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lomborg 2 copenhagen bak

PRIMARY 7 26 EZ, HEAT DEATH BS

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capt 916 html friel error? blog?

seralini hit

no merri

see shuffle, shill

wasn't he outed/busted?  behind the bastards?! yup see below

bak 211 21

html broadside

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tag:

https://www.dailykos.com/tags/lomborg}:

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aha just recycled john graham stat murder BS?

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LOMBORG ASKED EPSTEIN FOR $ CLIMATE ADAM

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mma omg

Fox blames climate policy for Europe’s climate-exacerbated heat deaths

Fox News and Fox Business figures applied that same framing to U.S. heat coverage to make fossil fuels look like the answer to deadly heat

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Evlondo Cooper

Published 07/09/26

As Europe reeled from a deadly heat wave, coverage on Fox News and Fox Business made air conditioning the story, claiming that climate policy had made it harder and more expensive for Europeans to survive the heat.

However, extreme heat is becoming more dangerous because of fossil fuel-driven warming, which makes climate policy more necessary. Fox networks instead used Europe’s deaths to argue against climate action, doubling down on the fossil fuel economy that is exacerbating dangerous climate impacts.

That argument is already being adapted to U.S. heat coverage. As American heat waves expose the strain on infrastructure built for a less dangerous climate, Fox figures blamed climate policy for making cooling more expensive, attacked climate mitigation and resilience planning, and defended more fossil fuel infrastructure. It is a convenient reversal: Fox casts fossil fuels as the answer to deadly heat, while eliding their role in making extreme heat worse.

Europe and the U.S. are both facing deadly heat made worse by climate change

Reuters reported at least 3,700 excess deaths during the June 20-28 heat wave that gripped France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. World Weather Attribution found that climate change made the European heat wave hotter and more likely, with a similar weather pattern now producing temperatures that would have been “virtually impossible” in June 1976 and still “highly unlikely at any time of the year.”

Europe’s lack of widespread air conditioning — which is shaped by its historically cooler climate, higher energy costs, and concerns about rising power demand from cooling — helps explain the death toll, but not in the way right-wing media suggest.

Much of Europe was built for a cooler climate baseline that no longer exists. As Mark O’Connell wrote in The Irish Times, “Our societies are not built, either figuratively or literally, for the world we now inhabit.” Europe is now the fastest-warming continent, warming more than twice as fast as the global average, and extreme heat is exposing the gap between the climate its systems were designed for and the climate people are now living in.

The American heat wave showed why the story cannot stop at air conditioning. Even though the U.S. has far more air conditioning than Europe, deadly heat is still outpacing the energy infrastructure that keeps people safe.

The New York Times reported that World Weather Attribution scientists also determined that the recent heat and humidity across the northeast U.S. and eastern Canada would have also been “virtually impossible” without human-caused warming, while Axios reported the event killed at least two dozen people, including 22 heat-related deaths in New Jersey.

Air conditioning saves lives during extreme heat, and more people will need it as heat waves become more frequent and deadly. However it does not solve the underlying danger. Instead, it moves part of the risk onto the power system, which is already being stressed by hotter summers, higher cooling demand, and climate-driven disruptions. During the recent heat wave, the Department of Energy issued an emergency order for PJM, the nation’s largest grid operator, as extreme heat pushed electricity demand toward possible shortfalls.

In addition, widespread air conditioning cannot protect people working outside, people without stable housing, people who cannot afford reliable indoor relief, or people who lose power when demand peaks. The scale of the risk is already visible in the American Southwest. In Maricopa County, Arizona, home to Phoenix, heat killed at least 579 people in 2023, the county’s deadliest year on record. As United Nations climate assessments link rising extreme heat to worsening health risks in the region, more of daily life is becoming harder to sustain safely without major adaptation.

Right-wing media coverage strips this context away. Global warming is making dangerous heat more frequent, but their answer is to attack climate policy while directing people back to the fossil fuel economy that has already made extreme heat worse. More cooling will be essential, but expanding air conditioning alone is not the solution. It will need to be paired with clean power, more energy efficiency, and heat adaptation to mitigate stress on fragile grids and reduce the burning of fossil fuels that are driving these harmful impacts.

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LOMBORG HILLSDALE

Thinking Smartly About Climate Change - Imprimis

V ERY LONG April/May 2023 | Volume 52, Issue 4/5

Thinking Smartly About Climate Change

Bjorn Lomborg

Copenhagen Consensus Center

wiki 3 26

Being "lukewarm" or "skeptical"

In 2012, Clive Hamilton published the essay "Climate change and the soothing message of luke-warmism".[86] He defined luke-warmists as "those who appear to accept the body of climate science but interpret it in a way that is least threatening: emphasising uncertainties, playing down dangers, and advocating a slow and cautious response. They are politically conservative and anxious about the threat to the social structure posed by the implications of climate science. Their 'pragmatic' approach is therefore alluring to political leaders looking for a justification for policy minimalism." He cited Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute, and also Roger A. Pielke Jr., Daniel Sarewitz, Steve Rayner, Mike Hulme and "the pre-eminent luke-warmist" Danish economist Bjørn Lomborg.[86]

Climate change skepticism, while in some cases professing to do research on climate change, has focused instead on influencing the opinion of the public, legislators and the media, in contrast to legitimate science.[30]: 28 

Pope Francis groups together four types of respondents rejecting climate change: those who "deny, conceal, gloss over or relativize the issue".[87]

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MMA

Corporate broadcast news covered this year’s COP30 global climate summit for 2 minutes — cable networks covered it for just over 3 hours

Fox News used COP30 to attack Gavin Newsom and undermine climate science

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Allison Fisher

Published 11/26/25

COP30 — which proceeded without an official U.S. delegation — opened on November 6 while the main sessions got underway on November 10 and concluded on November 21.

This year’s conference sought to address numerous issues, creating a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels and a landmark declaration on the threat of disinformation in addressing climate change and a newly proposed initiative to reduce deforestation.

As in previous years, the gathering was met with protests by Indigenous and civil society groups calling for stronger climate action. This year, although 2,500 Indigenous people gathered in Belém, Brazil, for the summit, only 14% (360 individuals) received credentials to attend negotiations. (No members were part of Brazil’s official delegation.) By contrast, fossil fuel lobbyists were overrepresented at the COP30 climate negotiations to the chagrin of climate organizers and Indigenous climate activists. In one demonstration on November 14, indigenous groups blocked the entrance to the conference and demanded to speak to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Reporting on the protests by TV news outlets was sparse, while the attendance of California Gov. Gavin Newsom was widely covered. CNN and MSNBC discussed how the U.S. is falling behind in the clean energy technology race while China gains ground. Additionally, 22% of segments mentioned Bill Gates’ controversial climate memo to world leaders. Meanwhile, Fox News coverage attacked Newsom and undermined climate science.

