lomborg shuffle
1119 sparked by wheeler BS, 4/5th phase of fallback?
crypto/mirror/ green blk death variant?
it's a ploy/ sleight of hand: AGW is no immediate threat, but look what we SHOULD be doing right now. kids need clean water in Zimbabwe!
shillenberger?
// john graham statistical murder BS? pseudo-rational # driven // risk asses?
from shill:
see lomborg shuffle (clintel covid fight covid not carbon)
820 aha: this is variant last stage of fallback strategy: 1) not real 2) real but not anthro 3) agw but too expensive to fix (wreck gnp) 4: we can afford to fix it, but we must be smart/targeted w/ $ 4a we can't really afford to fix big global warming, but we can do smaller green humanitarian stuff that will make some ppl's lives better and might let us move incrementally to fix climate [and BTW the worst effect/chaos in in far future if ever]
4th phase denialism to DELAYISM
simone de beauvoir has got your #:
15 pp
https://mahb.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/America_Misled.pdf
First published in October 2019. For more information, visit https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/america-misled/ Graphic design: Wendy Cook Cite as: Cook, J., Supran, G., Lewandowsky, S., Oreskes, N., & Maibach, E., (2019). America Misled: How the fossil fuel industry deliberately misled Americans about climate change. Fairfax, VA: George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication. Available at https://www.climatechangecommunication.org/america-misled/
How the fossil fuel industry polluted the information landscape
Key points 1. Internal corporate documents show that the fossil fuel industry has known about the reality of human-caused climate change for decades. Its response was to actively orchestrate and fund denial and disinformation so as to stifle action and protect its status quo business operations. 2. As the scientific consensus on climate change emerged and strengthened, the industry and its political allies attacked the consensus and exaggerated the uncertainties. 3. The fossil fuel industry offered no consistent alternative explanation for why the climate was changing—the goal was merely to undermine support for action. 4. The strategy, tactics, infrastructure, and rhetorical arguments and techniques used by fossil fuel interests to challenge the scientific evidence of climate change—including cherry picking, fake experts, and conspiracy theories—come straight out of the tobacco industry’s playbook for delaying tobacco control. These key points reflect the position of experts studying climate denial and the history of fossil fuel interests, based on thousands of pages of documented evidence.
...
Contradictory contrarianism The most common denialist arguments have been shown to contain fatal assumptions or fallacies26. Climate deniers do not offer any rational explanation for why our climate is changing. Rather, denialist arguments are incoherent and often contradictory27. For example, deniers will seize on snowfall to claim that global warming is a hoax, while at the same time claiming that an extreme event such as a drought or wildfire cannot be attributed to climate change. This is incoherent because either extreme events can be a signal of climate change or they cannot be. Climate denial lacks consistency because it is not about scientific evidence—it is about how to continue business as usual in the face of climate disruption. Climate deniers reject climate science because they are averse to proposed or perceived solutions to climate change28.
...
Common Fallacies
Climate denial arguments can be summarized by the five techniques of science denial (summarized with the acronym FLICC): fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectation, cherry picking, and conspiracy theories29,30.
Fake Experts
Logical Fallacies
Impossible Expectations
Cherry Picking
Conspiracy Theories
Promoting dissenting non-experts as highly qualified while not having published any actual climate research and/or received any relevant education. Logically flawed arguments that lead to false conclusions. Common logical fallacies are red herrings, non sequiturs, and false dichotomies. Demanding unrealistic standards of certainty before acting on the science. A technique practised by the tobacco industry. Selectively choosing data that supports a desired conclusion that differs from the conclusion arising from all the available data32. Proposing a secret plan among a number of people, generally to implement a nefarious scheme such as conspiring to hide a truth or perpetuate misinformation. Climate deniers are more likely to be conspiracy theorists33
nice graphics throughout eg]
Deconstructing Denial
Figure 7 shows deconstructions of some of the most common myths about climate change.Determining the misleading techniques of a climate myth requires outlining the argument structure: listing any premises (starting assumptions) and the conclusion. This allows one to ascertain whether any premises are false, and/or whether the argument is logically invalid. Figure 7:
Deconstruction of common climate myths.
MYTH “Cold weather disproves global warming.” Premise 1 CHERRY PICKING
IMPOSSIBLE EXPECTATIONS Some place is cold. Premise 2 No place can experience cold during global warming. Conclusion Global warming isn’t happening.
Cherry Picking: Ignores that most of the globe is warm. Impossible Expectations: Global warming doesn’t mean cold events don’t happen, just that they’re less likely to happen. MYTH “Global warming stopped in 1998.”
SLOTHFUL INDUCTION
CHERRY PICKING Premise 1 The temperature trend since 1998 is statistically insignificant. Conclusion Global warming isn’t happening.Slothful Induction: Ignores other temperature records and measures of heat imbalance showing a significant warming trend. Cherry Picking: Trends over short periods do not lead to conclusions about
...
Conclusion Disinformation about climate change has a straightforward purpose—to block action on climate change. In America, it has largely succeeded, with policies to mitigate climate change stymied or delayed for decades. Meanwhile, climate change has intensified, causing impacts such as intensified extreme weather events, rising sea level, harmful effects on human health, and much more. Climate denial has seriously hurt the American people. The damage, deaths, and harm to people will continue to worsen if we don’t expose and discredit denial. This is not the first time that corporations prioritizing profits over people have caused great harm. The tobacco industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars disinforming the public about the health impacts of smoking in order to undermine tobacco control34,35. The World Health Organization estimates that six million people die every year from preventable tobaccocaused disease. Drawing on the tobacco industry’s playbook, fossil fuel companies have done the same on climate change, spending hundreds of millions of dollars confusing the public and delaying life-saving action. Their legacy is the death, destruction, and injustices of irreversible global warming. Big Oil is the new Big Tobacco.
context:
see simon pow
Simon-Ehrlich wager
Main article: Simon-Ehrlich wager
Julian Lincoln Simon, a Cornucopian economist has argued that overpopulation is not a problem in itself, and that humanity will adapt to changing conditions. Simon argued that in the long run, human creativity would constantly improve living standards, and that the Earth's resources were, in effect, infinite.[27] Ehrlich called Simon the leader of a "space-age cargo cult" of economists convinced that new resources would miraculously appear and re-asserted the idea that population growth was outstripping the earth's supplies of food, fresh water and minerals.[6] This exchange led to the Simon-Ehrlich wager, a bet about the trend of prices for certain metals that he made in 1980 with, and lost to, Julian Simon.[6] Economists later showed that Ehrlich would have won in the majority of 10-year-periods over the last century.[28][29]
Simon was skeptical, in 1994, of claims that human activity caused global environmental damage, notably in relation to CFCs, ozone depletion and climate change, the latter primarily because of the perceived rapid switch from fears of global cooling and a new ice age (in the mid-1970s) to the later fears of global warming.[6]
Simon also listed numerous claims about alleged environmental damage and health dangers from pollution as "definitely disproved". These included claims about lead pollution & IQ, DDT, PCBs, malathion, Agent Orange, asbestos, and the chemical contamination at Love Canal.[7]He dismissed such concerns as a mere "value judgement."
But also, to a startling degree, the decision about whether the overall effect of a child or migrant is positive or negative depends on the values of whoever is making the judgment – your preference to spend a dollar now rather than to wait for a dollar-plus-something in twenty or thirty years, your preferences for having more or fewer wild animals alive as opposed to more or fewer human beings alive, and so on.[8]
Influence
Simon was one of the founders of free-market environmentalism. An article entitled "The Doomslayer"[9] profiling Julian Simon in Wired magazine inspired Danish Bjørn Lomborg to write the book The Skeptical Environmentalist.
--
https://www.cato.org/publications/economic-development-bulletin/julian-simon-was-right-half-century-population-growth
==
==
see lomborg shuffle (clintel covid fight covid not carbon)
820 aha: this is variant last stage of fallback strategy: 1) not real 2) real but not anthro 3) agw but too expensive to fix (wreck gnp) 4: we can afford to fix it, but we must be smart/targeted w/ $ 4a) we can't really afford to fix big global warming, but we can do smaller green humanitarian stuff that will make some ppl's lives better and might let us move incrementally to fix climate [and BTW the worst effect/chaos in in far future if ever]
https://newrepublic.com/article/153359/seductive-stupidity-andrew-wheeler
no lnx
The Seductive Stupidity of Andrew Wheeler
The EPA chief's latest argument against fighting climate change is astonishingly foolish-but it's exactly what most of us want to hear.
By EMILY ATKIN
March 20, 2019
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler is not your average climate denier. Unlike President Donald Trump, he's admitted that global warming is real and caused by humans. And unlike many Republicans in the House and Senate, he's admitted that its effects will be dangerous if warming continues unabated.
:{
}:
But when it comes to admitting that swift, aggressive action is necessary to slow the dangers of climate change, Wheeler is just like most Republicans: He denies it. In an interview with "CBS This Morning" on Wednesday, the former coal industry lobbyist said that global warming is simply too vague and distant a threat to focus on.
:{
}:
"On the climate change issue, it is an important issue that we have to be addressing and we are addressing it," Wheeler said. "But most of the threats from climate change are 50 to 75 years out." Instead of climate change, Wheeler argued that the EPA's efforts would be better spent focusing on cleaning up water in other countries. "We have 1,000 children die every day worldwide because they don't have safe drinking water," he said. "That's a crisis I think we can solve."
If humans didn't intend to keep living 50 to 75 years from now, Wheeler's argument might be a good one. But we do, making his argument exceedingly bad-as Twitter was kind enough to point out....
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-medias-favorite-climate-contrarians-go-fox-shows-bash-bidens-climate-plan
ted mcD
Climate contrarians Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg both got airtime on Fox shows this week to attack Joe Biden’s recent climate plan and promote their new books, which similarly downplay the seriousness of the climate crisis. This claim is wrong, of course, and plays right into the hands of the right-wing media which is all too eager to use their message to delay necessary climate action.
On July 14, Environmental Progress founder Shellenberger appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight to discuss Biden’s new climate plan. With his recent book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All in the background behind him, Shellenberger falsely accused renewable energy of being costly and inefficient, lamented why natural gas and nuclear power weren’t taken seriously by the Biden campaign, and accused “United Nations officials and some scientists” of wanting to “control energy and food production around the world.”
On July 15, Danish political scientist Lomborg appeared on Fox Business’ Varney & Co. to discuss Biden’s new climate plan and to promote his new book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.He called Biden’s plan “a very poor deal” that is “phenomenally expensive,” stated that “we need to get out of this ‘it’s the end of the world’ sense” on climate change, and promoted continued investment in research and development of new energy technologies as the sensible solution to climate change.
On July 16, Lomborg appeared on Fox Business’ Making Money with Charles Payne. He referred to Biden’s climate plan as “a phenomenally large cost for not very much benefit” and dismissed dire climate claims, stating that “we've been so force-fed with all these stories that are a little true and a lot of false.”
Shellenberger is a pro-nuclear advocate who has a history of criticizing renewable energy, singing the praises of natural gas, and pushing contrarian and bad-faith views about the environmental movement. He’s espoused deliberately misleading claims on recent issues including the Amazon fires of 2019 and the recent Australia wildfires. Similarly, Lomborg has his own history of downplaying the dangers of climate change. As Media Matters wrote last year, he’s “been long discredited within the climate science community,” including being “caught downplaying the risks of sea level rise and even misrepresenting Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.” His claim to fame, the book The Skeptical Environmentalist, was so riddled with errors that a Danish government committee found him guilty of “scientific dishonesty,” and a website was created specifically to debunk these errors.
Neither of these individuals, of course, are climate scientists.
Their appearances on Fox shows, which have been notorious purveyors of climate misinformation, were the culmination of a slew of op-eds and appearances by Shellenberger and Lomborg in various right-wing media outlets. Although their arguments have been picked apart by actual climate experts, that won’t stop right-wing media from using their works to continue pushing for delay on climate action.
Both books are being heavily promoted by climate deniers and right-wing media
Shellenberger has claimed, “No book on the environment has ever been praised by a more prestigious group of scientists & scholars than ‘Apocalypse Never.’” However, a look at the discourse surrounding his book showed that the praise largely came from climate skeptics within right-wing media.
In the days before and after the release of his book on June 29, climate denier and Fox News staple Marc Moranopraised Shellenberger, lumping Apocalypse Never, in with another set of contrarian climate works as “A Winning Trifecta for Climate Science & Rationality.”
