera.
After bloggers performed a good deal of the spade work concerning these matters, reputable UK newspapers are finally calling for the resignation of the IPCC's chairman - and urging that its findings be subject to an audit.
Yet the Toronto Star, which appears to have done absolutely nothing to inform its readers about these controversies (despite UK papers reporting on them non-stop for weeks) doesn't feel it should be held accountable. Rather, its senior political columnist, Carol Goar, thinks it is skeptics who now deserve to be peppered with questions.
"Suppose the scientific consensus on climate change is wrong," she began yesterday's column. Suppose arctic ice melts naturally, that greenhouse gases pose no risk, and that climatologists are misguided in their concerns about "rising sea levels, shrinking glaciers, longer droughts [and] more violent storms."
Doesn't it make sense "to set tougher emissions standards for the vehicles that pollute the air we breathe" anyway, she asks. Doesn't it also "make sense to stop burning up and selling off non-renewable resources as if there were no tomorrow?"
Now wait just one cotton-pickin' minute. Everyone thinks fighting pollution is a good thing. Most of us also believe in using natural resources wisely.
But those are not the measures media outlets such as the Toronto Star have been telling us we need to adopt. On December 7th, 2009 - that's 66 days ago - the Star was one of 56 newspapers worldwide that jointly ran the same alarmist climate change editorial [full list here]. The Star took the unusual step of printing said editorial on its front page [photo here], beneath large type that declared:
The world must kick its carbon habit and we'll have to change our lifestyle...Our survival depends on it. [bold added]Within the body of this editorial, the Star told its readers that:
- climate change "will ravage our planet"
- climate change consequences "will endure for all time"
- our prospects for fighting climate change "will be determined in the next 14 days" (at the Copenhagen climate summit)
- farmland would be turned into desert
- half "of all species could become extinct"
- "millions of people would be displaced"
- entire nations would be "drowned by the sea"
...every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level. [bold added]This is a strange argument, of course. It says we must, by applying the brakes to virtually all economic activity, deliberately embrace the kind of hardship we'd only otherwise experience during a severe recession/depression. Moreover, the reason we must endure this permanent hardship is to prevent speculative bad things from happening to not-yet-born humans at an unspecified time in the future.
As Bjorn Lomborg points out, however, "nobody emits C02 for fun." Emissions occur when we use energy. Energy refrigerates and cooks our food. It keeps us warm. It gets us to work and to church. It powers our hospitals and lights our schools. It is required to design, manufacture, and transport virtually every consumer good. In other words, it makes our world go round.
People who slip into energy poverty start burning books and furniture to protect themselves from winter's merciless bite. They perish from both the cold and their inability to access medical and social services. Their children are denied the opportunity to attend an arts school across town, because the cost of a transit pass is beyond their means.
This cramped, small, meagre, miserable existence is what the Star's editorial board told us was absolutely necessary 66 days ago, when it was urging us to "shop, eat and travel" less, and telling us we'd have to get used to paying more for energy while using it sparingly.
Near the end of her column yesterday, Ms. Goar acknowledges that:
Revelations about the shoddy research techniques and suppression of inconvenient information have cast doubt on the alarmist forecasts of the International Panel on Climate Change.She also admits that: "Global warming may not be the greatest threat facing mankind."
This is marvelous news. It means that a lot of little kids have been told a lot of scary stories about ghastly things that might not happen, after all.
Now what really needs asking is this: How did the Toronto Star manage, within a period of 66 days, to go from telling us our very survival was at stake due to global warming to arguing that, well, fighting pollution is a good idea anyway?
Where are the soul-searching examinations of how this happened? Where are the front-page mea culpas? Where are the solemn promises to be more critically-minded (not to mention open-minded) in the future?
It isn't climate skeptics who have some explaining to do.
..
(Full disclosure: my first regular gig during my 10-year stint as a journalist was a weekly opinions-page column in the Toronto Star that ran from 1992-1996. It was a great job, I was lucky to land it, and it paid the handsome sum of $200 a week.)
..
>> What she said about the climate bible 3 months ago
>> Time magazine's controversial glacier expert
>> Systemic failure: invasion of the drama queens
>> Science says: hop on one foot
Dec 2, 2009
Why the Munk Debate Proves the Debate Isn't Over
Last night, in front of a live audience of 1,100 in Toronto, four prominent individuals debated the following question:
Elizabeth May, the leader of Canada's Green Party, and George Monbiot, UK newspaper columnist and author, argued the "pro" position.