Two brief headline reports, one from ABC and one from CBS, focused on the protests at the conference. Much of the broadcast coverage focused on a fire that broke out in one of the convention halls on November 20 — though none of the coverage of the fire offered more details about the climate conference.

:{Video

Citation

From the November 21, 2025, edition of NBC's Today

CNN’s coverage of COP30 featured several experts, including Christiana Figueres, a Costa Rican diplomat who was the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change during the 2015 Paris climate accord negotiations; Margaret Barry, a climate litigation fellow at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University; Kim Cobb, climate scientist and director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society; as well as former vice president and climate advocate Al Gore.

A key narrative through CNN’s coverage was the state of the clean energy transition and China’s role in it.

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on November 8, Figueres explained some of the progress since the landmark Paris agreement in 2015: “Ten years ago, one in every hundred vehicles that were being sold was electric. Now, we have one in five. We have two times as much investment into renewable energy as we do into fossil fuels. Solar has been deployed 15 times faster than we ever expected 10 years ago, and on and on and on. There are many proof points that there is a new economy rising.”

Amanpour also interviewed Al Gore, who pointed out the cost of the U.S. ceding the clean energy economy to others.

“China is now exporting to other countries more green technology like electric vehicles and windmills and solar,” Gore said. “The value of their green tech exports now far exceeds the exports from the United States to the rest of the world. … We’re seeing this transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy and electric vehicles and batteries and these exciting new technologies that are pollution-free, they create three times as many jobs per dollar spent compared to the old dirty fossil fuels, and that’s where the economic future is.”

Climate scientist Kim Cobb made a similar argument on CNN Newsroom With Fredricka Whitfield*:

“China, of course, [is] transitioning its economy very, very quickly to clean energy sources. About 84% of the demand last year in China for electricity was met by clean energy sources. They are owning EVs, batteries, and solar cells to the tune of 78% of global manufacturing taking place in China for a $2 trillion industry. So right now what we’re looking at is China taking a very bold leadership role and charting its clean energy future. The U.S., in the meantime, swimming very much upstream against the global currents of deployed renewables, which are cheaper than fossil fuels right now.”

While MSNBC covered the climate conference for roughly 13 minutes, its coverage included similar narratives about clean energy. On his November 16 show, host Ali Velshi noted: “Now, in America's absence, China is stepping up as a global leader in climate science. The Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air reported last week that China's carbon emissions have been flat or falling for 18 months straight. Part of that is attributable to a record amount of renewable energy expansion in China. In 2024, the country installed 333 gigawatts of solar power capacity — that's more than the rest of the world combined.”

Video Citation}:

From the November 12, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

Discussing COP30 earlier in the same segment, Greg Gutfeld declared that the “climate agenda has been fully discredited” and that “the climate computer models have been shown to be corrupt.” He went on to falsely claim, “They are wrong on predicting everything from the temperature increases to the snow or ice melting.”

Laura Ingraham announced that scientists’ warnings on climate change have been “total scams.”

The network also hosted its usual round-up of climate contrarians and skeptics including Marc Morano, Bjorn Lomborg, Michael Shellenberger, and Victor Davis Hanson, and Fox coverage continued to cite the controversial October 28 climate memo from Bill Gates to global leaders ahead of COP30 to suggest that climate change is no longer considered a crisis requiring immediate action.

Video{Citation

From the November 15, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Journal Editorial Report

“I think what Bill Gates is really saying is something reasonable,” Lomborg agreed. “Talk about how you think about climate — he’s saying sure, it’s a problem, but it’s not the end of the world.”

In reality, 2025 is set to be the “second or third warmest year on record,” the World Meteorological Organization reports. The warmest year overall remains 2024, which was likely “the first calendar year with a global mean temperature of more than 1.5°C above the 1850-1900 average.”

REF OLD

As the window for meaningful climate action closes, climate change skeptic Bjorn Lomborg tells right-wing media everything’s going to be all right

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Evlondo Cooper

Research contributions from Ted MacDonald

Published 11/10/21 12:50 PM EST

Around the early days of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) on November 1, climate change contrarian Bjorn Lomborg was near ubiquitous in right-wing media. He appeared on Fox News and Fox Business a combined seven times, published an opinion piece in the New York Post, and wrote a series of op-eds in the Wall Street Journal since September. Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen even published an opinion piece on November 2 that drew heavily on Lomborg’s writings and statements.

This campaign fits a familiar pattern of right-wing and even mainstream news outlets promoting Lomborg to downplay the seriousness of climate change during a time when the world is focused on the need for climate action. Lomborg’s true value for the polluter industry and its fellow travelers in right-wing media is that he provides a thin veneer of seriousness and sincerity about climate change on one hand, while advocating climate inaction on the other. This cynical stance mirrors that taken by the fossil fuel industry, which has shifted tactics away from outright denial toward subtler forms of climate delay.

Lomborg has zero credibility on climate change

Lomborg’s prominent appearances to dismiss action on climate change rest less on his repeatedly debunked talking points and more on the fact that his narrative serves the interest of the powerful polluter lobby and its allies in right-wing media. His three main points -- climate change isn't that serious, the way to solve climate change is through technological innovation, and climate action as it’s currently conceived is too expensive -- all have one thing in common: They give license to industry and policymakers to kick the can down the road on fighting climate change.

Climate change is a serious threat to global humanity. Each degree of additional warming poses increasing risks for humanity in terms of health, economic well-being, and social cohesion. Staving off the worst consequences requires rapid decarbonization and transition to renewable energy sources; even with difficult tradeoffs, the technology to decarbonize by 2035 currently exists. And considering the cost of inaction far outweighs the cost of action, it is clear that the time to act is now.

Lomborg’s history of promoting soft climate denial in right-wing media

Lomborg is a long-time climate contrarian with connections to the fossil fuel-backed Koch network via his organization, the Copenhagen Consensus Center. As Media Matters noted in 2019:

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.

With this backing, Lomborg became a media darling, given ample space in both mainstream and right-wing news outlets to promote his brand of climate skepticism. For example, to promote the release of his book last July, Lomborg was able to publish op-eds in the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, while getting favorable profiles in The Epoch Times and Climate Depot. He was also interviewed by fellowclimate misinformer Dennis Prager. No climate-denier press run would be complete without stops on Fox. During this same period, Lomborg appeared on Fox Business’ *Varney & Co.* and Making Money with Charles Payne.