The conservative, climate-denying Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) shared an op-ed Shellenberger wrote for Forbes that teased some of the arguments made in the book -- the article has since been taken down by Forbes due to violating its standards of self-promotion (and not, as Shellenberger has claimed, due to censorship).
The climate-denying CO2 Coalition also tweeted in support of his new book.
Breitbartwrote an article on it, and noted how Shellenberger “issued a public apology for the unfounded panic caused by environmentalists over the fabricated horrors of global warming.” This was followed by a fawning profile of Shellenberger’s claims by James Delingpole, who has called climate change “the biggest scam in the history of the world.”
Jack Posobiec, a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist with white supremacist ties, called Shellenberger’s book “really a big deal.” The Daily Wire republished an excerpt of his since-deleted Forbes article in which, “on behalf of environmentalists,” he apologizes for the “climate scare.”
Zero Hedge, whose recent climate screeds have included “Global Warming Fraud Exposed In Pictures” and “Climate Change is real, but its manufactured. Weather is the new battlefield,” also tweeted about Forbes’ removal of Shellenberger’s piece. Finally, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who recently and falsely claimed that “the data are mixed” on climate change, tweeted a Wall Street Journal review that praised Shellenberger’s book, calling it “worth reading.”
Prior to appearing on Fox News, Shellenberger made the conservative media rounds, appearing on Glenn Beck’s right-wing
, 
* podcast, the Murdoch-owned Sky News Australia, and the podcast of The Heartland Institute, a group that has “been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.”
Lomborg’s book, published roughly two weeks after Shellenberger’s, has also run the right-wing media gamut. He published op-eds in both the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal. His book has been promoted by The Epoch Times, nihilistic Trump defender Scott Adams, and Climate Depot’s Morano. He conducted an interview with uber-conservative radio host and major climate misinformer Dennis Prager on July 16, and he is scheduled to discuss his book on July 23 with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group with a long history of fossil-fuel backed climate denial.
Actual experts have thoroughly debunked Shellenberger and Lomborg’s arguments
Shellenberger’s Forbes article was admonished by seven climate scientists at Climate Feedback, which bills itself as “a worldwide network of scientists sorting fact from fiction in climate change media coverage.” They referred to many of Shellenberger’s claims as “inaccurate” and made “in support of a misleading and overly simplistic argumentation about climate change.” Climate scientist Peter Gleick reviewed Shellenberger’s book for Yale Climate Connections, calling it “bad science and bad arguments,” and noted its propensity for “strawman arguments, cherry-picking facts, and ad hominem attacks on scientists, media, others.”
Lomborg’s book was given a scathing review in The New York Times by Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz,noting the “many contradictions within the book” and taking to task his “underestimation of the damage associated with climate change.” (Indeed, during Lomborg’s appearances on both Varney & Co.and *Making Money with Charles Payne*, he did not once mention the cost of inaction on climate change, which is estimated to be many trillions of dollars -- much greater than actually taking action.) The Times’ review closed by saying “Lomborg’s work would be downright dangerous were it to succeed in persuading anyone that there was merit in its arguments.”
Unfortunately, climate deniers within right-wing media are all too eager to use these false arguments to contradict the prevailing scientific consensus: Bold and immediate climate action is necessary if we want to maintain a livable climate.
These false claims play right into the hands of those who want to delay climate action
The arguments made by Lomborg and Shellenberger -- who both identify themselves as environmentalists and acknowledge the reality of man-made climate change -- represent a very insidious form of climate skepticism. Doubting the urgency of climate change is one of the three main themes of spreading climate misinformation.
Shellenberger here is just following in the footsteps of Lomborg, who has been at this schtick for years (and making a lot of money in the process). But Shellenberger’s case is particularly egregious because he took the authority to speak on behalf of the entire environmental movement. By painting himself as some sort of reformed environmentalist, he gains a lot of credibility and legitimacy with his readers who either outright deny climate change or are skeptical about it in the first place.
In fact, Shellenberger’s book was explicitly tailored for climate skeptics -- as journalist and meteorologist Eric Holthaus pointed out, Shellenberger’s publicist admitted that the book’s purpose was to get “people to think of climate change as a ‘100 year problem’ not a ‘10 year problem.’” Obviously, climate change is a serious problem that needs to be taken care of right now -- to argue otherwise is to encourage inaction on the issue.
By appearing on Fox to promote their books, they are just showing who their true audience really is -- those who want to kick the can down the road and avoid taking necessary action to address climate change.
==
https://newrepublic.com/article/153359/seductive-stupidity-andrew-wheeler
no lnx
The Seductive Stupidity of Andrew Wheeler
The EPA chief's latest argument against fighting climate change is astonishingly foolish-but it's exactly what most of us want to hear.
By EMILY ATKIN
March 20, 2019
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler is not your average climate denier. Unlike President Donald Trump, he's admitted that global warming is real and caused by humans. And unlike many Republicans in the House and Senate, he's admitted that its effects will be dangerous if warming continues unabated.
:{
}:
But when it comes to admitting that swift, aggressive action is necessary to slow the dangers of climate change, Wheeler is just like most Republicans: He denies it. In an interview with "CBS This Morning" on Wednesday, the former coal industry lobbyist said that global warming is simply too vague and distant a threat to focus on.
:{
}:
"On the climate change issue, it is an important issue that we have to be addressing and we are addressing it," Wheeler said. "But most of the threats from climate change are 50 to 75 years out." Instead of climate change, Wheeler argued that the EPA's efforts would be better spent focusing on cleaning up water in other countries. "We have 1,000 children die every day worldwide because they don't have safe drinking water," he said. "That's a crisis I think we can solve."
If humans didn't intend to keep living 50 to 75 years from now, Wheeler's argument might be a good one. But we do, making his argument exceedingly bad-as Twitter was kind enough to point out.
Nick Knudsen ???? #DemCast
@DemWrite
New EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler's feeling on the urgency of climate change?
Meh. ??????? Why worry? The effects of climate change are still "50 To 75 Years Out".
Wonder how the kids feel about that perspective. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/andrew-wheeler-epa-climate-change_n_5c9226ede4b0dbf58e465554 …
Wheeler's premise is also just plain wrong. "Most of the threats" from climate change are not far in the future; some really bad ones are happening right now.
Dave Levitan
?
@davelevitan
EPA administrator Wheeler says the effects of climate change are "50 to 75 years out," which I'm sure is a huge comfort to *checks notes* enormous swaths of humanity?
The EPA chief's claim that water pollution is a better focus because it's a crisis "we can solve" also falsely implies that climate change doesn't fall into that category. Last year, thousands of scientists from around the world put out a report saying humanity can prevent the worst climate impacts of the next 50 to 75 years-but only if we rapidly decarbonize the planet within about a dozen years. And even if we don't rapidly decarbonize within that time frame, we can still slow and prevent many terrible events by reducing emissions as quickly as we can.
The danger of Wheeler's comments, though, isn't that they're wrong or dumb. It's that they're extremely relatable. They represent everything the human brain wants to hear about climate change: that nothing that bad is currently happening; that anything truly awful will occur far down the road; and that we have plenty of time and space to prevent those horrific things from happening-even though the evidence tells us otherwise. "[Our] inability to deal with climate change is due in part to the way our mind is wired," reads a Time article from 2013, which outlines the psychological barriers to climate action.
Those psychological barriers have historically prevented much of the population from prioritizing global warming. And for the first time in a very long time, that's changing. As Robinson Meyer wrote in The Atlantic on Tuesday, America is experiencing "a potential upheaval in how important voters consider climate policy." That's inspired at least some Republicans stop denying the problem and start focusing on solutions, Meyer wrote.
Wheeler doesn't seem interested in solutions. So he's resorted to playing on the most powerful de-motivator we have: our brains.
Emily Atkin is a contributing editor to The New Republic and the author of the climate newsletter Heated.
@emorwee
Read MoreClimate Change, Politics, Psychology, Science, Environment, Andrew Wheeler, Environmental Protection Agency
MAIN BAK 521
capt 916 html friel
seralini hit
see shuffle, shill
wasn't he outed/busted? behind the bastards?! yup see below
koonin blurb:
William W. Hogan jfk sch harv
Jean-Lou Chameau caltech emeritus
BJorn Lomborg pres of cop consesnus visit fellow hoover
Vaclav Smil dist emeritus manitoba
see simon pow
Simon-Ehrlich wager[
Main article: Simon-Ehrlich wager
Julian Lincoln Simon, a Cornucopian economist has argued that overpopulation is not a problem in itself, and that humanity will adapt to changing conditions. Simon argued that in the long run, human creativity would constantly improve living standards, and that the Earth's resources were, in effect, infinite.[27] Ehrlich called Simon the leader of a "space-age cargo cult" of economists convinced that new resources would miraculously appear and re-asserted the idea that population growth was outstripping the earth's supplies of food, fresh water and minerals.[6] This exchange led to the Simon-Ehrlich wager, a bet about the trend of prices for certain metals that he made in 1980 with, and lost to, Julian Simon.[6] Economists later showed that Ehrlich would have won in the majority of 10-year-periods over the last century.[28][29]
Simon was skeptical, in 1994, of claims that human activity caused global environmental damage, notably in relation to CFCs, ozone depletion and climate change, the latter primarily because of the perceived rapid switch from fears of global cooling and a new ice age (in the mid-1970s) to the later fears of global warming.[6]
Simon also listed numerous claims about alleged environmental damage and health dangers from pollution as "definitely disproved". These included claims about lead pollution & IQ, DDT, PCBs, malathion, Agent Orange, asbestos, and the chemical contamination at Love Canal.[7] He dismissed such concerns as a mere "value judgement."
But also, to a startling degree, the decision about whether the overall effect of a child or migrant is positive or negative depends on the values of whoever is making the judgment – your preference to spend a dollar now rather than to wait for a dollar-plus-something in twenty or thirty years, your preferences for having more or fewer wild animals alive as opposed to more or fewer human beings alive, and so on.[8]
Influence
Simon was one of the founders of free-market environmentalism. An article entitled "The Doomslayer"[9] profiling Julian Simon in Wired magazine inspired Danish Bjørn Lomborg to write the book The Skeptical Environmentalist.
--
https://www.cato.org/publications/economic-development-bulletin/julian-simon-was-right-half-century-population-growth
==
==
mma no tag
NY Times uncritically cited “statistician” and discredited global-warming skeptic Bjorn Lomborg
03/22/07 4:09 PM EDT
Fox Misidentifies Bjorn Lomborg As A Scientist
07/12/11 12:06 PM EDT
Scientist says Lomborg's geoengineering proposal to cool Earth could cause “huge threat to the food supply” in India, China
12/09/09 9:17 PM EST
https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/right-wing-medias-favorite-climate-contrarians-go-fox-shows-bash-bidens-climate-plan
ted mcD
Climate contrarians Michael Shellenberger and Bjorn Lomborg both got airtime on Fox shows this week to attack Joe Biden’s recent climate plan and promote their new books, which similarly downplay the seriousness of the climate crisis. This claim is wrong, of course, and plays right into the hands of the right-wing media which is all too eager to use their message to delay necessary climate action.
On July 14, Environmental Progress founder Shellenberger appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight to discuss Biden’s new climate plan. With his recent book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All in the background behind him, Shellenberger falsely accused renewable energy of being costly and inefficient, lamented why natural gas and nuclear power weren’t taken seriously by the Biden campaign, and accused “United Nations officials and some scientists” of wanting to “control energy and food production around the world.”
On July 15, Danish political scientist Lomborg appeared on Fox Business’ Varney & Co. to discuss Biden’s new climate plan and to promote his new book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. He called Biden’s plan “a very poor deal” that is “phenomenally expensive,” stated that “we need to get out of this ‘it’s the end of the world’ sense” on climate change, and promoted continued investment in research and development of new energy technologies as the sensible solution to climate change.
On July 16, Lomborg appeared on Fox Business’ Making Money with Charles Payne. He referred to Biden’s climate plan as “a phenomenally large cost for not very much benefit” and dismissed dire climate claims, stating that “we've been so force-fed with all these stories that are a little true and a lot of false.”
