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Merged Bjørn Lomborg, noted climate change skeptic / switches teams

The title of the article, "Noted anti-global-warming scientist reverses course", is a bit exaggerated ...

Lomborg's essential argument was: Yes, global warming is real and human behavior is the main reason for it, but the world has far more important things to worry about.
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... hardly a reverse course ... he already seemed to be warmed up to the idea
 
Bjørn Lomborg, noted climate change skeptic, does a U-turn!

Well, well. Isn't this an interesting bit of news...

'Sceptical environmentalist' and critic of climate scientists to declare global warming a chief concern facing world
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.

Examining eight methods to reduce or stop global warming, Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pouring money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and more work on climate engineering ideas such as "cloud whitening" to reflect the sun's heat back into the outer atmosphere. ...
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:popcorn1
 
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Doh! *facepalm*

Thanks for the catch, Wangler. My apologies - would the Mods please merge the threads?
 
While I'm quite pleased to see Lomborg's change in position on this, I also agree that his new stance isn't necessarily a reversal, per se. It seems that he's always accepted the fact that the planet is warming, and been reasonably accepting of a human-induced component of said warming. I think the real big issue that he seems to have had in the past is that there was too much uncertainty in the data and how to effectively (if at all) address the question.

At least, that's my take on it all.

Curiously, I shared this news with a colleague who strongly questions any climate change science (I think for ideological reasons), and he basically dismissed Lomborg's "reversal" outright. I'm guessing that Lomborg will find himself universally astrocized: many on the GW-denying side will likely label him as "irrelevant" or a "traitor" or whatnot, whereas some on the other side will call him an "opportunist" or something similar.
 
MattusMaximus said:
Curiously, I shared this news with a colleague who strongly questions any climate change science (I think for ideological reasons), and he basically dismissed Lomborg's "reversal" outright. I'm guessing that Lomborg will find himself universally astrocized: many on the GW-denying side will likely label him as "irrelevant" or a "traitor" or whatnot, whereas some on the other side will call him an "opportunist" or something similar.
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Which I find extremely sad.

In the entire GW "debate", Bjorn Lomborg seems to be just about only person with name recognition who is acting like a scientist -- looks at evidence and changes his mind when evidence contradicts what he previously thought to be true. To call such behavior "opportunism" (or "treason" for that matter) indicates there is no honest debate, just ideology.
 
Mark6 said:
Which I find extremely sad.

In the entire GW "debate", Bjorn Lomborg seems to be just about only person with name recognition who is acting like a scientist -- looks at evidence and changes his mind when evidence contradicts what he previously thought to be true. To call such behavior "opportunism" (or "treason" for that matter) indicates there is no honest debate, just ideology.
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Yes, I agree that it is sad. Bully for Lomborg; I have a newfound respect for the man. If only there were more voices like his in this whole discussion. Who knows? Perhaps he'll start more public discussion and start giving lectures, like he did back in his "Skeptical Environmentalist" days.
 
MattusMaximus said:
While I'm quite pleased to see Lomborg's change in position on this, I also agree that his new stance isn't necessarily a reversal, per se. It seems that he's always accepted the fact that the planet is warming, and been reasonably accepting of a human-induced component of said warming. I think the real big issue that he seems to have had in the past is that there was too much uncertainty in the data and how to effectively (if at all) address the question.

At least, that's my take on it all.

Curiously, I shared this news with a colleague who strongly questions any climate change science (I think for ideological reasons), and he basically dismissed Lomborg's "reversal" outright. .
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Aside from what his actual position has been, and you can correct me if I am wrong, but Lomborg was still a high profile guy who was happily included on the list of global warming skeptics before, right? Weren't they perfectly happy to include him among their numbers before? But now they will try to disavow his significance...

It's kind of like the recently retracted Wakefield study and vaccines. Wakefield made himself a huge player in the anti-vax movement with that paper, and it was responsible for a huge part of the anti-vax movement, especially in Engalnd However, when it got retracted, they tried to claim that it wasn't REALLY about autism and vaccines, and tried to downplay it's significance. To be fair, the original Wakefield paper really didn't claim that vaccines caused autism, but it certainly was promoted that way by the anti-vaxxers (including Wakefield himself). However, once that paper was officially dismissed as trash, then suddenly they all claim that it wasn't that important.

I think the same is true for Lomborg. When they could claim him, the global warming loons were more than happy to do so, and to hold him up as a beacon. Now that he's switched, they will try to downplay his significance, and deny that he ever mattered.
 
Mark6 said:
Don't count you flock, Preacher. Lomborg does not believe anything. He accepts evidence, and changes his mind with new evidence.
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Lomborg was not relevant to the scientific discourse on climate change before and he is not relevant to it now. TBH if he accepted evidence readily he would not be needing to change his mind now.
 
lomiller said:
Lomborg was not relevant to the scientific discourse on climate change before and he is not relevant to it now. TBH if he accepted evidence readily he would not be needing to change his mind now.
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True enough, but he is relevant to the public discourse, more so now than ever especially given his "skeptical environmentalist" history. Of course, his switch will do nothing to dissuade the hard core ideological deniers, but it could serve to cause many fence-sitters to think hard.
 
Mark6 said:
Which I find extremely sad.

In the entire GW "debate", Bjorn Lomborg seems to be just about only person with name recognition who is acting like a scientist -- looks at evidence and changes his mind when evidence contradicts what he previously thought to be true. To call such behavior "opportunism" (or "treason" for that matter) indicates there is no honest debate, just ideology.
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He's a SOCIAL scientist, ie. not really a scientist at all, who has lectured in statistics :rolleyes:
 
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