When he isn’t promoting a book, Lomborg often receives airtime and print coverage to downplay the seriousness of climate change when an important climate story makes headlines. At the beginning of the year, after President Joe Biden announced the United States’ reentry into the Paris climate accord, Lomborg was invited on Fox & Friends and asserted that rejoining the Paris agreement would “cost a fortune and cut almost nothing, so basically achieve almost nothing to fix climate change,” before downplaying both the severity of future climate impacts and the record-breaking 2020 hurricane season. He appeared on Fox News again in February to falsely blame the Texas blackouts on renewable energy.

More recently, Lomborg published an op-ed in the New York Post in August downplaying the urgency of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report and accused the media of “hyperventilating” about its finding that climate change is a “code red for humanity.” Ahead of COP26, Lomborg once again made the rounds on Fox News and Fox Business to claim climate change isn’t driving wildfires, even as new research finds a direct connection, and to downplay the need for global climate action.

Why Lomborg’s climate skepticism is so valuable to the polluter industry and its right-wing media allies

Even though Lomborg is “spectacularly wrong” about nearly everything, he’s the perfect poster child for an industry that knowingly drove climate change, engaged in a campaign to hide this fact, and is currently funding sophisticated greenwashing campaigns to fool the public about its meager efforts to mitigate a crisis it is primarily responsible for.

His faux-serious dismissal of the climate crisis allows companies such as News Corp. and Fox News Media, for example, to pretend to be serious about climate change, via a net-zero campaign and weather app, while their core news media property continues coverage that denies or mocks the reality of climate change. As long as climate deniers and skeptics such as Lomborg are given space to promote soft climate denial and climate inaction, one should not take conservative news outlets’ public statements about their supposed commitment to cover climate change seriously.

Lomborg’s siren song would lull us into a sense of complacency -- especially during pivotal moments such as COP26, which represents one of the few remaining chances to advance a framework that could stave off the worst climate consequences. And that's precisely why the polluter lobby and its right-wing media allies are singing his tune.

//

  1. ### The fantastic hypocrisy behind News Corp.’s net-zero editorial campaign

10/20/21 10:37 AM EDT

  1. ### Fox Misidentifies Bjorn Lomborg As A Scientist

07/12/11 12:06 PM EDT

  1. ### Who is Bjorn Lomborg? Wash. Post doesn't really tell

03/21/0

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Murdoch media find a scapegoat for New Jersey’s high electric rates

As data centers demand enormous energy outputs and Garden State grid operators reportedly slow-walk new projects, right-wing media take shots at renewable energy

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Published 08/27/25

The price of electricity has been on the rise across the country. Between 2021 and 2024, the average monthly residential electricity bill in America went up by $22 per month. Now, energy prices are rising twice as fast as inflation and are expected to increase further.

Several factors, including increased demand for electricity to power new data centers and New Jersey grid operator PJM’s reported failure to quickly connect renewable projects to the grid, are contributing to the rate hikes in New Jersey.

As electricity bills become a prominent concern in New Jersey and across the country, Energy Secretary Chris Wright complained to Politico, “We’re going to get blamed.” Indeed, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill is set to increase energy costs “by around $165 per household per year in 2030, and by more than $280 in 2035 — a jump of over 13% compared to current costs.” Instead of acknowledging that, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post are scrambling to find a way to blame rate hikes on now-imperiled renewable energy projects — projects that tech companies fought to keep as they search for ways to make their data centers viable.

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116 KIA

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September 30, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Five

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'm going to pay some credit to the media. Because I think this is the first -- and I don't say this is a bright side to a disaster because a disaster is horrible. But from somebody who looks at the media, this is really the first time that the climate change narrative has fizzled, you know? It used to be instantaneously, a horrible thing would happen and everybody would blame it on man-made climate change.

And I think it goes down to people like Bjorn Lomborg, you know? These are people that have tirelessly pointed out the facts. You know this is an interesting fact. The U.S. population has risen fourfold since 1940, but it has risen fiftyfold in coastal areas. So, a hurricane that might have hit in 1940 would hit 800,000 homes, now it's 11 million. So when you adjust for wealth and population, the hurricane damage has not increased over the past 100 years. And the total hurricane energy has actually decreased since 1980. So it's -- at least there's some progress in the way we report these things. But politically, we will never change.

DANA PERINO (CO-HOST): And she didn't mention it either, Kamala Harris in her statement.

GUTFELD: No, she didn't. And I think it's because -- I think we have turned a corner in the climate change narrative because so many people have wised up on the climate models being inaccurate. And reading and understanding the research and also looking now towards how we demonize our mainstream energy sources and now with nuclear coming along.

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Texas and 15 states sue Biden admin over climate agenda targeting gas projects | Fox News

fox no lnx

Texas and 15 states sue Biden admin over climate agenda targeting gas projects

'I will not stand by while Biden attacks Texas,' Attorney General Ken Paxton says

Thomas Catenacci By Thomas Catenacci Fox News

Published March 22, 2024

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Biden's halting of liquified natural gas projects is 'utter nonsense': Marc Morano

Climatedepot.com Executive Director Marc Morano discusses the impact on American energy from the Biden administration's halt of liquified natural gas projects and reacts to Davos saying that drinking coffee causes climate change.

A coalition of 16 Republican states, led by Texas and Louisiana, filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration, challenging its recent climate action pausing proposed energy projects.

The multistate coalition filed its complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, listing President Biden, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and the Department of Energy (DOE) among the defendants in the case. According to the complaint, the DOE's move earlier this year pausing major liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal projects violated long-standing federal energy laws.

"Biden’s unilateral decree disregards statutory mandates, flouts the legal process, upends the oil and gas industry, disrupts the Texas economy, and subverts our constitutional structure," said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

"The ban will drive billions of dollars in investment away from Texas, hinder our ability to maximize revenue for public schools, force Texas producers to flare excess natural gas instead of taking it to market, and annihilate critical jobs," he continued. "I will not stand by while Biden attacks Texas."

GOP LEADERS CONFRONT BIDEN’S NEW CLIMATE CZAR ON KEY SECURITY RISKS LURKING IN GREEN AGENDAPrice Futures Group senior analyst Phil Flynn and Copenhagen Consensus Center President Bjorn Lomborg on the concerns with bans on natural gas for costs and reliability.

Ken Paxton in front of Supreme Court

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 1, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

According to Paxton, the LNG export moratorium is unconstitutional, ignores the 1938 Natural Gas Act’s "presumption in favor of exports" and discards decades of DOE energy policy.

In arguing the alleged unconstitutionality of the policy, the states' complaint notes Article I of the Constitution vests Congress with "[a]ll legislative Powers," including the power "[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations." Therefore, since blocking LNG exports can be considered a regulation of commerce, the DOE violated the Constitution, according to the lawsuit.