Shellenberger is a pro-nuclear advocate who has a history of criticizing renewable energy, singing the praises of natural gas, and pushing contrarian and bad-faith views about the environmental movement. He’s espoused deliberately misleading claims on recent issues including the Amazon fires of 2019 and the recent Australia wildfires. Similarly, Lomborg has his own history of downplaying the dangers of climate change. As Media Matters wrote last year, he’s “been long discredited within the climate science community,” including being “caught downplaying the risks of sea level rise and even misrepresenting Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.” His claim to fame, the book The Skeptical Environmentalist, was so riddled with errors that a Danish government committee found him guilty of “scientific dishonesty,” and a website was created specifically to debunk these errors.
Neither of these individuals, of course, are climate scientists.
Their appearances on Fox shows, which have been notorious purveyors of climate misinformation, were the culmination of a slew of op-eds and appearances by Shellenberger and Lomborg in various right-wing media outlets. Although their arguments have been picked apart by actual climate experts, that won’t stop right-wing media from using their works to continue pushing for delay on climate action.
Both books are being heavily promoted by climate deniers and right-wing media
Shellenberger has claimed, “No book on the environment has ever been praised by a more prestigious group of scientists & scholars than ‘Apocalypse Never.’” However, a look at the discourse surrounding his book showed that the praise largely came from climate skeptics within right-wing media.
In the days before and after the release of his book on June 29, climate denier and Fox News staple Marc Morano praised Shellenberger, lumping Apocalypse Never, in with another set of contrarian climate works as “A Winning Trifecta for Climate Science & Rationality.”
The conservative, climate-denying Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) shared an op-ed Shellenberger wrote for Forbes that teased some of the arguments made in the book -- the article has since been taken down by Forbes due to violating its standards of self-promotion (and not, as Shellenberger has claimed, due to censorship).
The climate-denying CO2 Coalition also tweeted in support of his new book.
Breitbart wrote an article on it, and noted how Shellenberger “issued a public apology for the unfounded panic caused by environmentalists over the fabricated horrors of global warming.” This was followed by a fawning profile of Shellenberger’s claims by James Delingpole, who has called climate change “the biggest scam in the history of the world.”
Jack Posobiec, a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist with white supremacist ties, called Shellenberger’s book “really a big deal.” The Daily Wire republished an excerpt of his since-deleted Forbes article in which, “on behalf of environmentalists,” he apologizes for the “climate scare.”
Zero Hedge, whose recent climate screeds have included “Global Warming Fraud Exposed In Pictures” and “Climate Change is real, but its manufactured. Weather is the new battlefield,” also tweeted about Forbes’ removal of Shellenberger’s piece. Finally, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who recently and falsely claimed that “the data are mixed” on climate change, tweeted a Wall Street Journal review that praised Shellenberger’s book, calling it “worth reading.”
Prior to appearing on Fox News, Shellenberger made the conservative media rounds, appearing on Glenn Beck’s right-wing BlazeTV, The Federalist Radio Hour podcast, the Murdoch-owned Sky News Australia, and the podcast of The Heartland Institute, a group that has “been at the forefront of denying the scientific evidence for man-made climate change.”
Lomborg’s book, published roughly two weeks after Shellenberger’s, has also run the right-wing media gamut. He published op-eds in both the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal. His book has been promoted by The Epoch Times, nihilistic Trump defender Scott Adams, and Climate Depot’s Morano. He conducted an interview with uber-conservative radio host and major climate misinformer Dennis Prager on July 16, and he is scheduled to discuss his book on July 23 with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group with a long history of fossil-fuel backed climate denial.
Actual experts have thoroughly debunked Shellenberger and Lomborg’s arguments
Shellenberger’s Forbes article was admonished by seven climate scientists at Climate Feedback, which bills itself as “a worldwide network of scientists sorting fact from fiction in climate change media coverage.” They referred to many of Shellenberger’s claims as “inaccurate” and made “in support of a misleading and overly simplistic argumentation about climate change.” Climate scientist Peter Gleick reviewed Shellenberger’s book for Yale Climate Connections, calling it “bad science and bad arguments,” and noted its propensity for “strawman arguments, cherry-picking facts, and ad hominem attacks on scientists, media, others.”
Lomborg’s book was given a scathing review in The New York Times by Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, noting the “many contradictions within the book” and taking to task his “underestimation of the damage associated with climate change.” (Indeed, during Lomborg’s appearances on both Varney & Co. and Making Money with Charles Payne, he did not once mention the cost of inaction on climate change, which is estimated to be many trillions of dollars -- much greater than actually taking action.) The Times’ review closed by saying “Lomborg’s work would be downright dangerous were it to succeed in persuading anyone that there was merit in its arguments.”
Unfortunately, climate deniers within right-wing media are all too eager to use these false arguments to contradict the prevailing scientific consensus: Bold and immediate climate action is necessary if we want to maintain a livable climate.
These false claims play right into the hands of those who want to delay climate action
The arguments made by Lomborg and Shellenberger -- who both identify themselves as environmentalists and acknowledge the reality of man-made climate change -- represent a very insidious form of climate skepticism. Doubting the urgency of climate change is one of the three main themes of spreading climate misinformation.
Shellenberger here is just following in the footsteps of Lomborg, who has been at this schtick for years (and making a lot of money in the process). But Shellenberger’s case is particularly egregious because he took the authority to speak on behalf of the entire environmental movement. By painting himself as some sort of reformed environmentalist, he gains a lot of credibility and legitimacy with his readers who either outright deny climate change or are skeptical about it in the first place.
In fact, Shellenberger’s book was explicitly tailored for climate skeptics -- as journalist and meteorologist Eric Holthaus pointed out, Shellenberger’s publicist admitted that the book’s purpose was to get “people to think of climate change as a ‘100 year problem’ not a ‘10 year problem.’” Obviously, climate change is a serious problem that needs to be taken care of right now -- to argue otherwise is to encourage inaction on the issue.
By appearing on Fox to promote their books, they are just showing who their true audience really is -- those who want to kick the can down the road and avoid taking necessary action to address climate change.
==
720 ggl
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False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs ... - Amazon.comwww.amazon.com › False-Alarm-Climate-Change-Trilli...
"Bjorn Lomborg is that rare thing: a clear-sighted realist about climate change. In False Alarm, he argues that it would be foolish to do nothing to prepare for a warmer planet, but it would be more foolish to pretend that we are doing things that will significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions when we are not.
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False Alarm. How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. by Bjorn Lomborg. The New York Times-bestselling ...
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==
https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/dallas-morning-news-editorial-board-conducted-rare-climate-change-focused-qa
ted mcd 12/19
The Dallas Morning News’ editorial board conducted an interview with discredited climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg and published an edited version without explaining his background or contextualizing his claims. He used the opportunity to push for minor solutions that do not adequately address the scale of the climate crisis.
On December 1, The Dallas Morning News -- a top 15 U.S. newspaper by circulation -- published a condensed interview about climate change solutions with Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish political scientist and director of the think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center. Lomborg criticized current spending on climate change as inadequate and instead proposed that leaders “look at where can you spend a dollar and do the most good” -- which he suggested should include implementing a carbon tax, increased spending on clean energy research and development, investment in climate adaptation, and consideration of “geoengineering,” or using technology to purposefully change the climate.
Those proposals sound relatively benign, and Lomborg has been making these arguments for quite some time. But they are not nearly enough to tackle climate change, and they allow for the continued burning of fossil fuels when what is really needed is a drastic cut in carbon emissions. Lomborg, who has a long history of downplaying the climate crisis, offers relatively minor approaches to solving this massive problem. Unfortunately for readers of the piece, the editorial board does not provide any of this context.
What’s worse, it’s extremely rare for climate change to come up in a Q&A with The Dallas Morning News’ editorial board. Media Matters reviewed Dallas Morning News Q&As going back to January 2017, and just one -- a July 2017 interview with Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) -- included a substantive mention of climate change. When the topic of climate change was finally addressed again in a Q&A format, instead of reaching out to a climate scientist, activist, or policymaker, the paper chose to talk to serial climate misinformer Lomborg.
Lomborg is a climate contrarian who has connections to the Koch network
The only information provided about Lomborg in this interview reads: “Bjorn Lomborg is an academic and author of the book ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist.’” The interview gives the impression that Lomborg is a credible climate expert, but there are many issues with his climate-related work.
Lomborg is a contrarian who “represents an insidious form of climate change denial,” according to The Washington Post. Lomborg has been long discredited within the climate science community. He’s been caught downplaying the risks of sea level rise and even misrepresenting Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. His work showing that it’s a poor investment to limit global temperatures to 2 degrees C under the Paris climate agreement has been scrutinized and rejected by scientific experts.
He’s also been credibly accused of misinforming about climate change’s effects on both poverty and extreme weather. NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt has said that Lomborg is “totally undermined by his whole career of cherry picking whatever the most favorable reading is and refusing to countenance any possibility of something worse.”
His book is rife with scientific inaccuracies. The one major disclosure about Lomborg in this piece is that he is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. This best-selling book published in 2001 helped launch Lomborg to fame, but its main claims have been debunked by the climate science community. In 2003, a Danish government committee found him guilty of “scientific dishonesty,” concluding, “Based on customary scientific standards and in light of his systematic one-sidedness in the choice of data and line of argument, [he] has clearly acted at variance with good scientific practice.” Climate news site Grist spoke with scientific experts in eight environment-related fields, and all of them found his analyses in The Skeptical Environmentalist to be fundamentally flawed -- with one expert noting that Lomborg lacks even “a preliminary understanding of the science in question." Scientific American also shared critical responses to his work. There is even a website that takes down the errors in Lomborg’s book one by one.
Groups connected to the shadowy Koch network have generously donated to Lomborg’s think tank. Since its registration in the U.S. in 2008, the Copenhagen Consensus Center has received $170,000 from the conservative Randolph Foundation, whose director, Heather Higgins, has ties to multiple groups within the Koch network. Copenhagen Consensus Center also received $300,000 from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which is part of the Koch network’s attempt to influence state and federal judges. The group also received $200,000 from conservative Republican billionaire Paul Singer, who had previously given more than $1 million to the oil billionaire Koch brothers. The Koch network has donated lavishly to climate denial efforts.
Lomborg generally appears in right wing media to make his case
Climatologist Stefan Rahmstorf said in 2015 that Lomborg’s “propaganda message is not only popular with fossil fuel interests, but continues to get ample space in the media.” Since then, and after Lomborg was thoroughly shut down by the climate science community, he has been generally relegated to right-wing media outlets to make his points (save for a few USA Today op-eds).
Lomborg regularly publishes op-eds in the conservative Wall Street Journal and New York Post. As noted above, he generally downplays the seriousness of climate change, avoids calling for a reduction in carbon emissions, and argues in favor of focusing on milquetoast approaches like increasing clean energy research and development spending.
He’s also appeared on Fox News three times in 2019 -- twice on Tucker Carlson Tonight and once on The Ingraham Angle. In all of these appearances, he’s downplayed the risks of climate change. For example, in an April appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight, he stated, “They’re telling us global warming is a problem. But it’s also a moderate one.”
His various debunked climate views have largely kept him out of the mainstream media -- until now.
The Dallas Morning News’ news team has done a decent job with climate coverage over the past year: The September youth climate strike and the IPCC land report were important enough for the paper to feature them on its front page. They also took a look at climate change’s role in amplifying extreme weather in Texas and elsewhere. The paper’s opinion section has stepped up, too, with an op-ed from climate scientist Andrew Dessler and an op-ed linking global warming to racial equity. That’s why it’s so disheartening to see that when the editorial board conducts a rare climate-focused interview, it gives that space to such a dishonest actor.
==
punked GUK then
https://yyy.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/24/bjrn-lomborg-centre-got-640000-for-report-saying-limiting-warming-rise-to-2c-not-worth-it
guk no lnx
Bjørn Lomborg centre got $640,000 for report saying limiting warming rise to 2C not worth it
This article is more than 3 years old
Exclusive: Revealed under freedom of information, cost came before Copenhagen Consensus Centre’s controversial $4m Australian program dropped
Paul Karp
@Paul_Karp
Fri 23 Sep 2016 18.03 EDTLast modified on Wed 14 Feb 2018 12.09 EST
Bjørn Lomborg
Bjørn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre was paid $640,000 before its Australian program was dropped. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images
Australia’s education department paid Bjørn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Centre $640,000 to help produce a report that claimed limiting world temperature increases to 2C was a “poor” use of money.
