Letters to the Editor
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Hmm
It is very refreshing to see a scientist who does not deny that global warming is happening, but who says that we need to think more about how we attempt to solve the problem. I think a dissenting voice can help the debate tremendously, as long as the dissenting voice is not saying the problem does not exist.
Unfortunately, I don't know enough of the science to make any decisions about the solutions. I find the Copenhagen Consensus Center's approach of trying to find the value in each dollar spent on each of these problems to be novel and interesting. I just have no way to assess the applicability of this approach.
The worst part about Lomborg is the way that disgusting liars like Jim Inhofe distort his views. But this is not Lomborg's fault. Inhofe et al are going to find bases for their lies no matter whether Lomborg writes a book or not.
I am glad Lomborg is out there.
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No One Tells Me Not To Overreact!
I don't know about the rest of you but no gay, Danish, vegetarian is going to tell me not to overeact!
If I want to rush headlong into something and then lose all interest in a couple of years, I will!
I did it with nuclear power and the ozone layer and I'll do it with global warming!
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ummm he doesn't sound crazy
as Salon would like you to think
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Oh, the irony
Nothing demonstrates the fundamental stupidity of Inhofists and Crichtonites than their belief that people like Lomborg are on their side. Unfortunately, Kevin Berger also seems weedded to that false impression.
I may be more impatient than Lomborg, and less sanguine about the near term impact of climate change, but I agree with his central point - we wil have to apply a lot more intelligence to solve this problem than we have shown by getting into it in the first place.
And he is right about the importance of trying out lots of ideas on a small scale instead of jumping into a few inefficient and ineffective ones on a big scale. The windmill story is a great example. While big wind farms face fierce opposition, for good reasons and bad, that drive up their costs and delay their construction, policy makers love them. At the same time, they pay little attenton to small-scale proven technologies, such as scalable distributed Combined Heat and Power, that can be deployed fast, at low cost, and doubling the energy yield of every square foot of natural gas in the process.
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Beating a dead horse
This interview went nowhere fast, and I quit reading after the first page. According to this interview, he is only saying we need to prioritize spending to the most effective strategies. There is only so much money to go around. Much like it is better to spend money on safety where it gets the most bang for the buck -- if vaccination saves one life per $10 and airplane seat belts save one life per $1000, which is a better value? (I made up those numbers out of thin air.)
What I digressed from is that the interviewer spent the first page beating this dead horse, trying over and over to trick the interviewee into saying the opposite of what he had already said. It was obvious the interviewer wasn't interested in what the interviewee said, and one page of that is enough.
Next time listen the your subject and respond to what he says. Stop pushing your own agenda -- you are interviewing him, not vice versa.
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Who's the arrogant one here?
I'm sorry to say that it's Kevin Berger who comes off as the arrogant one in this interview, for not understanding and accepting the simple fact that societies have to prioritize how much should be spent on which problems and when. Mr Lomberg keeps trying to make this point but Kevin Berger simply repeats his mantra that global warming MUST be more important than everything else.
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Not a scientist
I find it interest that Lomberg is being called "scientist." He isn't. His PhD is in Political Science which last a look was a humanity. The difference in the approaches taught in a hard science and a social science are vast. Social sciences aren't really science per se because they don't really use the scientific method. This is clearly demonstrated through out the article but was especially telling the polar bear discussion. Here's a response to the writer quoting one expert's opinion (a frontline researcher in polar bears).
"OK. But I've talked to a different expert that's up in Greenland, who works for the Danish government, and he has looked over my chapter, and said that it's OK."
Social sciences often play this sort semantic games of this authority said this or this authority said that. Quoting another expert is supposed to counter the point but he never makes a commitment on which has the better data and the better hypothesis which is a fundamental step in science. This of course will be tested in the next twenty years so we will know . Of course if Ian Sterling is right we won't have more any more polar bears so I guess the point will be moot.
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Sorry. Industrial Pollution Still Causes Cancer And Birth Defects.
His entire viewpoint is that since climate change isn't "that big a deal" then there is no need whatsoever to radically change any of our industrial production methods.
Please tell that to the kid with tumors all over his organs because he grew up next to an industrial site with outdated pollution controls.
"Oh! We don't need to upgrade our emission controls," argues the plant manager. "Climate change isn't a big problem! Therefore we can pump as much cancer causing toxic waste into the air and water as we want!"
Kinda of like arguing that since DDT has no impact on our climate -- it's okay to spray it all over our food and, heck, spray it all over our kids too! It's not a problem because the science tells us that DDT doesn't impact the climate!
Do not let these Republicans equate climate change with pollution controls!
That's all they do: they argue climate change is a "hoax" or meaningless and then re-write laws allowing industrial sites to pollute freely giving your kids (and you) cancer.
Yeah. Okay. Fine. You win! It's all a big hoax! Ya got us! Can we please pass laws FORCING industrial sites to reduce these toxic emissions anyway?
Please???