TIKTOK ACTIVIST SAYS HE ADVISED WHITE HOUSE ON BIDEN'S NEW NATURAL GAS MORATORIUM

"The LNG Export Ban implicates an issue of profound national importance. LNG exports account for billions of dollars to the economy and thousands of jobs," the complaint states. "They also raise serious questions of national security. And this is an issue that has been the subject of proposed legislation and public attention in and outside of Congress."

President Biden ordered pending natural gas export projects to be halted in a stunning move in January. (Getty Images)

The complaint accuses DOE of violating the Administrative Procedure Act which governs the procedures of administrative law. The states highlight that DOE failed to host any public comment period before finalizing its LNG policy without "good cause to forego the notice and comment requirement."

Additionally, the states argue the DOE failed to properly consider the Natural Gas Act and its provision that states the agency issue an export license before hearing from the public.

DOZENS OF FORMER TOP FEDERAL OFFICIALS CALL ON CONGRESS TO STRIKE DOWN BIDEN'S NATURAL GAS CRACKDOWN

"The Biden administration’s illegal attacks on American energy jeopardizes the livelihoods of thousands of hard-working Louisiana men and women, millions of dollars in tax revenue, and billions of dollars in infrastructure," said Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill.

"LNG continues to have an enormous positive economic impact for our state — especially on our hard-hit coastal communities, which continue to recover from a recent series of devastating hurricanes. Jobs like these grow the economy, reduce crime, and help address the out-migration problem," she continued. "The people of Louisiana are proud to power this nation. I’m ready to fight for them."

An LNG tanker is pictured at the Elbehafen port in Brunsbuettel, Germany. American LNG has been critical in helping Germany and other European nations wean off Russian gas. (Bodo Marks/picture alliance via Getty Images)

In a surprise move in January, Biden ordered the DOE to pause pending permits for LNG export facilities while federal officials conduct a rigorous environmental review assessing the projects' carbon emissions, which could take more than a year to complete. The action was lauded by climate activists who have loudly called for such a move, which they said would help combat global warming.

However, the move was blasted by industry groups, former federal officials and bipartisan lawmakers, who noted energy exports are vital for aiding allies in Europe and Asia. In the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine two years ago, U.S. LNG largely filled the void left by Russian natural gas as U.S. allies sought to wean off Russian exports and punish the nation's economy, a plan Biden endorsed at the time.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Opponents also argued that LNG exports bolster domestic energy production and boost the U.S. economy. Fossil fuel industry groups recently cited research indicating that LNG exports could add as much as $73 billion to the U.S. economy by 2040, create 453,000 American jobs and increase U.S. purchasing power by $30 billion.

Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.

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Right-wing media coverage of this year’s COP28 global climate summit included mocking, downplaying, and denying the reality that the climate crisis is increasingly claiming lives through extreme weather and climate-fueled disease — tactics right-wing media figures have deployed for at least the past three years.

On December 4, Hillary Clintonparticipated in a COP28 panel focused on the key role women play in building a climate-resilient world. During her remarks, Clinton referenced a recent report on deaths related to extreme heat:

“We're seeing and beginning to pay attention and to count and record the deaths that are related to climate, and by far the biggest killer is extreme heat. I mean, even in Europe last summer, which has the ability to count and figure out what happened, they recorded 61,000 deaths because of the heat in Europe. We don't have that kind of number yet from Africa, Asia, Latin America, but we know and estimate that we probably could measure about 500,000 deaths, and the majority of those are women and girls, and particularly pregnant women.”

Right-wing media reacted to her remarks by trying to minimize the impact of our overheated planet, pushing their go-to red herring argument that cold kills more than heat, and suggesting that a warmer planet actually saves lives.

Right-wing media deny, downplay, and mock extreme heat-related deaths

Right-wing media’s history of dismissing climate-related deaths

Since at least the summer of 2021, right-wing media figures have been relying on the red herring argument that cold kills more than heat and that somehow global warming saves lives. The claim is most notably associated with climate skeptic and right-wing media darling Bjor[Dennis Pragern Lomborg](https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/window-meaningful-climate-action-closes-climate-change-skeptic-bjorn-lomborg-tells-right), who has published several op-eds making this argument including in USA Today, a piece that was applauded by podcaster and PragerU founder .

In another 2021 op-ed in the New York Post, Lomborg claimed that global warming saves 166,000 lives each year. The op-ed was intended to downplay the latest warning on the climate crisis from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Using a study published by the Lancet which found that about half a million people die from heat per year, but 4.5 million people die from cold, Lomborg claimed:

As temperatures have increased over the past two decades, that has caused an extra 116,000 heat deaths each year. This, of course, fits the narrative and is what we have heard over and over again. But it turns out that because global warming has also reduced cold waves, we now see 283,000 fewer cold deaths.

You don’t hear this, but so far climate change saves 166,000 lives each year.

Lomborg later appeared on Fox News’ The Journal Editorial Report to discuss the IPCC findings and push the argument that cold kills more than heat.

The Wall Street Journal published a similar op-ed by Lomborg on September 16, 2021, titled “Climate Change Saves More Lives Than You’d Think,” in which he again misleadingly claimed that “global warming now prevents more than 166,000 temperature-related fatalities annually.”

Climate Feedback, a collection of climate scientists who review dubious climate claims in various media outlets, debunked his New York Post piece, writing that “Lomborg’s claims are based on a misinterpretation of a scientific study and wrong interpretation of data.” The piece cited Aaron Bernstein of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, who wrote:

The issue with Lomborg’s argument is that he is using cherry-picked data that may be compelling in isolation, but belies a firm grasp of the science, which makes clear that unmitigated climate change is a disaster for human health and welfare, even if we may, in the near term, see reductions in cold deaths.

A recent article in Forbes also pushed back on the the argument that a warming world is better for human life:

However, we shouldn’t read into this that global warming is a good thing. Climate change has long-term impacts on sea levels, animal and plant life, and agriculture, each of which can have lasting deleterious effects on human health and wellbeing. Also, heat exposure deaths disproportionately impact impoverished regions of the world, including poor areas of the U.S. which implies that over time they’re much more affected by temperature-related deaths.

These claims have persisted in right-wing media, however, reemerging in the summer of 2022, when destructive wildfires and deadly heat were concurrently affecting part of the United States, and again this past summer as record heat waves impacted the U.S., Europe, and parts of Asia.

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Abundant Energy Makes The World Better | Bjorn Lomborg

BETTER STORY IF WE CAN GET RO REALITY 1ST

UNited Nations • Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.

Abundant Energy Makes The World Better | Bjorn Lomborg

Alliance for Responsible Citizenship jordAN PETERSON

https://www.youtube.com/@arc_conference)

FIRES DECLINE to 2%

[### Wildfires

Our World in Data

https://ourworldindata.org › wildfires](https://ourworldindata.org/wildfires)

Apr 2, 2024 — Wildfires globally add around 5 to 8 billion tonnes of CO2 each year. For context, globally, we emit around 37 billion tonnes of CO2 from fossil ...