The $640,000 cost, incurred before the CCC’s controversial $4m Australian program was junked, is revealed in the 2016 incoming ministerial brief published under freedom of information laws.
An education department spokeswoman told Guardian Australia the $640,000 represented the Australian government contribution to the CCC for the Smarter UN Post-2015 Development Goals project.
Bjørn Lomborg's $4m centre rejected by Flinders University academics
Read more
The project concluded that for every dollar spent on keeping global temperatures to the 2C target, less than $1 of social, economic or environmental benefit resulted, which it described as a “poor” result.
Other spending with “poor” returns included cutting outdoor air pollution, increasing protected biodiversity areas, better disaster resilience for the poor and reducing child marriages.
Projects with “phenomenal” returns included reducing world trade restrictions through the Doha trade round, which it said would produce $2,011 for every dollar spent, and universal access to contraception which would return $120 on the dollar.
Some environmental projects rated as good investments, with “more energy research” rating an $11 return, and phasing out fossil fuel subsidies likely to yield $15 or more.
The education department spokeswoman said the CCC had provided a comprehensive report on 169 funding possibilities across 22 core issues, which was published as the Nobel Laureates’ Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World, 2016-2030.
Australian taxpayers funding climate contrarian's methods with $4m Bjørn Lomborg centre
Graham Readfearn
Read more
The project explained its conclusions were “based on peer-reviewed analyses from 82 of the world’s top economists and 44 sector experts”.
Its brochure notes financial support was provided by the Australian government. A spokesman for the CCC said the $640,000 was for costs incurred and that the intended work of the Australian Consensus Centre, which included the development goal project, was a matter of public record.
In April 2015 Guardian Australia revealed the then Abbott government’s plan to spend $4m over four years to bring the Copenhagen Consensus Centre methodology to Australia at a new centre in the University of Western Australia’s business school.
UWA rejected the funds after a public backlash leading to a search for a new home for the Australian Consensus Centre.
The project was axed later in 2015 when Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister, which the brief explains was caused by the government’s conclusion it was “unlikely to enjoy success and that the funds could be better utilised elsewhere”.
Flinders University staff and students keep fighting Bjørn Lomborg centre
Read more
The brief notes the centre’s Australian program was to cost $4m to provide “policy information and advice on smart, cost-effective solutions to national and international challenges” before it was dropped in mid 2015.
“The department has negotiated a funding agreement which will provide a one-off payment to the CCC for a total of $640,000 to cover costs incurred in relation to the establishment of the Australian Consensus Centre prior to the decision to cancel this project,” it said.
The shadow innovation, industry, science and research minister, Kim Carr, questioned why the government had “felt the need to keep [the $640,000] secret”.
“The department of education needs to explain why in one document the secretary is told that this money was establishment costs around the centre, but now states that the $640,000 was for a specific research project,” he said.
The Liberals must explain their actions.
Kim Carr
“When government research money is in such sort supply for Australia’s best and brightest scientists and researchers, the Liberals must explain their actions here.”
Carr accused the Abbott and Turnbull governments of “using taxpayers’ money in an attempt to promote an anti-science conservative agenda”.
An education department spokeswoman refuted the suggestion it had sought to hide the payment, and cited the fact the $640,000 grant was also disclosed in a log of education grants created on 2 July 2015 and made public on 22 April 2016.
Bjorn Lomborg: Patient Zero of Climate Denial
Oct 15, 2019
In Episode 89, Robert is joined by Eric Lampaert to discuss Bjorn Lomborg.
FOOTNOTES:
- Bjorn Lomborg’s lukewarmer misinformation about climate change and poverty
- BJORN LOMBORG: PERFORMANCE ARTIST EXTRAORDINAIRE
3, Bjorn Lomborg Bibliography
- Hot, It’s Not
- On Bjorn Lomborg and extinction
- The Skeptical Environmentalist: A Case Study In The Manufacture Of News
- Bjørn Lomborg: the dissenting climate change voice who changed his tune
- Bjørn Lomborg WSJ Op Ed Is Stunningly Wrong
- Who’s Behind Trump’s Claim the Green New Deal Will Cost $100 Trillion?
- Exclusive: Bjorn Lomborg Think Tank Funder Revealed As Billionaire Republican 'Vulture Capitalist' Paul Singer
- Common Core’s Global Warming Agenda
- James Harff
- Copenhagen Consensus III
- Bjørn Lomborg centre got $640,000 for report saying limiting warming rise to 2C not worth it
- Atmospheric engineering may help reverse global warming
- SCIENTIST AT WORK/Bjorn Lomborg; From an Unlikely Quarter, Eco-Optimism
- About Bjorn Lomborg
- UCS Examines 'The Skeptical Environmentalist'
- THE EXTINCTION CRISIS
==
==
https://www.desmogblog.com/2015/02/05/exclusive-bjorn-lomborg-think-tank-funder-revealed-billionaire-republican-vulture-capitalist-paul-singer
A billionaire “vulture capitalist” and major backer of the US Republican Party is a major funder of the think tank of Danish climate science contrarian and fossil fuels advocate Bjørn Lomborg, DeSmogBlog has found.
New York-based hedge fund manager Paul Singer’s charitable foundation gave $200,000 to Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) in 2013, latest US tax disclosures reveal.
The grant to Lomborg’s think tank is revealed in the tax form of the Paul E. Singer Foundation covering that foundation’s activities between December 2012 and November 2013.
Singer, described as a “passionate defender of the 1%”, has emerged as a major force in the Republican party in recent years and was a key backer and influencer during Mitt Romney’s failed tilt at the Presidency.
The $200,000 grant represented almost one third of the $621,057 in donations declared by the Copenhagen Consensus Center in 2013.
A spokesperson for the think tank told DeSmogBlog that “not one dollar” of the Singer grant had been spent.
Lomborg, a Danish political scientist, is often cited on lists of the world’s most influential people.
He writes extensively on climate change and energy issues with his columns appearing in many of the world’s biggest news outlets.
The CCC think tank produces reports that consistently argue that cutting greenhouse gas emissions and increasing the roll-out of current renewable energy technologies should be low priorities for policy makers.
Most recently, Lomborg wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal arguing climate change was not the urgent problem that many thought.
He wrote that “the narrative that the world’s climate is changing from bad to worse is unhelpful alarmism”.
Lomborg argues the poorest countries need fossil fuels to lift themselves out of poverty – a position that gained support from the world’s richest man, Bill Gates.
At a G20 side event in Brisbane last year, Lomborg appeared at an event sponsored by the world’s largest private coal company, Peabody Energy, where he again argued that the world’s poor needed fossil fuels.
The CCC’s keystone project is the Post 2015 Consensus that is trying to influence the formulation of the next set of global development goals being discussed by the United Nations. Those goals will replace the millennium development goals.
Lomborg’s CCC think tank was registered as a not-for-profit in the US in 2008 and has attracted almost $5 million in donations since then. In 2013, the CCC paid Lomborg, its founder and president, $200,484 for his work. The previous year Lomborg was paid $775,000.
The think tank has insisted that its funders, most of which are anonymous, do not influence its research. The think tank says it does not accept funding from the fossil fuel industry.
Despite being registered in the US, Lomborg has admitted that all but one of the think tank’s seven staff are based elsewhere. The think tank’s address is a parcel service in Lowell, Massachusetts.
The discovery of support from Paul Singer comes after a DeSmogBlog investigation last year found that CCC’s early funders included conservative think tanks with links to the network of organisations funded by the Koch brothers, who have pushed millions into organisations denying climate science and blocking action to cut fossil fuel emissions.
In the 2014 US political spending cycle, data presented by OpenSecrets shows Singer spent $9.4 million influencing Republicans – the biggest disclosed individual spender on the conservative side of US politics.
Singer, whose Elliott Management hedge fund manages about $25 billion in assets, has been branded a “vulture capitalist” enterprise due to investment strategies employed by his firm that targets foreign economies in trouble.
A 2011 summary of “vulture funds” in The Guardian said Elliott Management’s “principal investment strategy” was “buying distressed debt cheaply and selling it at a profit or suing for full payment”.
Greg Palast, the author of Vulture’s Picnic, documented in The Guardian how Singer’s firm had managed to pocket $1.29 billion from the US Treasury after a “brilliantly complex” financial manoeuvre in 2009 that saw Singer lead a consortium to buy the parts supplier of General Motors and Chrysler before claiming cash from a government bailout of the struggling auto industry.
Singer, who according to Forbes is personally worth $1.8 billion, remains in conflict with the Argentinian government over debt bought by an Elliott affiliate and other investors.
As well as the generosity shown to Bjorn Lomborg’s think tank, Singer’s foundation gave $500,000 to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, where Singer is chairman of the board of trustees.
The Manhattan Institute is also known for downplaying the impacts of climate change while promoting fossil fuels.
In October 2014, Manhattan senior fellow Robert Bryce wrote a report Not Beyond Coal arguing that the future for the coal industry was bright and the fossil fuel was “essential” for addressing poverty in developing countries — a position identical to that pushed by Lomborg.
Bryce also attacks the wind industry claiming it cannot cut emissions, describing wind turbines as “climate change scarecrows”. In testimony to the US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in February 2014, Bryce said wind turbines were “slaughtering wildlife” and killed 600,000 birds every year in the US.
A review of studies and data into US bird deaths has found about 600 million birds are killed annually in collisions with windows and buildings, but even this high number was only a quarter of the birds killed annually in the US by feral cats.
Another large donation from Singer’s foundation went to the Moving Picture Institute – an organisation that says it produces films that promote understanding of “individual rights, limited government, and free markets”.
The MPI helped fund the 2004 pro-mining documentary Mine Your Own Business by Irish filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney.
The two would go on to make the 2009 climate science denial film Not Evil Just Wrong, which was partly funded through a grant from DonorsTrust – a fund which stockpiles cash from conservative philanthropists and that has pushed millions into organisations promoting climate science denial while fighting action to cut emissions.
Roland Mathiasson, Executive Vice President at the Copenhagen Consensus Center, told DeSmogBlog: “Not one dollar of this grant has been spent. It's for a potential future project, pending support from a broad range of political perspectives to underline the non-political nature of the project.
“It is a project for the public conversation, so obviously there will be a lot of communication once broad support is secured, and the project is launched.”
Mathiasson declined to provide further details.
DeSmogBlog attempted to contact the Paul E Singer Foundation to ask about their donation to CCC, but email requests went unanswered.
lomborg 2 fer http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/project_syndicate/2012/10/gm_crops_and_global_warming_two_studies_use_scare_tactics_that_could_backfire.html
Bjorn Lomborg: Eight Op-Eds. Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center -- which was launched in the U.S. with funding from the Koch-linked Randolph Foundation -- wrote six op-eds in The Wall Street Journal and two in USA Today about climate or energy. In them, Lomborg frequently distorted climate science or deceptively criticized climate action. For instance, in one Journal op-ed in which he suggested that fewer people will die as the planet warms, Lomborg “misrepresent[ed] the results of existing studies” and “rel[ied] on flawed reasoning,” according to climate scientists who analyzed his claims for Climate Feedback. He also cited the global warming “hiatus” to dismiss concerns about future climate change, and falsely claimed that spending resources on climate aid to poor countries will deprive those countries of "medicine, mosquito nets or micronutrients." Additionally, he frequently cited a Copenhagen Consensus Center study to claim that the Paris climate agreement would reduce global warming by only 0.17 degrees Celsius. However, this study was debunked by multiple experts, and Lomborg’s findings were contradicted by several more reputable analyses, which found that the Paris climate agreement would limit global warming by approximately 1 degree Celsius and could lead to further global warming reduction. In USA Today, Lomborg again cited his study to call the Paris climate agreement a “hugely expensive way of doing very little.” He also twisted facts to claim that ceasing production of electric cars would keep people from dying. [Media Matters, Frequent Misinformers Spreadsheet; Climate Denial/Misinformation Spreadsheet, Fossil Fuel Disclosure Spreadsheet, 12/3/15,2/24/15; Climate Feedback, 4/6/16]
Matt Ridley: Two Op-Eds And One Essay. Matt Ridley frequently contributes to The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed pages about climate change and sometimes discloses that his family leases land for coal mining in northern England. During the time period examined for this study, Ridley authored two climate-related Journal op-eds -- and one additional piece published for “The Saturday Essay” in the Journal’s Life section, where he asserted that fossil fuels “will save the world.” One Ridley op-ed co-authored with Benny Peiser, director of the U.K.-based climate denial organization Global Warming Policy Foundation, was titled “Your Complete Guide to the Climate Debate” and released shortly before the international climate talks in Paris. Dozens of scientists criticized and debunked this op-ed on Climate Feedback, calling it a “very biased and misleading presentation of the science,” and adding that it contained “rampant cherry-picking, misleading statements, and flawed logic.” Climate Feedback assigned the op-ed an overall credibility score of “Low” to “Very Low.” A previous Media Matters analysis found that between January 2011 and October 15, 2012 -- when Ridley was a columnist for the Journal -- he authored 18 columns about climate change in which he frequently distorted climate science and compared climate scientists to eugenicists because eugenicists "insist[ed] that its tenets were beyond reasonable challenge." In one 2012 Journal column, Ridley asserted that global warming will be a “net good” for the planet. [Media Matters, Frequent Misinformers Spreadsheet, Climate Denial/Misinformation Spreadsheet, 10/29/12, 12/20/12; The Wall Street Journal, 3/13/15; Climate Feedback, 11/27/15]
6/15
“STOP ACADEMIC CENSORSHIP” screamed the full caps headline on the half-page advert in the Murdoch-owned The Australian newspaper earlier this week.
