Monday, August 30, 2010

Turns out Bjorn Lomborg is Danish for "Richard Cohen"

Ugh. Watch as another entirely discredited voice gets free press for belatedly coming to grips with the facts that were in front of his face the entire time.
The world's most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and "a challenge humanity must confront", in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby.

Bjørn Lomborg, the self-styled "sceptical environmentalist" once compared to Adolf Hitler by the UN's climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating the rate of global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.

But in a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. "Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century," the book concludes.
So Lomborg is only about twelve years late to the party. This makes him twelve years less credible than, say, Jim Hansen or Joe Romm. He is also a direct analog to the voices who came out against the Iraq War, circa 2006-2007.

Interesting side note: In Canadian English, "Bjorn Lomborg" is properly pronounced "Michael Ignatieff".

2 comments:

That guy said...

And he'll both want, and get, tons of credit for it, while the people who were right all the time will, as usual, get ignored.

Jim Parrett said...

Journalists are paid to write pretty words. They are not hired because they are analysts. They are hired by other writers who also pen sweet prose. Broder, Jeffrey Goldberg, Cohen - they've been wrong about virtually everything forever. But they keep getting accolades while those who have been mostly right about everything are considered dirty f'ing hippies. These writers never acknowledge their errors and the horrible consequences of their enabling. So, I give Lomberg the benefit of the doubt for now. I'll read his book, then decide his veracity and sincerity. At least he is seeming to admit his own ignorance. That's worth something.