Missing: surface ‎| Show results with: surface

[### The Latest Data Confirms: Forest Fires Are Getting Worse

World Resources Institute

https://www.wri.org › insights › global-trends-forest-fires](https://www.wri.org/insights/global-trends-forest-fires)

Aug 13, 2024 — New data reveals that forest fires are becoming more widespread, burning nearly twice as much tree cover today as they did 20 years ago.

Missing: surface ‎| Show results with: surface

[### Climate Change Indicators: Wildfires | US EPA

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (.gov)

https://www.epa.gov › climate-indicators › climate-chan...](https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-wildfires)

Jul 23, 2024 — Of the total area burned each year from 1984 to 2021, the proportion of burned land suffering severe damage has ranged from 5 to 22 percent ( ...

Missing: surface ‎| Show results with: surface

[### Wildfire Statistics FAS Project on Government Secrecy

https://sgp.fas.org › crs › misc](https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf)

PDF

Jun 1, 2023 — From 2013 to 2022, there were an average of 61,410 wildfires annually and an average of 7.2 million acres impacted annually.

[### 2023: A year of intense global wildfire activity

Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service

http://atmosphere.copernicus.eu › 2023-year-intense-gl...](http://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/2023-year-intense-global-wildfire-activity)

Dec 12, 2023 — According to CAMS estimates, global wildfires generated approximately 2,170 megatonnes of carbon emissions in 2023, of which the Canadian ...

cold kills 10x in EU Biden extrme heat

see arc for trans

==

The game plan for Best Things Firstis similar to the strategy used in How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place (2006, Bjorn Lomborg, editor, New York: Cambridge University Press)—bring together a group of academic experts to discuss and discover the most cost-effective ways to solve the world’s problems.

Unfortunately, despite the admonitions of the earlier book, “across the world, most policy conversations continue to pretend that it’s possible to say yes to everything” (p. xi). The earlier book found sixteen investments worthy of funding given a budget constraint of $75 billion. This time Lomborg recommends only projects that will yield an estimated benefit-to-cost ratio of fifteen—in other words, only projects with a massive payoff in comparison to costs. Sadly, many of the problems identified in How to Spend $75 Billionhaven’t gone away and appear again in Best Things First.These include tackling malnutrition, malaria, childhood immunization, and tuberculosis in the poorest countries.

Lomborg argues that the momentum for solving these problems has stalled. He contends that the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals spurred considerable progress between 2000 and 2015, but their successor, the Sustainable Development Goals (the SDGs in the book’s title), are unfocused and much too broad, causing the progress to lag. Best Things Firstaims to refocus attention on the most solvable problems proposing to spend $35 billion per year to save 4.2 million lives annually and “make the poorer half of the world more than one trillion dollars better off each and every year” (p. 3). Thirty-five billion dollars is a pretty modest amount as Lomborg sees it. After all, globally “we devote more than $1.1 trillion to low-carbon energy, $2.1 trillion to military expenditures, and $5 trillion to education” each year (p. 35), as well as $147 billion to pet food, $112 billion to cosmetics.

Who should spend this money? It’s not entirely clear. “We ought to put these policies into action. And when I say ‘we,’ I mean all people of good will,” says Lomborg. Implicitly, as the chapters suggest, he means mostly international donors—both governments and philanthropic organizations—with a role for governments of poorer countries, as well. But the volume’s findings might prompt individual donors to open their checkbooks too. In any case, the book seems mainly aimed at global leaders and policy makers—and it clearly has a “top down” and (in some cases) paternalistic flavor.

Each of the twelve most efficient solutions identified by the experts advising Lomborg’s think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus Center, is the subject of a chapter in Best Things First.And each chapter is based on a paper written by a team of academics for a special issue of the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis.The overall plan is anchored by policies designed to get vital resources to the poorest, most vulnerable populations—funding tuberculosis treatment, a campaign to reduce malaria, health care treatments and nutritional supplements to newborn babies and their mothers, childhood immunization, and “a second green revolution” to grow more and cheaper food in the poorest countries. (Sadly, the chapter on helping newborns and their mothers has an anti-natalist component.)

However, other policies are more procedural. These include providing the most ill-equipped teachers with semi-scripted lesson plans and training in how to use them, as has recently been adopted in Kenya; changing laws to boost taxes on cigarettes and reduce the amount of salt in processed foods; improving land tenure security using satellite mapping to clearly and inexpensively identify property boundaries, as has recently been implemented in Rwanda; allowing more immigration to richer countries—especially by highly skilled workers, including doctors; and—a policy that will especially appeal to economists—promoting international trade by reducing tariffs and other trade barriers.

Unfortunately, the approach of calculating the benefit-to-cost ratio that drives the entire project isn’t always applicable to some of the ideas on this second list. Randomized control trials can be helpful for estimating the benefits and costs of specific, narrow projects—such as providing nutritional supplements to newborns—but modelling the effects of reducing trade barriers or increasing immigration is much more complicated. Lomborg implicitly acknowledges this when he pulls back from the idea of allowing unlimited international migration. He titles one section of the chapter “Doubling global GDP and vanquishing most inequality—A world with unlimited migration,” but then recognizes that “there seems to be no way that unrestricted migration could plausibly take place without enormous social upheaval” (p. 222)—and estimating a price tag for such upheaval would be a meaningless exercise. Massive international immigration may well double the size of the economic pie but eating the pie in one sitting could cause severe indigestion.

The most unexpected (to me) and fruitful of the twelve proposals is one that aims to fix dysfunctional government rather than giving it more power and more responsibilities. This chapter, based on a paper by Erica Bosio, Gavin Hayman, and Nancy Dubosse, proposes making government procurement of goods and services visible and transparent by moving the whole process online, known as e-procurement. Experiments with e-procurement have yielded salutary effects. In practice, moving procurement away from the old-fashioned system of posting procurement tenders in obscure paper-based journals to an easy-to-access online portal increases competition, doubling the number of bidders in South Korea and increasing the number from 130 to 4800 in India’s Karnataka State. The increase especially comes from smaller firms. E-procurement reduces procurement expenses, improves quality, and cuts purchasing prices paid by the government around 7 percent on average, according to the evidence in this interesting chapter. With access to the internet now very widespread in poorer countries, the main force blocking the move to e-procurement is the political power of incumbent firms currently supplying governments. Lomborg reports that when he presented these findings to Bangladesh’s Finance Minister, he enthusiastically adopted the idea, as the savings freed up resources for higher priority needs.