Referring to the Danish climate change contrarian and US think tank boss Bjorn Lomborg, the advert claimed: “We stand for academic freedom. We stand with Dr Lomborg.”
For those playing catch-up, a research centre based on the methods ofLomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center think tank was to be established at the University of Western Australia (UWA).
After it emerged the centre was being funded with $4million of taxpayer cash, academics and students at UWAprotested at Lomborg’s apparent lack of academic credentials and the questionable methodology of his centre, particularly when it came to how it dismissed the urgency of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
In a statement, the university’s Vice Chancellor Paul Johnson said Lomborg’s centre was in an “untenable” position and so he would be handing back the $4 million. Lomborg would no longer take an adjunct professor role at the university.
This, as I wrote on The Guardian, was the cue for Australia’s conservative commentariat to lose the plot. Now the Australian Government has pledged to find a new home for Lomborg.
Placing the advert was the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance – a private company run from a Sydney apartment unit by its “executive director” Tim Andrews.
The ATA had been fundraising for just over a week on the GoFundMe website with a $22,500 target before the advert was placed in The Australian. The campaign came with a fundraising video voiced by Melbourne-based Christopher Field, who also directed a video project based on work by climate science denialist Lord Christopher Monckton (that project included interviews with a who's who of climate science misinformers, included Marc Morano, Fred Singer, Donna Laframboise and blogger Anthony Watts).
According to one supporter of the ATA ad campaign, “these climate fascists need to confronted” while another reckoned “green religion bigots” had been exposed. Another suggested there should be more adverts “to challenge the climate hoax”.
Koch Ties Among Bjorn Lomborg's Fan Network
So what is the Australian Taxpayers' Alliance and who is Tim Andrews?
Andrews is a graduate of the Koch Associate Program in the US – an effort by the billionaire Republican activist Koch brothers to train activists to push their free market libertarian ideals.
The Koch’s and the foundations they control have pushed millions into organisation that push climate science denial and campaign to block laws cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Andrews also spent time as an intern at the Koch-linked Cato Institute. In a 2011 article in the right-wing The Spectator magazine, Andrews was described as one of the “masterminds” of Australia’s anti-carbon tax protests of that year.
When Andrews created the stopgillardscarbontax.com website to help drive the 2011 protests, he recruited Cato Institute climate science denialist Patrick Michaels as an advisor.
Michaels, who once admitted that about 40 per cent of the funding for his work came from the fossil fuel industry, is now a member of an academic advisory board at the ATA.
According to its website, the ATA is a “unique grassroots advocacy & activist organisation comprised of over 25,000 members dedicated to standing up for hardworking Australian taxpayers”. The site states:
We oppose the high taxes, wasteful spending, and crippling red tape that are hurting Aussie families and businesses, and provide a voice for everyone who opposes the big-government agenda.
The ATA is a private company registered to a unit address in Sydney. Records provided to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show two shareholders – Tim Andrews and his mother.
Free market activists
As the ATA was gathering support before its early 2012 launch, its business plan, written by Andrews, explained how the organisation was driven by a particular ideology, rather than what was necessarily good for “hardworking taxpayers”.
According to the business plan, ATA had a goal “to become Australia’s leading and most influential centre-right grassroots advocacy body in order to transform Australia to a new level of free market public policies by focusing on cutting tax, regulation and waste”.
For close watchers of the network of US think tanks backed by the Koch brothers, the language is glaringly familiar.
When the ATA launched its Perth chapter in November 2012, the special guests were climate science denialist bloggers JoNova and David Evans and fellow denier, David Archibald, who has a background in oil and mineral exploration.
The ATA is also listed as a sponsor of the Heartland Institute’s upcoming conference for climate science denialists to be held in Washington DC next month.
From the start, the ATA has engaged with climate science denialists while opposing any plans to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions. It seems to me inconsistent that a group supposedly there to stand up for taxpayers is barracking in favour of a $4million taxpayer-funded grant handed out secretively and arbitrarily with no competitive process and no consultation whatsoever.
Rather than representing “hard working taxpayers” it appears the ATA is instead representing climate science denial and the interests of free market activist billionaires like the Koch brothers.
http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/05/28/climate-science-deniers-and-free-market-activists-backing-bjorn-lomborg
==
Senior academics at an Australian university are asking their bosses to pull the plug on a $4 million taxpayer funded research centre fronted by climate science contrarian Bjorn Lomborg.
The University of Western Australia (UWA) was given $4 million to establish the Australia Consensus Centre — a new arm of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, the US-registered think tank headed by Lomborg.
The cash grant came after more than $400 million was slashed for sciencefunding in the government’s 2014 budget.
Bjorn Lomborg, a favourite among conservatives and climate science deniers for his contrarian views on climate change, has claimed that while global warming is a problem, it should be placed well down a list of global priorities for aid and development spending.
DeSmogBlog investigations have found that Lomborg’s US arm has received funding from foundations with links to the billionaire Koch brothers and to billionaire “vulture capitalist” and major Republican donor Paul Singer.
UWA announced on April 2 that Lomborg would be given an adjunct Professor role at the university, but did not disclose the $4 million of taxpayer funding.
While Lomborg told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that he had worked with UWA to prepare a proposal for the government, it has been reported that the idea came from the office of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who has said that “coal is good for humanity”.
UWA has also said it was approached by the government to house Lomborg’s centre, not the other way around.
Academics from UWA and elsewhere have expressed frustration that the $4 million was handed over without any apparent competitive process being carried out.
The university’s Student Guild launched a “Say NO to Bjørn Lomborg” campaign, saying the decision to offer the money toUWA was “politically motivated, and it is an insult to the staff and students” at the university.
The Copenhagen Consensus Center claims to do cost-benefit analysis of policies to tackle global problems and claims that targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions are too expensive and that climate change won’t begin to have negative impacts on the world’s economy until near the end of this century.
Dr Frank Jotzo, a leading climate economist at the Australian National University in Canberra, claimed in The Guardian that the Copenhagen Consensus Center methodology “has no academic credibility” and pointed to fundamental flaws in the way the CCC assessed the impacts of climate change.
On Friday, staff from across the University of Western Australia’s schools and departments packed out a lecture theatre for a special meeting in an attempt to get some answers from university administrators.
Professor Stuart Bunt, of the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology, and vice president of the UWA Academic Staff Association, told DeSmogBlog:
Given the strength of feeling, many wanted to know if it was possible to cancel this. The question was rather ducked by the VC, Professor Paul Johnson. Our university prides itself on having high academic standards and selects staff very carefully. Some very young applicants, for example to our own school, have better publication records than Lomborg.
He said during the meeting, some were concerned how much academic freedom the Australia Consensus Centre might be able to have, given the reliance on government funding. “We were not reassured,” he said. “There’s a fear that people won’t be able to work without fear or favour.”
Bunt, who served 12 years on the university’s main decision-making Senate board, said academics were angry there had been a lack of consultation about the centre and Lomborg's appointment. He said it appeared the decision to appoint Lomborg and to establish the centre had been taken within a small group of university executives.
Bunt said he was also concerned that Lomborg’s work had been heavily criticised in the past. He said there appeared not to have been a risk analysis done on the impact that engaging with Lomborg might have on the university’s reputation.
Dr David Glance, the director of the Centre for Software Practice, told DeSmogBlog that some academics wanted to know if it was too late to cancel the centre entirely.
The main focus was staff wanting to know if there was an opportunity to reverse the decision. There was a lot of non-committal answers from Paul Johnson, the Vice Chancellor.
Glance said while the meeting started cordially, “it became less so towards the end” as frustrations began to rise. “People came out more depressed than when they went in,” he added.
DeSmogBlog was told by others in the meeting that academics expressed “shame and embarrassment” at the appointment of Lomborg and were “frustrated that they couldn’t get answers to their questions.”
In a highly critical letter released on the Conservation Bytes blog of Adelaide academic Corey Bradshaw, Professor Sarah Dunlop, Head of the School of Animal Biology at UWA, told university administrators that Lomborg’s academic record did not merit his appointment. The letter said:
Aside from the concerns expressed by others, the School is facing a difficult reputational challenge in terms of attracting high quality staff and students as well as establishing and maintaining national and international collaborations as a consequence of these events. As an example, an international Research Fellow has just informed us that, if Dr Lomborg’s adjunct appointment is confirmed, they will not bring their Fellowship to UWAbut, rather, transfer it to a more reputable University.
Additionally, existing PhD students in the School are concerned that this appointment will tarnish their accomplishments as graduates from this University. In addition, staff in the School have been inundated by correspondence from collaborators and stakeholders concerned about the University’s decision.
Professor Bunt said he was aware that other schools within UWA were considering drafting similar letters critical of the university’s decision.
UWA Adjunct Professor Paul Wills, of the School of Earth and Environment, told Fairfax media the appointment of Lomborg “tarnishes the reputation of the university.”
Dr Frank Jotzo, director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at ANU, told The Guardian:
Within the research community, particularly within the economics community, the Bjorn Lomborg enterprise has no academic credibility. It is seen as an outreach activity that is driven by specific set of objectives in terms of bringing particular messages into the public debate and in some cases making relatively extreme positions seem more acceptable in the public debate.
Jotzo also said he believed the Copenhagen Consensus Centre was guilty of filtering out dissenting voices from its final recommendations.
The CCC has defended its methods, saying that Nobel Laureates and top economists have been engaged in the work.
UWA has said it will look to raise further funds for the Australia Consensus Centre. The CCC has said it would not accept cash from the fossil fuel industry.
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http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/02/09/exclusive-bjorn-lomborg-think-tank-funder-revealed-billionaire-republican-vulture-capitalist-paul-singer
billionaire “vulture capitalist” and major backer of the US Republican Party is a major funder of the think tank of Danish climate science contrarian and fossil fuels advocate Bjørn Lomborg, DeSmogBlog has found.
New York-based hedge fund manager Paul Singer’s charitable foundation gave $200,000 to Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) in 2013, latest US tax disclosures reveal.
The grant to Lomborg’s think tank is revealed in the tax form of the Paul E. Singer Foundation covering that foundation’s activities between December 2012 and November 2013.
Singer, described as a “passionate defender of the 1%”, has emerged as a major force in the Republican party in recent years and was a key backer and influencer during Mitt Romney’s failed tilt at the Presidency.
The $200,000 grant represented almost one third of the $621,057 in donations declared by the Copenhagen Consensus Center in 2013.
A spokesperson for the think tank told DeSmogBlog that “not one dollar” of the Singer grant had been spent.
Lomborg, a Danish political scientist, is often cited on lists of the world’s most influential people.
He writes extensively on climate change and energy issues with his columns appearing in many of the world’s biggest news outlets.
The CCC think tank produces reports that consistently argue that cutting greenhouse gas emissions and increasing the roll-out of current renewable energy technologies should be low priorities for policy makers.
Most recently, Lomborg wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal arguing climate change was not the urgent problem that many thought.
He wrote that “the narrative that the world’s climate is changing from bad to worse is unhelpful alarmism”.
Lomborg argues the poorest countries need fossil fuels to lift themselves out of poverty – a position that gained support from the world’s richest man, Bill Gates.