Skeptical Environmentalist author Bjorn Lomborg and former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, argued against.
A video of the entire 2-hour debate can be viewed here. It appears that, at a later date, a transcript will also be available.
What's interesting is that while Al Gore and others insist "the debate is over" few of us have actually witnessed a genuine debate on this topic. Instead, via the mainstream media, we've been force-fed one particular perspective.
So what happens when multiple points of view are granted equal time to make their case? Opinion shifts. But not in the direction environmental activists would wish.
When the 1,100 people entered the auditorium they were asked to vote. 61% considered climate change to be "mankind's defining crisis," while 39% thought otherwise.
At 1 pm today, Munk Debates, the organization that sponsored last night's event, e-mailed the post-debate results to those of us who'd signed up to watch online. [click image for a larger view]
The verdict: support for the motion dropped from 61 to 53%. Opposition increased from 39 to 47%.
In other words, when people are given a chance to hear both sides of the story, public opinion shifts from roughly 2 to 1 in favor of the view that climate change is our top priority to pretty much evenly split.
This means the debate is by no means over. In fact, it's a good indicator that the real debate hasn't yet begun. When nations or organizations make profound, reboot decisions about the future (such as when they amend their constitutions), they typically require a super-majority in the neighborhood of two-thirds to 75%. Last night produced nothing like a super-majority in one direction or the other.
..
UPDATE: Dec.3 - The error on the Monk Debates website, discussed below, has been corrected. Producer David Taylor apologizes and advises that there were 583 PRO votes post-debate and 517 CON votes. Thus, the above numbers are accurate.
P.S. I've just noticed something rather curious. The post-debate numbers displayed on the Munk Debates website are different from the ones distributed in the e-mail. The website says the results were 56% pro and 44% con - not quite as large a shift. Strange.
But the larger point remains. The position advanced by May and Monbiot lost ground last night after the audience was exposed to an alternative perspective.
Be it resolved climate change is mankind's defining crisis, and demands a commensurate response.The question wasn't do you think climate change is:
- natural?
- man-made?
- a problem?
- a non-issue?
- within our power to influence?
- beyond our ability to control?
Elizabeth May, the leader of Canada's Green Party, and George Monbiot, UK newspaper columnist and author, argued the "pro" position.
Skeptical Environmentalist author Bjorn Lomborg and former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, argued against.
A video of the entire 2-hour debate can be viewed here. It appears that, at a later date, a transcript will also be available.
What's interesting is that while Al Gore and others insist "the debate is over" few of us have actually witnessed a genuine debate on this topic. Instead, via the mainstream media, we've been force-fed one particular perspective.
So what happens when multiple points of view are granted equal time to make their case? Opinion shifts. But not in the direction environmental activists would wish.
When the 1,100 people entered the auditorium they were asked to vote. 61% considered climate change to be "mankind's defining crisis," while 39% thought otherwise.
At 1 pm today, Munk Debates, the organization that sponsored last night's event, e-mailed the post-debate results to those of us who'd signed up to watch online. [click image for a larger view]
The verdict: support for the motion dropped from 61 to 53%. Opposition increased from 39 to 47%.In other words, when people are given a chance to hear both sides of the story, public opinion shifts from roughly 2 to 1 in favor of the view that climate change is our top priority to pretty much evenly split.
This means the debate is by no means over. In fact, it's a good indicator that the real debate hasn't yet begun. When nations or organizations make profound, reboot decisions about the future (such as when they amend their constitutions), they typically require a super-majority in the neighborhood of two-thirds to 75%. Last night produced nothing like a super-majority in one direction or the other.
..
UPDATE: Dec.3 - The error on the Monk Debates website, discussed below, has been corrected. Producer David Taylor apologizes and advises that there were 583 PRO votes post-debate and 517 CON votes. Thus, the above numbers are accurate.
P.S. I've just noticed something rather curious. The post-debate numbers displayed on the Munk Debates website are different from the ones distributed in the e-mail. The website says the results were 56% pro and 44% con - not quite as large a shift. Strange.
But the larger point remains. The position advanced by May and Monbiot lost ground last night after the audience was exposed to an alternative perspective.
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