Although the big picture of Best Things Firstseems sensible—target funds where they will have the biggest payoff and adopt win-win policies like e-procurement—some of the specifics seem dubious. At times, the idea of people taking care of themselves because it’s their duty and in their self-interest seems foreign to Lomborg. In discussing how to reduce TB, Lomborg says “it’s difficult to get diagnosed people to complete their treatment. Part of this is simply that you must take medicine every day for four to six months for it to work properly. That is a big ask. Many people have trouble taking pills consistently for a week or two. Doing so conscientiously for many months is arduous” (p. 50). He suggests that they should be bribed to do what’s in their own self-interest. In the chapter on malaria, Lomborg advocates donating more funding for mosquito nets, which are shockingly inexpensive—only $4.50 for a net that lasts three years. Who couldn’t afford this on his or her own even in the poorest country? Not too many people. More important, Lomborg doesn’t even mention the central problem with mosquito nets. They are already available for free in many poor countries but aren’t always widely used because of hidden costs that Best Things Firstignores (despite saying that it will try to include all costs). The problem is that using the nets can be cumbersome.

Among other design flaws, their tight mesh blocks ventilation, a serious problem in the hot, humid places where malaria roosts. Minor discomfort might be tolerable in rural African communities desperate for anti-malarial prevention. But, as medical anthropologists have consistently found, because malaria is so common in much of sub-Saharan Africa, and because the overwhelming majority of cases go away on their own, most rural Africans consider malaria a minor ailment, the way that Westerners might think of the cold or flu (Sonia Shah, 2010, “In Africa, Anti-malaria Mosquito Nets Go Unused by Recipients,” Los Angeles Times,May 2).

Said a female student: “In the middle of the night, when I have to [go to the bathroom], I have to think hard about it. Should I wait until morning or should I go through the stress of getting out of my net?” Some participants spoke of how items they need to access— ... Bibles, eyeglasses, water, phones—are often outside of the net when they are inside. Others spoke of feelings of claustrophobia since most nets are a standard size and made for smaller beds (Stephanie Desmon, 2019, “Why Don’t We Ask People What They Want?,” Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs, June 27).

Life is a series of tradeoffs, and one would presume that these individuals understand the tradeoffs better than an international donor. Many people report that these cheap $4.50 nets aren’t what they want. They want nets that look better and work better. The malaria eradication benefit-to-cost ratio seems to be lower than estimated in Best Things Firstbecause the costs are higher than it reports.

However, while the volume sometimes expresses an air of omniscience about the benefits of its proposals, it closes by explaining that “it would be folly to believe that these complicated models, often contingent on far-off futures and significant changes in policy, give the absolutely correct answer.... There is no way all costs and all benefits have been correctly incorporated.... They are our best estimates, not truths” (p. 269). With this caution in mind, Best Things Firstis a useful set of ideas and should be widely read.

Robert M. Whaples

Wake Forest University

===

hoover fellow 300 items

forbes heart med cheap 3.5B$ save lots of lives

commentary | Articles

Articles

Commentary: Green Innovation Is Key To Addressing Climate Change

At the turn of the 21st century, in the famously bold words of Francis Fukuyama, history had come to an end. There was relative peace and trust among major powers, significant economic growth, and rapid strides against poverty. It seemed like most major issues had been resolved.

September 13, 2024

by Bjorn Lomborg via My Journal Courier

Read More

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commentary | Articles

Articles

The Transition To Green Energy That Wasn't

Despite much hype, the much-vaunted green energy transition away from fossil fuels isn't happening. Achieving a meaningful shift with current policies turns out to be unaffordably costly. We need to drastically change policy direction.

September 6, 2024

by Bjorn Lomborg via The Bangkok Post

Read More

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commentary | Articles

Articles

U.N. Casts Little Light On Heat subscription

[Subscription Required] The international body’s latest climate-change alarms are more about demagoguery than data.

August 29, 2024

by Bjorn Lomborg via The Wall Street Journal

Read More

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commentary | Articles

Articles

Tackling The World’s Biggest Killer Is Surprisingly Cheap

The world’s biggest killer is one that seldom creates many headlines. The public conversation focuses far more on disasters like air plane crashes or climate change weather events, although these kill thousands of times fewer people.

August 22, 2024

by Bjorn Lomborg via Forbes

bes heart med cheap 3.5B$ save lots of lives

Image

commentary | Articles

Articles

We Are Wasting $2 Trillion A Year Chasing ‘Green’ Fantasies

Despite much hype, the much-vaunted green energy transition away from fossil fuels isn’t happening.

August 11, 2024

by Bjorn Lomborg via New York Post MURDOCH

Read More

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commentary | Articles

Articles

Numbers Don’t Lie, Except When...

President Biden is “wrong by a factor of 25,” wrote Bjorn Lomborg, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, in the Wall Street Journal. “While extreme heat kills nearly 6,000 Americans each year, cold kills 152,000, of which 12,000 die from extreme cold.”

August 3, 2024

quoting Bjorn Lomborg via The Washington Times

Read More

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commentary | Articles

Articles

We Need A Less Costly Way To Fight Climate Change

Focus on developing energy technologies that are better and cheaper than hydrocarbons so people will want to switch voluntarily.

July 23, 2024

by Bjorn Lomborg via Financial Post

Read More

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commentary | Articles

Articles

West Hurting Itself By Pursuing ‘Net Zero’ While Russia And China Increase Fossil Fuels

Starting in the 1990s, at the end of the Cold War, climate change became a fixation for rich-country politicians and elites.

July 10, 2024

by Bjorn Lomborg via New York Times nope post

Read More

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commentary | Videos

Videos

Bjorn Lomborg: Spouting Nonsense Over Climate Change

Hoover Institution fellow Bjorn Lomborg discusses how climate change panic costs us trillions, hurts the poor and fails to fix the planet. And, Lomborg talks about how data-driven insights could be used to debunk misconceptions about climate change.

July 9, 2024

interview with Bjorn Lomborg via The Julia Hartley-Brewer Show on Talk

GGL 9 24

...Books

The Skeptical Environmentalist

1998

False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet

2020

Best Things First: The 12 Most Efficient Solutions for the World's Poorest and Our Global SDG Promises

2023

Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming

2007

How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place

2013

Global Crises, Global Solutions

2004

Rajasthan Priorities

2013

Ghana Priorities: Analysing Costs and Benefits

2021

Bangladesh Priorities: Ranking the Smartest Solutions by Their Benefits and Costs

2017

See more

Latest posts from Bjørn Lomborg

BjornLomborg

X (Twitter)

New study: Rich elite wants to tax CO₂ 6x more than median person in world

Rich people have few immediate problems so they can afford to worry a lot about the far-off future — like climate change. (Rich people are patient)

Most of the poorer world worries a lot more about…

5 hours ago

Bjorn Lomborg

The Australian

Fractured world now shuns costly mirage of net zero

Starting in the 1990s, climate change has become a fixation for rich-country politicians and elites. It emerged as the world had just seen...