At a G20 side event in Brisbane last year, Lomborg appeared at an event sponsored by the world’s largest private coal company, Peabody Energy, where he again argued that the world’s poor needed fossil fuels.
The CCC’s keystone project is the Post 2015 Consensus that is trying to influence the formulation of the next set of global development goals being discussed by the United Nations. Those goals will replace the millennium development goals.
Lomborg’s CCC think tank was registered as a not-for-profit in the US in 2008 and has attracted almost $5 million in donations since then. In 2013, the CCC paid Lomborg, its founder and president, $200,484 for his work. The previous year Lomborg was paid $775,000.
The think tank has insisted that its funders, most of which are anonymous, do not influence its research. The think tank says it does not accept funding from the fossil fuel industry.
Despite being registered in the US, Lomborg has admitted that all but one of the think tank’s seven staff are based elsewhere. The think tank’s address is a parcel service in Lowell, Massachusetts.
The discovery of support from Paul Singer comes after a DeSmogBlog investigation last year found that CCC’s early funders included conservative think tanks with links to the network of organisations funded by the Koch brothers, who have pushed millions into organisations denying climate science and blocking action to cut fossil fuel emissions.
In the 2014 US political spending cycle, data presented by OpenSecrets shows Singer spent $9.4 million influencing Republicans – the biggest disclosed individual spender on the conservative side of US politics.
Singer, whose Elliott Management hedge fund manages about $25 billion in assets, has been branded a “vulture capitalist” enterprise due to investment strategies employed by his firm that targets foreign economies in trouble.
A 2011 summary of “vulture funds” in The Guardian said Elliott Management’s “principal investment strategy” was “buying distressed debt cheaply and selling it at a profit or suing for full payment”.
Greg Palast, the author of Vulture’s Picnic, documented in The Guardian how Singer’s firm had managed to pocket $1.29 billion from the US Treasury after a “brilliantly complex” financial manoeuvre in 2009 that saw Singer lead a consortium to buy the parts supplier of General Motors and Chrysler before claiming cash from a government bailout of the struggling auto industry.
Singer, who according to Forbes is personally worth $1.8 billion, remains in conflict with the Argentinian government over debt bought by an Elliott affiliate and other investors.
As well as the generosity shown to Bjorn Lomborg’s think tank, Singer’s foundation gave $500,000 to the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, where Singer is chairman of the board of trustees.
The Manhattan Institute is also known for downplaying the impacts of climate change while promoting fossil fuels.
In October 2014, Manhattan senior fellow Robert Bryce wrote a report Not Beyond Coal arguing that the future for the coal industry was bright and the fossil fuel was “essential” for addressing poverty in developing countries — a position identical to that pushed by Lomborg.
Bryce also attacks the wind industry claiming it cannot cut emissions, describing wind turbines as “climate change scarecrows”. In testimony to the US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in February 2014, Bryce said wind turbines were “slaughtering wildlife” and killed 600,000 birds every year in the US.
A review of studies and data into US bird deaths has found about 600 million birds are killed annually in collisions with windows and buildings, but even this high number was only a quarter of the birds killed annually in the US by feral cats.
Another large donation from Singer’s foundation went to the Moving Picture Institute – an organisation that says it produces films that promote understanding of “individual rights, limited government, and free markets”.
The MPI helped fund the 2004 pro-mining documentary Mine Your Own Business by Irish filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney.
The two would go on to make the 2009 climate science denial film Not Evil Just Wrong, which was partly funded through a grant from DonorsTrust – a fund which stockpiles cash from conservative philanthropists and that has pushed millions into organisations promoting climate science denial while fighting action to cut emissions.
Roland Mathiasson, Executive Vice President at the Copenhagen Consensus Center, told DeSmogBlog: “Not one dollar of this grant has been spent. It's for a potential future project, pending support from a broad range of political perspectives to underline the non-political nature of the project.
“It is a project for the public conversation, so obviously there will be a lot of communication once broad support is secured, and the project is launched.”
Mathiasson declined to provide further details.
DeSmogBlog attempted to contact the Paul E Singer Foundation to ask about their donation to CCC, but email requests went unanswered.
seralini
lomborg 2 fer http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/project_syndicate/2012/10/gm_crops_and_global_warming_two_studies_use_scare_tactics_that_could_backfire.html
http://ecowatch.com/2014/08/29/bill-gates-jigar-shah-carl-pope-renewables/ debate
==
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/06/25/millions-behind-bjorn-lomborg-copenhagen-consensus-center
Tue, 2014-06-24 23:28Graham Readfearn
The Millions Behind Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center US Think Tank
In early 2012, it seemed like the future of Bjørn Lomborg [1]’s influential think tank was in serious doubt.
The Danish Government had changed its political stripes and the millions in public funds that had poured into his Copenhagen Consensus Center [2] had come to an abrupt halt.
Lomborg told The Ecologist [3] magazine he was worried there would be a limited pool of donors willing to part with cash to support his work.
“We have to make sure that that funding, if it’s going to go forward, is unassailable,” Lomborg said.
The impression back in 2012 might have been that Lomborg’s think tank was struggling for cash, but a DeSmogBlog investigation suggests the opposite.
The nonprofit Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC) has spent almost $1 million on public relations since registering in the US in 2008. More than $4 million in grants and donations have flooded in since 2008, three quarters of which came in 2011 and 2012.
In one year alone, the Copenhagen Consensus Center paid Lomborg $775,000.
Lomborg is the blonde-haired political scientist, economist and “skeptical environmentalist [4]” who is a beacon for many climate change contrarians and so-called “luke warmists” around the world.
While Lomborg accepts the fact that human emissions of greenhouse gases cause climate change, he argues the net economic impacts will not turn negative for more than 50 years.
If the world is to spend big money combating climate change, it should do it by “making green energy cheaper”.
His stated aim is fighting global poverty and he frequently argues that deploying renewable energy generation and cutting emissions should be well down any list of the world’s priorities.
Lomborg’s name regularly appears in lists of international influencers. In 2002, Time magazine named him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
Esquire magazine named him as one of the 75 most influential people of the 21st century.
According to Lomborg [5], his syndicated columns are read by more than 30 million people around the world in more than 30 newspapers translated into 19 different languages. He has written books, made documentary films, given TED talks and been invited to share his controversial views on television shows across the world.
The Copenhagen Consensus Project
The headline act for Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center is to bring together a group he describes as “the world’s top economists” to prioritise spending “to do the most good in the world”.
In 2008, Lomborg’s project ranked mitigating global warming at the bottom of a list of 30 [6] issues.
In its latest 2012 report [7], climate change featured three times. Ranked sixth was spending on research to improve crop yields, in 12th was research spending on geoengineering and in 17th place was money for “green energy” research.
When Lomborg told The Ecologist about his cash concerns, there was no mention that four years earlier his organisation had been quietly registered as a nonprofit think tank in Washington DC.
Documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service show that by the end of 2011, some $2 million in donations had already hit CCC’s US bank account.
Since registering as a US-based non-profit organisation in 2008, tax records show the Copenhagen Consensus Center has attracted $4.3 million in donations with almost half that coming in 2012, the most recent year where public records are available.
Lomborg’s compensation for his CCC work that year was $775,000, according to the tax records [8].
[click image to enlarge] [9]
So where is the money coming from and who are the people pulling the strings?
Big PR spending
A strapline at the bottom of a page on the Copenhagen Consensus Center’s website [10] reads “Cutting out special interest groups and lobbyists”.
But in 2006, when the CCC first started to look at gaining support for its efforts in the United States, the person they turned to was long-time Washington lobbyist and PR veteran James Harff [11].
Harff had previously served as president of global public affairs at international PR firm Ruder Finn, where his clients included the republics of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia as well as the Kosovan opposition during the Bosnian war in the early 1990s.
In March 2006, Harff declared to the US Department of Justice [12] under its Foreign Agents Registration laws that he was acting on behalf of the Copenhagen Consensus Center.
Harff declared his company, Harff Communications, would offer Copenhagen Consensus Center “advice, counsel, media relations, logistical support and related tasks” and this work could include scheduling or attending meetings on CCC’s behalf.
A further declaration made in June 2006 [13] stated Harff was being paid $5000 a month by the CCC.
As well as media relations, the document said Harff’s work would include identifying and arranging meetings with members of Congress, the Bush administration and policy makers.
Harff and his PR company Global Communicators, a subsidiary of Harff Communications, continue to work with Copenhagen Consensus Center.
In 2009 and 2010, the CCC paid another public relations company — 42West [14] — more than $800,000. One of 42West’s tasks was to help spruik Lomborg’s 2010 film Cool It, based on his book of the same name.
Conservative funders
The only income for the CCC in its first year in the US came in the form of a $120,000 grant from the New York-based Randolph Foundation [15].
The foundation, seeded by money from the Richardson family’s sale of the Vick Chemical Company [16] in 1985, gave CCC another $50,000 in 2012 [17].
The main trustee at Randolph is Heather Higgins [18], the president and CEO of Independent Women’s Voice and the chairman of its sister organisation Independent Women’s Forum [19]. Higgins is the daughter of R. Randolph Richardson, a member of the family that sold Vick Chemical Company to Procter & Gamble for $1.2 billion [20].
Staff writers of both organisations regularly express scepticism about the science of human-caused climate change and cite Lomborg’s views approvingly.
A recent article from IWF senior fellow Vicki Alger claimed [21] “a majority of scientists believe that global warming is largely nature-made” — ignoring several studies that show the vast majority of research from scientists studying climate change believe exactly the opposite.
IWF funders include the Charles R. Lambe Foundation [22], controlled by Charles Koch, and Donors Trust [23], a fund for conservative philanthropists that has pushed millions into organisations promoting climate science denial and fighting laws to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Higgins is also board member at the Philanthropy Roundtable [24], another route for conservative philanthropy which shares two members of personnel with Donors Trust or its partner organisation Donors Capital Fund [25].
Also on the board of trustees at Randolph is Polly Freiss, the daughter-in-law of conservative Christian businessman Foster Freiss.
Foster Freiss put more than $2 million into Republican Senator Rick Santorum’s 2012 run for his party’s nomination for the presidency. Freiss also bankrolled conservative news outlet The Daily Caller [26], which regularly publishes articles supporting the views of climate science denialists.
On his personal web page, Freiss promotes climate science denial sources [27] including Climate Depot and The Heartland Institute [28]. Friess’s website has also promoted Lomborg’s views.
Foster Freiss and his daughter Polly attended the Koch brother’s secretive 2010 strategy meeting in Aspen [29], along with Heather Higgins and a host of other conservative activists.
The tax records of the Kansas-based Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation indicate it has given the CCC two $150,000 grants — one in 2011 [30] and another in 2012 [31].
The foundation is the legacy of pharmaceutical entrepreneur Ewing Kauffman and currently holds $1.89 billion in assets.
The only other known funder of Lomborg’s think tank is the Sevenbar Foundation — a group that gave Copenhagen Consensus Center $50,000 in 2009 [32] but otherwise supports micro-finance initiatives to empower women using money raised from lingerie shows.
DeSmog’s analysis of the tax records of not-for-profit groups and foundations donating to CCC accounts for only $520,000 of the total $4.3 million income of the CCC since it was launched in the US. The center’s new website makes no mention of its funding.
When so little is known about the funding for CCC, it is hard for anyone to know if Lomborg’s hope to find “unassailable” donors has come true.
Roland Mathiasson, executive vice president at CCC, told DeSmogBlog the think tank's website was being modernised and some statements about funding had not yet been transitioned.
He said where donors agreed, they would be identified on specific projects. Funding for the “Third Copenhagen Consensus [33]” came from the Rush Foundation [34], he said, while a “Scorecard for Humanity [35]” project was financed through legacy funding from the Danish Government.
He said: “Some donors stipulate that we are not allowed to advertise the name of the foundation or donor. Donors routinely decide to be anonymous, for a variety of reasons. Given how some parts of the blogosphere vilify Dr. Lomborg and certain research from the Center, it is something donors can understandably live without.
“We work with more than a hundred of the world's top economists and seven Nobel Laureates. It is the work of these people that assure the public of the quality of the output of the Copenhagen Consensus.
“We do not take funding from fossil fuel industry and we are explicit that no funding will have any influence on our research. This statement should be on our website - we'll add this to the new website.”
