Rundle: Bjørn again? Reshaping the climate change debate
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These are strange times for climate change sceptics/deniers. The science is gradually overwhelming them, and more and more sensible people in the centre-right have come to accept it as something which must be treated as real. A broad swathe of the general public now see it as a clear priority and punish a party like Labor which does not follow through on a commitment to doing something about it. Yet at the same time, the sceptic/denial position has lodged forcefully amongst a section of the public, and one larger than it might have been a few years ago. Climate change scepticism/denial at this level is equally shared out among people who hate Greens/The Left/etc so much that they will simply refuse to admit they were right all along; by rural people with their folksy ‘nature goes in cycles’ stuff, and by a third section of people who are so terrified by what climate change might do to their grand-children that they don’t want to admit the possibility of it. Put together, it’s not a social coalition of much durability, and its nadir has probably been the recent tour by Christopher ‘Lord’ Monckton, whose belief that global warming was a plot to create a world Nazi government even the conservatoriat felt necessary to apologise for. So it’s fair to wonder what the effect on them and their sceptic-denial ideologues who lead them of the sudden change-about of Bjørn Lomborg, a prize trophy in the sceptic/denialist cubbyhouse. Lomborg, whose Sceptical Environmentalist of 2001 claimed that climate change was happening but not a high priority, has now announced that, waddaya know, that climate change matters a lot:
The quote is taken from the end of Lomborg’s new book; the title — Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits — a good deal less insouciant than his previous effort, entitled Cool It, in which he suggested that everyone should just stop worrying and learn to love the warm. Lomborg claims that he hasn’t changed his position, but a few quotes would suggest otherwise. The blurb of Cool It, for example, suggested:
And in the Wall Street Journal’s Opinionjournal section in March 2006, reviewing the Stern report he noted:
Evidently not, for Lomborg now proposes spending $100 billion a year to combat climate change, through the expansion of renewable energy, tree planting, methane reduction and cloud whitening. Indeed, Lomborg now mutters various things about “something really bad lurking around the corner” in climate change processes, which seems to evoke the James Lovelock notion of a self-accelerating temperature rise that would make large parts of the earth uninhabitable. Of course Lomborg has had his fair share of criticism: there are several books claiming that his use of statistics is shoddy, his evidence selective and his conclusions illogical, the most recent of them being The Lomborg Delusion. Then there’s the clearing house website, www.lomborg-errors.dk. The criticism has cut no ice with his adoring fans, but what will they think of his call for a trillion dollars over a decade devoted to the only one option of seriously addressing global warming? Green alarmists don’t want to hear Lomborg because he says that far from making a “big mess” of our environment, statistics show we’re doing all right. Monsignor Christopher Pearson wrote in 2008:
Meanwhile in The Spectator the same year, arch-skeptic James Delingpole confessed to a man-crush:
One will watch with interest to see how the Lomborgers — including the IPA, which has hitherto brought him out here — treat him now. I suspect that for them, there will be no Bjørn Again. After all, this was the guy who could reliably wind up people like Rajenda Pachauri, head of the UN climate change panel, by being flip about the massive geographical changes to be wrought by climate change … and who now has, in pride of place on the cover of his new book, an endorsement from Rajenda Pachauri. Ah well, somebody get ‘Lord’ Monkcton on the phone… |
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18 Comments
At least Bjørn Lomborg has demonstrated an ability to modify his position in the face of accumulating evidence. Would that more participants in public debate on economic and energy policy did the same.
Oh dear, thanks Rundle.
As I write, I can hear the Commodore64 of Tamas Calderwood warming up (but not globally) in the background…..
I was surprised to see a few articles in the Oz over the past year where Lomborg stated this case. I think they may have not read them and just assumed he was still sceptical.
He still seems to have the need to be contrarian, but now restricts it to the methods of action. His call for massive increase in renewables research can’t be a bad thing.
The problem with Lomborg’s positions — con and now pro — is that they are statistical, not scientific, as is the entire AGW position. Lomborg the skeptic, simply proved the point that statistics can be construed any way you like; East Anglia’s statistical computer models prove the same thing.
Runcle touches upon the biggest problem for climate alarmists: the people have stopped buying it. And once people collectively turn away from this issue, you aren’t going to get them back. It’s a bit like Iraq and WMD. That war was only possible in a small window of opportunity while Americans were in a mood to punish for 9/11. When WMD’s weren’t found, it gradually dawned on them they’d been had. Starting another war on a similar pretext — Iran? — won’t be possible. They aren’t going to fall for that again. Same with global warming.
There is a further group prone to scepticism and denial - those of us who are trying to make a buck from the hydrocarbons industries. Apart from professionals, a denier may simply be afraid that the value of his/her real estate would fade if the hydrocarbons industry left the district.
Even among the most technically educated of this group you hear the delusion: “… but I don’t believe that it is man-made”. The assertion is made with a religious posture, as though they are entitled to believe whatever they darn well like.
I have had no luck replying, “surely you believe that extra 1.5 kg/m2 of atmospheric CO2 is man-made?” Science cannot dissuade faith based on venal interest. What would you say to it ?
@Ern Malleys Cat
That’s right, and his call (in the same breath) for nuclear power development is a pretty good one, too.
Robert Barwick, I take it that when you write that “…the people have stopped buying it…” and that they “… aren’t going to fall for that again”, you mean yourself? Do you personally sit with the “alarmists” or the “skeptics” or is this not about you, just them?
Hugh McColl, I’m not “skeptical” — I know AGW is crap.
Robert Barwick-go put your head back in the sand. Alternatively read Dr. James Hansen and what he has to say.
Read what Hansen has to say about what? That an ETS is garbage? I agree.
Which is it Mr Barwick? An ETS or AGW, or are they the same thing. Methinks I detected another slippery topic shift when challenged there …
Today, at the National Press Club, Simon Grose stumped up to Prof. Lord Stern with a ‘what da ya think about Lomborg’ question, and got the straight answer: Stern strongly disagrees with him. Not, mind you, that more funds should be allocated to renewables, but that there’s been a colossal market failure and a price on carbon must be part of the solution.Lomborg, a statistician, has not yet embraced market philosophy as yet apparently…go figure, as they say.
The whimpering noises of the deniers will get fainter and fainter as the gut churning reality of what is slowly happening gradually sinks in to those too dull to accept what the science has been telling us for decades.
Cut to the chase - Lomborg wants to sell more books. Nothing more.
Tsk tsk - 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree with the tenets of anthropogenic climate change so that puts Robert Barwick in the losers’ camp and I wonder who Lomborg’s pimping for now?
“Losers’ camp” is a big assumption. The history of science would indicate that the minority usually end up being right. Science isn’t a democracy.
Cranks vs Reality? Yawn……zzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Why is it that deniers cant read the real peer reviewed evidence of scientists on the ground measuring these effects and come up with the same conclusions as the majority of other people Their heads really are in the sand
Robert Barwick says - “The history of science would indicate that the minority usually end up being right.” Umm… perhaps you are forgetting (or not aware of) Svante Arrhenius the Swedish physicist who in the 1890’s was the first person to speculate that natural and man-made changes in atmospheric co2 could alter the earth’s surface temperature. His theories were intially dismissed and it would not be until they mid 20th century that conclusions were vindicated (or at least he was more right than his critics). So now that you know that the theory of anthropogenic global warming started as a minority view, perhaps you can accept it’s reality? Regardless, your odd statement is a complete logical black-hole anyway and you are basically saying that any theory that is challenged is therofore automatically incorrect. Perhaps your gist is the old Galileo vs Establishment argument. When I hear that one I think of Carl Sagans famous quote: “because some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”