.7 hours ago

BJORN LOMBORG

Independent Newspaper Nigeria

‘Green Energy Transition’ Is Not Actually Happening Despite Subsidies Of Almost $2trn Each Year

BJORN LOMBORG. Despite much hype, the much-vaunted green energy transition away from fossil fuels isn't happening.

.12 hours ago

Bjorn Lomborg

Jacksonville Journal-Courier

Commentary: Green innovation is key to addressing climate change — Bjorn Lomborg

The economic rationale for aggressive climate action has always been flawed — and this is now glaringly apparent.

.17 hours ago

Bjorn Lomborg

Arab News

Economics of violence

What is the biggest source of violence in our world? With the brutal conflicts in Syria, Ukraine, and elsewhere constantly in the news, many people would...

.2 days ago

BjornLomborg

X (Twitter)

EU climate policy has enormous costs

Industry electricity prices have increased 70% in real terms since 2000

EU industries now pay 2.7x the electricity price in the US (and 1.9x in China)

EU households now pay 2x US electricity price (and 3.3x China)

www.iea.org/data-and-st…

2 days ago

BjornLomborg

X (Twitter)

Every problem is seen as a climate problem, and every solution is cutting CO₂.

In reality, most problems are much better solved by simple & effective solutions first.

We need a better, smarter climate conversation.

www.amazon.com/dp/15416… (free first 25 pages)

2 days ago

Bjørn Lomborg

Facebook

Every problem is seen as a climate problem, and every solution is cutting CO₂. In reality, most problems are much better solved by simple & effective solutions first. We need a better, smarter climate conversation. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541647475 (free first 25 pages)

2 days ago

Bjorn Lomborg

Graphic Online

Geopolitical dimensions of climate policy

Starting in the 1990s, climate change has become a fixation for rich country politicians and elites.

.2 days ago

Bjorn Lomborg

Graphic Online

Geopolitical dimensions of climate policy

Starting in the 1990s, climate change has become a fixation for rich country politicians and elites.

.2 days ago

Feedback

Videos

19:43

Abundant Energy Makes The World Better | Bjorn Lomborg

YouTube · Alliance for Responsible Citizenship

Jul 17, 2024

10 key moments in this video

From

01:15

Wildfire

From

01:34

Global fire, burned area 1900-2100

From

04:47

Scare on extreme heat

From

07:03

Deaths from Climate, 1920-2023

From

10:07

Average person 4.5x as rich

From

10:21

Because of climate, average person 4.4x as rich

From

11:53

UK Energy Prices 1820-2024

From

13:17

Global share of renewable energy, 1800-2050

From

16:21

Net-Zero 2050: Benefits

From

17:48

Climate policies: what works - and what doesn't

54:12

Bjorn Lomborg - A Data-Driven Approach to Global Issues

YouTube · World of DaaS with Auren Hoffman

3 days ago

10 key moments in this video

14:41

The Climate Change Panic: Myths and Costs | Bjorn Lomborg

YouTube · Hillsdale College

Nov 23, 2023

4 key moments in this video

View all

Publications

The skeptical environmentalist: measuring the real state of the world

B Lomborg

Cambridge University Press Cambridge

2003

Nucleus and shield: the evolution of social structure in the iterated prisoner's dilemma

B Lomborg

American Sociological Review

1996

O ambientalista cético

B Lomborg, NP GLEDITSCH

Rio de Janeiro: Campus

2002

Welfare in the 21st century: Increasing development, reducing inequality, the impact of climate change, and the cost …

B Lomborg

Technological Forecasting and Social Change

2020

See more on

Google Scholar

About Bjorn Lomborg

Bjorn Lomborg

https://lomborg.com › about

lomborg from lomborg.com

Bjorn Lomborg researches the smartest ways to do good. With his think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus, he has worked with hundreds of the world's top economists ...

Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) ...

X · BjornLomborg

248.8K+ followers

lomborg from twitter.com

Author of 'Best Things First', 'False Alarm', and 'Skeptical Environmentalist', President Copenhagen Consensus: smart solutions through economic prioritization.

False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us ...

Amazon.com

https://www.amazon.com › False-Alarm-Climate-Chang...

lomborg from www.amazon.com

Children panic about their future, and adults wonder if it is even ethical to bring new life into the world. Enough, argues bestselling author Bjorn Lomborg.

$14.99 · 4.5

(2,764) · 30-day returns

Bjorn Lomborg

Hoover Institution

https://www.hoover.org › profiles › bjorn-lomborg

lomborg from www.hoover.org

Dr. Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School. His numerous books include ...

Bjørn Lomborg

DeSmog

https://www.desmog.com › Database Entries

lomborg from www.desmog.com

Bjørn Lomborg is a political scientist, economist, and the founder and president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center (CCC).

Bjørn Lomborg

Facebook · Bjørn Lomborg

58.2K+ followers

lomborg from www.facebook.com

Bjorn Lomborg is the president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center (@CopenhagenConsensus ) a think tank focused on cost effective solutions to the world's big...

Bjorn Lomborg

Copenhagen Consensus Center

https://copenhagenconsensus.com › bjorn-lomborg

Dr. Bjorn Lomborg is Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and Visiting Professor at Copenhagen Business School. He researches the smartest ways to help ...

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With COP Closing, Deniers Beclown Themselves, Then Cry ‘I’ve Been Cancelled!’ When People Laugh

The disinformation around this year’s climate negotiations got off to a stupid start, got slightly funny and gross there for a minute, and then just gross as a TERF called climate reporters biased. But not to worry, it’s still getting stupider, and...

ClimateDenierRoundup

Nov 12, 2021 at 7:00 am PST

2comments

8recommends

Facebook and Other Social Media Sites Challenged to Rein in Climate Disinformation

On Friday a coalition of environmental and tech accountability organizations sent an open letter to leadership of Facebook, Twitter, and other major social media platforms, calling on them to protect their users from the fossil fuel industry’s false...

ClimateDenierRoundup

Oct 18, 2021 at 6:14 am PDT

4comments

7recommends

Friday a coalition of environmental and tech accountability organizations sent an open letter to leadership of Facebook, Twitter, and other major social media platforms, calling on them to protect their users from the fossil fuel industry’s false advertising climate disinformation.