Tags:
bjorn lomborg [37]
heather higgins [38]
foster freiss [39]
polly freiss [40]
Koch [41]
independent women's voice [42]
Independent Women's Forum [43]
IWF [44]
james harff [45]
harff communications [46]
global communicators [47]
climate change [48]
climate denial [49]
desmogblog [50]
Copenhagen Consensus Center [51]
copenhagen consensus centre [52]
Read more: The Millions Behind Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center US Think Tank [53]
Source URL: http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/06/25/millions-behind-bjorn-lomborg-copenhagen-consensus-center
Links:
[1] http://www.desmogblog.com/bjorn-lomborg
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/23/bjorn-lomborg-climate-thinktank-close
[3] http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/1212685/climate_change_sceptic_bjorn_lomborg_im_the_victim.html
[4] http://www.lomborg.com/publications/the_skeptical_environmentalist/
[5] http://www.lomborg.com/about/biography
[6] http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/copenhagen-consensus-ii/outcomes
[7] http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/sites/default/files/outcome_document_updated_1105.pdf
[8] http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/990_pdf_archive/261/261214521/261214521_201212_990.pdf
[9] http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/lomborg%20990.jpg
[10] http://www.webcitation.org/6QSZlE4Ir
[11] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=James_Harff
[12] http://www.fara.gov/docs/5744-Exhibit-AB-20060405-1.pdf
[13] http://www.fara.gov/docs/5744-Exhibit-AB-20060622-2.pdf
[14] http://www.42west.net/
[15] http://conservativetransparency.org/wp/assets/The-Randolph-Foundation-2008.pdf
[16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicks
[17] http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/990pf_pdf_archive/470/470892971/470892971_201212_990PF.pdf
[18] http://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/who_we_are/board/heather_higgins
[19] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Independent_Women%27s_Forum
[20] http://articles.latimes.com/1985-10-02/business/fi-16298_1_white-knight
[21] http://www.iwf.org/blog/2794034/Common-Core%E2%80%99s-Global-Warming-Agenda
[22] http://conservativetransparency.org/donor/claude-r-lambe-charitable-foundation/
[23] http://www.desmogblog.com/who-donors-trust
[24] http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Philanthropy_Roundtable
[25] http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/media-center/reports/Donors-Trust-Laundering-Climate-Denial-Funding/
[26] http://www.desmogblog.com/tucker-carlson%E2%80%99s-daily-caller-website-bankrolled-climate-change-denier
[27] http://fosterfriess.com/key-issues/climate-change/leading-the-cause/
[28] http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute
[29] http://images2.americanprogressaction.org/ThinkProgress/secretkochmeeting.pdf
[30] http://pdfs.citizenaudit.org/2012_12_PF/43-6064859_990PF_201112.pdf
[31] http://pdfs.citizenaudit.org/2013_12_PF/43-6064859_990PF_201212.pdf
[32] http://990s.foundationcenter.org/990pf_pdf_archive/752/752912550/752912550_200912_990PF.pdf
[33] http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/copenhagen-consensus-iii
[34] http://www.rushfoundation.org/
[35] http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/scorecard-humanity
[36] https://www.flickr.com/photos/worldtravelandtourismcouncil/
[37] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/707
[38] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/16990
[39] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/16991
[40] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/16992
[41] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/5968
[42] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/16993
[43] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/10875
[44] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/10876
[45] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/16994
[46] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/16995
[47] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/16996
[48] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/939
[49] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/3062
[50] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/2540
[51] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/2140
[52] http://www.desmogblog.com/directory/vocabulary/14580
[53] http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/06/25/millions-behind-bjorn-lomborg-copenhagen-consensus-center
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big pict exxon china
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175848/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_what%27s_big_energy_smoking/#more
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USA Today Lets Go Top Climate Reporter, Embraces Confusionist Bjorn Lomborg
BY JOE ROMM ON NOVEMBER 24, 2013 AT 11:41 AM
Bjorn Lomborg has a plan to help poor low-lying countries from Kiribati (featured above) to Bangladesh threatened by rising seas and worsening storm surges. Delay real climate action, but invest in R&D to develop artificial floating islands for them to live on.
OK, that isn’t literally his plan, but it is figuratively. Lomborg argues that: 1) there is a trade-off between efforts to fight poverty and efforts to fight climate and 2) the best way to fight climate change is to let emissions keep rising while spending gazillions of public dollars on R&D.
Both are false. When unrestricted carbon pollution forces tens of millions of people to flee rising seas and Dust-Bowlification, who do you think will suffer the most — the rich or the poor? Worse, when unrestricted carbon pollution makes it all but impossible to feed 9 billion people post-2050, who is going to suffer the most malnutrition — the rich or the poor? One analysis just of the impact of temperature rise on food security finds “Half of world’s population could face climate-driven food crisis by 2100.” Which half of the population do you think will be in crisis, the richer or poorer?
But the sub-hed in Lomborg’s latest USA Today op-ed asserts, “The recent storm in Philippines was not a result of global warming, but about poverty.”
No, I’m not going to link to the piece because the only possible reason USA Today keeps running op-eds from someone as widely debunked as Lomborg is to get page views. Worse, while the paper is embracing Lomborg, they have let go one of the top climate reporters in the country, Dan Vergano. That’s the worst trade since the Boston Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees for $100,000.
For Lomborg, climate change doesn’t actually cause the climate to change or raise sea levels or anything that might make extreme weather events more and more devastating the longer we ignore the problem. For a good response from actual scientists, see the UK Guardian piece on super typhoon Haiyan by Dana Nuccitelli and John Abraham, which explains, “The strongest hurricanes are becoming stronger, fueled by warmer oceans caused by climate change.”
Worse, Lomborg has a second piece on why we should stop supporting renewable energy deployment and shift the money to “investments in research and development into new energy sources.” He writes:
The economics show that the smartest long-term solution is to focus on innovating green energy through R&D, rather than merely subsidizing its use. Such innovation would push down the costs for future generations of wind, solar and other amazing possibilities.
Huh? Lomborg’s do-little strategy doesn’t merely reflect a complete lack of understanding ofenergy technology and markets. His “strategy” would strangle the renewable energy transition in the cradle.
You’d never know from reading Lomborg that thanks to a quarter-century of deployment policies that he criticizes, photovoltaic panels have dropped in price a staggering 99 percentand can compete with grid power unsubsidized in many countries around the world.
price-of-solar-power-drop-graph
The R&D-only strategy was first advanced publicly by GOP strategist Frank Luntz and then embraced by Pres. George W. Bush as a way for conservatives to seem like they care about the issue while continuing to do nothing serious about it (see Bush climate speech follows Luntz playbook: “Technology, technology, blah, blah, blah”). It’s probably why Lomborg’s calls for inaction are so widely reprinted by climate science deniers.
Former Carbon War Room CEO Jigar Shah, a solar-industry rock star who founded the pioneering solar company SunEdison, told CP in 2011 why doubters of today’s renewable energy technologies are so wrong:
It depends on the person … but often they’re just too ignorant to know better. For some people, technology is not their sweet spot. They have other skills. And so when someone tells them, “technology is not ready,” they just eat up those words … hook, line and sinker and then decide that’s what their talking points are going to be. And with those people it’s just sad that they don’t read more.
Then there are actually people who are diabolical … This is by far the most interesting way to foil the progress of new technologies. That is, by saying that they’re not ready. You know, you see this with the big oil companies. They’ll say: “we need all of the above.” Or they say: “we are huge supporters of solar and wind if only their costs would come down by 20 percent. Then, you know, if there were big breakthroughs in the technology, we’d be huge supporters.”
No, that actually just means that they don’t love solar and wind. It actually means that they hate those technologies and that, in fact, they are trying to figure out, using white lies, how to undermine those technologies. So we just have to call their bluff, as opposed to saying: “Oh my god, they’re our friends because they said something that seems to resonate with me.” They’re not your friend. They’re actually trying to figure out how to play a nice PR trick to marginalize you.
At the heart of Lomborg’s diabolical argument is the false choice that we can’t fight climate change and poverty at the same time, that somehow money spent on climate action comes at the expense of money spent fighting poverty. There’s no evidence that’s actually true, but there is an abundance of analysis suggesting that delaying investment in clean energy is the costliest possible strategy for responding to threat of catastrophic climate change.
The tragedy of Lomborg’s campaign of inactivism is that the cost of climate action is so low, one tenth of a penny on the dollar, not counting co-benefits (see “Introduction to climate economics“) — while the cost of inaction is nearly incalculable, hundreds of trillions of dollars.
As far back as 2009, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned, “The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming.”
Then in 2011, the IEA explained November that on our current path, “rising fossil energy use will lead to irreversible and potentially catastrophic climate change” — warming of an almost unthinkable 6°C [11°F] — whereas
“Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.”
It’s hard to think of a better two-word summary of Lomborg’s entire argument than “false economy.”
Bjorn Lomborg Climate Change Climate Change Deniers
==
in contrast to climategate attacks on Mann etc, BO found to be sloppy and dishonest?
Let’s turn to the Slate reader findings. Here they are:
RANK SOLUTION CHALLENGE
1 Family Planning Population Growth
2 Bundled Micro-Nutrient Interventions Hunger and Malnutrition
3 Tobacco Taxation Chronic Diseases
4 Civil War Prevention Armed Conflicts
5 Schoolbased Health and Nutrition Programs Education
6 Effective Early Warning Systems Natural Disasters
7 Expanded Childhood Immunization Coverage Infectious Disease
8 The Reinvented Toilet Water and Sanitation
9 Increased Funding for Energy R&D Climate Change
10 Agricultural Productivity R&D Biodiversity
11 Subsidy for Malaria Combination Treatment Infectious Disease
12 R&D to Increase Yield Enhancements Hunger and Malnutrition
13 Hepatitis B Immunization Chronic Diseases
14 Deworming of Children Infectious Disease
15 Geo-Engineering R&D Climate Change
16 Extension of Protected areas Biodiversity
17 Community Led Total Sanitation Water and Sanitation
18 Protecting All Forests Biodiversity
19 Expanding Tuberculosis Treatment Infectious Disease
20 Adaptation Planning Climate Change
21 Acute Heart Attack Low-Cost Drugs Chronic Diseases
22 Post-Conflict Reconstruction Armed Conflicts
23 Low$1.8/tC Global Carbon Tax Climate Change
24 Retrofitting Schools to Withstand Earthquake Damage Natural Disasters
25 Generic Pill for Heart Attack Risk Reduction Chronic Diseases
26 Investing in Accelerated HIV Vaccine Development Infectious Disease
27 Information Campaign on Returns to Schooling Education
28 Sanitation as a Business Water and Sanitation
29 Strengthening Structures Against Hurricanes and Storms Natural Disasters
30 Community Walls Against Floods Natural Disasters
31 Conditional Cash Transfers for School Attendance Education
32 Increase Competition in the Fertilizer Market Hunger and Malnutrition
33 Salt Reduction Campaign Chronic Diseases
34 Crop Advisory Text Messages Hunger and Malnutrition
35 Civil War Intervention Armed Conflicts
36 High $250/tC Global Carbon Tax Climate Change
The Danish statistician, a self-proclaimed "skeptical environmentalist" who has spent the past decade downplaying the risks of global warming, has long been the darling of do-nothing politicians who cite his bogus numbers to justify their inaction on climate change. The good news is that last year Lomborg finally admitted we have a problem, arguing that world leaders should invest $100 billion annually to develop clean energy. The bad news is that Lomborg still fails to grasp the urgency of the threat, blithely insisting that global warming is "not the end of the world." Instead of pushing to cap carbon pollution immediately, he continues to cite research that is a decade out of date, asserting that "global sea levels are not likely to rise more than about 20 inches by 2100." In fact, the latest research shows that sea levels will likely rise by three to six feet. Lomborg is also wrong when he claims that most polar bears aren't threatened by global warming, that the lives saved by warmer winters will outnumber the deaths caused by heat waves and drought, and that the breakup of the Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica is unrelated to rising temperatures. "He's a performance artist disguised as an academic," says Howard Friel, an independent researcher who has systematically debunked Lomborg's work. RS
http://www.desmogblog.com/bjorn-lomborg
Credentials
Ph.D., Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen (1994).
M.A., political science (1991).
Source: [1]
Background
According to his website, Bjorn Lomborg is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School. He received his Ph. D. in Political Science at the University of Copenhagen in 1994.
He is best known as the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, two books on global warming. Notably, Lomborg does not have a background in climate science and has published no peer-reviewed articles in the area.
Lomborg's errors in his discussion of climate change have been well-documented by many sources. For example, here's a notable website dedicated to documenting his errors (the site also maintains a timeline documenting the events leading to Lomborg's fame, and how he is regarded among his fellow Danes).
Lomborg has recently been pioneering the controversial idea of geo-engineering to solve the issue of climate change. In one instance, Lomborg envisioned a fleet of 1900 robotic ships that will patrol the ocean while releasing spouts of ocean water to reflect the sun's rays in an attempt to reduce global warming. [2]
Geoengineering research proponent Ken Caldeira has said "the vision of Lomborg’s Climate Consensus is 'a dystopic world out of a science fiction story . . . Geoengineering is not an alternative to carbon emissions reductions . . . If emissions keep going up and up, and you use geoengineering as a way to deal with it, it's pretty clear the endgame of that process is pretty ugly'." [3]
Stance on Climate Change
In a 2010 report in The Guardian, Lomborg acknowledged that global warming is "a challenge that humanity must confront." Lomborg goes as far as calling for a carbon tax and a $100 billion investment in clean technologies. [4]
But Lomborg's "new" view on climate change, presented prominently in his new book Smart Solutions to Climate Change, isn't exactly new. He still argues that it would be too expensive to implement any major carbon reduction policy, and that "drastic carbon cuts would be the poorest way to respond to global warming." [5]
At this point, Lomborg appears to be directly contradicting himself.
Key Quotes
"We have to ask ourselves: what do we want to do first? Do we want to focus on cutting CO2, at fairly high costs and doing fairly little good a hundred years from now? Or would we rather want to fix some of the many obvious problems in the world, where we could do a lot more good and do it now?" [6]
Key Deeds
November 12, 2010
Lomborg appeared in the documentary film Cool It which focused on his views regarding climate policy where he suggests "that there's a well-financed effort underfoot to spin the failure of climate action into a new political strategy for high-tech mega-investments."
Lomborg said that "independent investors" has financed the film. [7]
April, 2008
David Sassoon wrote a series of postings at Solve Climate on Lomborg’s media tours to the US. They are available here:
"Global Warming’s Danish Denialist Coming to America: Part 1"
"Global Warming’s Danish Denialist Coming to America: Part 2"
"Global Warming’s Danish Denialist Coming to America: Part 3"
"Bjorn Lomborg Delivers Nihilist Message at Manhattan Institute Climate Talk"
2007
In 2007 Lomborg published his second major book skeptical about climate change titled Cool It. His book tour in Canada was sponsored by the Fraser Institute, an organization which has received $120,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
Alanna Mitchell, the Science Reporter for the Globe and Mail wrote a review:
"It would be possible to go point by point through the many similar flaws in each of Lomborg’s arguments, but frankly, the book is too pitiful to merit it. It’s not that his analysis is controversial - that would be fun - but that it is deeply dissatisfying, ignorant and shallow. I remember wondering, after I interviewed Lomborg, whether he was intellectually dishonest or just not very bright. Cool It has convinced me that it doesn’t matter. Lomborg has now proved beyond a doubt that he is incapable of contributing anything of merit to scientific discourse." [8]
More recently, Dr. Frank Ackerman of Tufts University wrote a detailed and critical analysis for the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change, outlining the many errors and biases in Lomborg's book:
"The book is riddled with small inaccuracies, and because it displays a pervasive bias in its coverage and evaluations of climate issues. To begin with, Lomborg has a weak grasp of some of the essential details and commits elementary mistakes, with little or no citation of sources that would explain his results." [9]
2004
Lomborg hosted the Copenhagen Consensus conference, partially funded by the Danish government. Eight economists selected by Lomborg were asked to prioritize ten global problems based on a hypothetical budget of $50 billion and a timeline of five years. Based on those constraints, the panel concluded that climate change was the least cost-effective area to invest public money.
The conference was hosted through the Danish Environmental Assessment Institute, of which Lomborg was the director. When the conference was announced, five of the seven board members resigned en masse in a dispute over the event.
Ackerman also provides a detailed rebuttal to the methodology of this conference in his peer-reviewed paper. [9]
Professor John Quiggin is a Senior Research Fellow of the Australian Research Council, based at the Australian National University and Queensland University of Technology. He wrote a series of articles critical of the process, participants and perceived bias of the conference. [10], [11]
He concludes that "the Copenhagen Consensus project was created as a political stunt. It was designed, in every detail, to produce a predetermined outcome. Having got the desired outcome, the organizer has shown little or no interest in pursuing any of the other issues raised by the project."
Jeffery Sachs was also critical of the Copenhagen Consensus conference in his analysis (PDF) for the prestigious journal Nature. [12]
Tom Burke similarly wrote a scathing review of the Copenhagen Consensus, titled "This is neither scepticism nor science - just nonsense" in The Guardian. [13]
2001
In 2001, Lomborg published his first major book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. In response, The Danish Ecological Council published an 225-page book titled Skeptical Questions and Sustainable Answers which documents the many errors and omissions in Lomborg's work.
The Danish Committee for Scientific Dishonesty also received numerous complaints regarding the accuracy of Lomborg's first book. After investigating, they concluded:
"The publication is deemed clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice…there has been such perversion of the scientific message in the form of systematically biased representation that the objective criteria for upholding scientific dishonesty . . . have been met."
Lomborg later had this overturned after appealing to the Danish Government, who was sympathetic to his message, ordered the body to review this decision. [14]
Scientific American later published their own 10-page article, written by four leading experts, that was critical of The Skeptical Environmentalist and which described Lomborg's work as "deeply flawed." [15]
They further described Lomborg's text as having "misrepresented the actual positions of environmentalists and scientists" with an analysis that was "marred by invalidating errors that include a narrow, biased reading of the literature, an inadequate understanding of the science, and quotations taken out of context."
John P. Holdren, one of the Scientific American authors noted: "It is instructive that [Lomborg] apparently did not feel he could manage an adequate response by himself (In this, at least, he was correct. But he could not manage it with help, either)."
For his part, Lomborg sent a plea to his supporters asking for help in forming a rebuttal. It read:
"Naturally, I plan to write a rebuttal to be put on my web-site. However, I would also love your input to the issues — maybe you can contest some of the arguments in the Scientific American, alone or together with other academics. Perhaps you have good ideas to counter a specific argument. Perhaps you know of someone else that might be ideal to talk to or get to write a counter-piece."
The Union of Concerned Scientists also authored a highly critical analysis of Lomborg’s first book. They state: [16]
"Lomborg’s book is seriously flawed and fails to meet basic standards of credible scientific analysis. The authors note how Lomborg consistently misuses, misrepresents or misinterprets data to greatly underestimate rates of species extinction, ignore evidence that billions of people lack access to clean water and sanitation, and minimize the extent and impacts of global warming due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases. Time and again, these experts find that Lomborg’s assertions and analyses are marred by flawed logic, inappropriate use of statistics and hidden value judgments. He uncritically and selectively cites literature—often not peer-reviewed— that supports his assertions, while ignoring or misinterpreting scientific evidence that does not. His consistently flawed use of scientific data is, in Peter Gleick’s words 'unexpected and disturbing in a statistician.'"
Grist magazine also asked eight leading experts to critique the book based on their particular areas of knowledge. Their critical analysis, titled "A Skeptical Look at the Skeptical Environmentalist," thoroughly discredits many of Lomborg's claims. [17]
Affiliations
The Heartland Institute — "Expert." [18]
Copenhagen Consensus Center — Director. [19]
Publications
Apart from the Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, Lomborg was also the editor of a 2010 book titled Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits.
According to a search of Google Scholar, Lomborg has not published any articles in the area of climate science, although he has published numerous articles on economics.
Resources
"Biography," www.lomborg.com. Accessed January, 2012.
"Lomborg says armada could halt global warming," The Copenhagen Post Online, August 7, 2009. Archived August 11, 2010.
Joe Romm. "Lomborg flip-flop: 'Climate change is undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today'," Climate Progress, August 31, 2010.
Juliette Jowit. "Bjørn Lomborg: $100bn a year needed to fight climate change," The Guardian, August 30, 2010.
Howard Friel. "Bjørn Lomborg's missing questions," The Guardian, August 30, 2010.
"Perspective on Climate Change" (PDF), Testimony prepared by Bjorn Lomborg for the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality joint hearing with the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the Committee on Science and Technology on Wednesday March 21, 2007.
Robert Collier. "Bjorn Lomborg film offers new convenient truth," San Francisco Chronicle, November 7, 2010.
Allanna Mitchell. "The Pollyanna of global warming," Globe and Mail, September 29, 2007.
Frank Ackerman. "Hot, It's Not: Reflections on Cool It!, by Bjorn Lomborg" (PDF), Tufts University. Accessed January, 2012.
John Quiggin. "Copenhagen: conned again," Crooked Timber, December 13, 2004.
"Copenhagen review," John Quiggin, January 21, 2005.
Jeffrey D. Sachs. "Seeking a global Solution" (PDF), Nature, Vol. 430 (August 12, 2004). Archived November 17, 2008.
Tom Burke. "This is neither scepticism nor science - just nonsense," The Guardian, October 23, 2004.
"THE DECISION OF THE DANISH MINISTRY OF RESEARCH ON DEC. 17TH, 2003, concerning A COMPLAINT LODGED BY BJØRN LOMBORG ON FEBRUARY 13TH, 2003," Republished by lomborg-errors.dk.
"Skepticism toward The Skeptical Environmentalist," Scientific American, April 15, 2002.
"The Skeptical Environmentalist," Union of Concerned Scientists.
"Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark: A skeptical look at The Skeptical Environmentalist," Grist Magazine, December 12, 2001. Archived December 25, 2001.
"Heartland Experts: Mr. Bjorn Lomborg," The Heartland Institute. Accessed January, 2012.
"Bjørn Lomborg: Director," Copenhagen consensus center. Accessed January, 2012.
"Bjorn Lomborg," SourceWatch Profile.
ExxonSecrets Factsheet: Bjorn Lomborg.
"Bjørn Lomborg," Wikipedia entry.
"The Skeptical Environmentalist," Wikipedia entry.
Stacy Feldman. "Why Isn't Anyone Laughing at Bjorn Lomborg?", Solve Climate, October 26, 2007. Archived January 5, 2009.
Tags:
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trashed earth hour
One person who won't be participating is Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish academic, author of the 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist, and seemingly tireless critic of what he perceives as empty green dogma. In an essay published in Slate this week, Lomborg delivers a broadside against Earth Hour, calling it "exactly what is wrong with today's feel-good environmentalism."
Lomborg's organization, the Copenhagen Consensus, is also releasing a video on Friday that aims to pick apart what he considers to be Earth Hour's errant messaging:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-zeller-jr/earth-hour-waste_b_2928892.html
http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/
Bjørn Lomborgis a well-known personality in the environmental debate. He is the author of several books which, due to their copious lists of notes and references, appear very technical and scientific and therefore trustworthy. Unfortunately, those reading his books or listening to his lectures or seeing his film are rarely aware that the facts and statements presented by Lomborg are often not reliable.
When experts in the fields covered by Lomborg check his texts, they most often find that the evidence has been distorted. Danish biologist Kåre Fog has systematically over many years checked Lomborg´s texts against his sources and references and against other scientific literature. His conclusion is that Lomborg´s texts are systematically manipulated to fit a certain agenda.
The web site Lomborg-errors has been established to document this claim. It gathers and publishes errors found in Bjørn Lomborg´s books, especially "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (2001) and Cool it! (2007).
In addition, it gives information on cases and activities related to Bjørn Lomborg, attempts to describe his methods, and points out cases where the claims about Lomborg´s dishonesty seem to hold true.
From January 2008, the page also comments on errors made by Al Gore, to allow a comparison where the two persons are judged by the same standards.
The web site is set up by, written by and hosted by Kåre Fog.
Main contents :
Additional content :
General issues
The Skeptical Environmentalist´:{ :(style="white-space:pre"):}: Al Gore´s An Inconvenient Truth´
The book `Cool it!´ Bjørn Lomborg versus Al Gore
The film Cool it!´:{ :(style="white-space:pre"):}: Howard Friel The Lomborg Deception´
`Smart Solutions to Climate Change´ Various special issues
Copenhagen Consensus Who is Kåre Fog?