“As we approach November’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26),” the letter reads, “it’s never been more clear that we are running out of time to avoid the catastrophic impacts of climate change.” And because “research has outlined that it is far more efficient to prevent the spread of disinformation than to try to correct it afterward,” and “analysis shows the mass of _{paid}_ and _{organic}_ disinformation comes from a few bad actors that are _{well-connected}_ to the oil and gas industry,” the groups are “calling on all big tech platforms to take concrete, transparent steps to eliminate climate disinformation.”

They demand that social media companies adopt policies to “eliminate climate disinformation”, and apply “consistent standards to rapidly deplatform professional climate denial influencers and repeat offenders” while also creating fact-checking policies (that are “protected from politicization by company staff”) and “a ban on paid ads from serial climate deniers, like fossil fuel companies that have systematically lobbied against climate action.”

While any such ad ban might’ve been considered inconceivable by some until recently, Google and Youtube’s recent move to demonetize climate denial and ban denial ads is exactly the sort of thing that’s needed, and of course already has deniers howling. At the Murdoch-owned New York Post, Koched-up and self-ashamed lobbyist Daniel Turner attempted to high-road the issue with quotes from “British philosopher Wittgenstein” that essentially questioned “what is a climate denier?”

Turner then provides exactly the answer in his various claims downplaying the climate crisis, as is his job.

And it’s not like it’s hard to figure out climate denial, either. Take the recentBjorn Lomborg Faecbook postwith 1k reactions, that describes a Nature comment as a study, and more importantly, claims it says electric cars are "net-bad everywhere." Click through to the Nature link he calls a “study,” though, and find out that the comment he cites says "some countries with lots of clean electricity sources, such as Norway, are already at a point at which electrifying a truck has more climate benefits than safety costs.” Oh. So not only is it not a study, it also contradicts his claim that EVs are worse everywhere!

He gets to this twisted point by extrapolating that if EVs are heavier than traditional cars (because of the batteries) then the extra deaths from those EVs hitting and killing people outweigh any climate gains.

(And even though it's not directly relevant here, we'll spin your brain one more time by reminding you that climate deniers supportedthe previous administration's lowering of fuel efficiency standards because, they said, lighter cars would lead to more deaths.)

Lomborg's claim that EVs are always bad is sophisticated sophistry, while social media is also full of more base denial, like this image post, also over the 1k mark, making fun of liberals for "coal fired electric cars." But obviously grids aren’t all coal these days, and both types of climate denial are refuted by a major report showing that even in coal-heavy grids, a life-cycle assessment shows that EVs are better than traditional gasoline-powered cars, a finding in line with other peer-reviewed studies. (And as of 2020, clean energy surpassed coal power globally, making the argument increasingly less true as the transition continues!)

But by focusing on the fact that EVs are a bit heavier than their traditional competition, Lomborg conveniently ignores the fact that it’s pickups and SUVs that have supersized the definitely-not-compensating-for-anything bigger-is-better auto arms race. If vehicle weight and related safety issues are a concern, the millions of giant SUVs would be a more sensible target than the emerging electric vehicle market. After all, public transit is both safer and cleaner than private cars, so if Lomborg were really all that concerned about any of this, promoting public funding for public transit — not to mention pedestrian and bike-friendly infrastructure — would be his priority.

But those aren't his priority, because his priority is attacking climate solutions. And that's exactly why he's the sort of climate disinformation professional who should be kicked off social media.

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CBG cites BS #:

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1/10th factoid origin?

HHRG-114-SY00-Wstate-LomborgB-20151201

18 pp

The impact and cost of the 2015 Paris Climate Summit,$with$special$focus$on$US$policies Tuesday,$December$1$2015, 10:00am,$2318$Rayburn$House$Office$Building The House$of$Representatives,$Committee$on$Science,$Space$and$Technology Testimony*by*Bjorn*Lomborg,*President,*Copenhagen*Consensus*Cente

The impact and cost of the 2015 Paris Climate

Summit, with special focus on US policies

Tuesday, December 1 2015, 10:00am, 2318 Rayburn House Office Building

The House of Representatives, Committee on Science, Space and Technology

TestimonybyBjornLomborg,President,CopenhagenConsensus*Cente

5 2

Summary:

Global warming is real, mostly man-made and a net problem. However, the

current Paris COP21 promises will do little to tackle the problem while

costing a fortune.

The only peer-reviewed estimate shows that the climate impact of all Paris

promises 2016J2030 will reduce temperature in 2100 by 0.08°F (0.05°C).

Even if all countries continue their promised reductions for 2031, 2032 …

until 2100, it will reduce temperatures by just 0.31°F (0.17°C).

The US Clean Power Plan will reduce global temperatures by maximally

0.023°F (0.013°C) in 2100.

The entire US climate promises will reduce global temperatures by just

0.057°F (0.031°C) by 2100.

The cost of Paris is substantial. This submission uses the best available

climate economic model ensembles from the Stanford Energy Modeling

Forum, the Asia Modeling Exercise and the EU/EPA CLIMACAPJLAMP project.

It finds the cost for the US climate promises are likely 154J172 billion every

Figure 1 shows (most clearly in the enlargement in the bottom right) that the

temperature reduction resulting from the US Clean Power Plan by the end of the

century will be 0.007°F (0.004°C) if the policy is gradually abandoned after 2030.

If the Clean Power Plan is continued throughout the century, reducing 535Mt

CO₂ each year from the baseline, it will reduce global temperatures by 0.023°F(0.013°C) by 2100*

year in lost GDP by 2025. This assumes that all US climate policies are enacted in the most efficient way, which is very unlikely. If they are not, the peer-reviewed literature suggests the costs will at likely double.

The costs for the world is at least close to 1 trillion per year in 2030, with likely costs due to policy inefficiency doubling to almost 2 trillion per year:

Billion per year Most effective policy Most likely policy

USA 154 308

EU 305 610

China 200 400

Mexico 80 160

Rest of World 185 370

Global cost 924 1848

The$impact$and$cost$of$the$2015$Paris$Climate$

Summit,$with$special$focus$on$US$policies

Tuesday,$December$1$2015, 10:00am,$2318$Rayburn$House$Office$Building

The House$of$Representatives,$Committee$on$Science,$Space$and$Technology

TestimonybyBjornLomborg,President,CopenhagenConsensus*Cente

5 2

Summary:

Global$warming$is$real,$mostly$manJmade$and$a$net$problem.$However,$the$

current$Paris$COP21$promises$will$do$little$to$tackle$the$problem$while$

costing$a$fortune.

The$only$peerJreviewed$estimate$shows$that$the$climate$impact$of$all$Paris$

promises$2016J2030$will$reduce$temperature$in$2100$by$0.08°F$(0.05°C).$

Even$if$all$countries$continue$their$promised$reductions$for$2031,$2032$…$

until$2100,$it$will$reduce$temperatures$by just$0.31°F$(0.17°C).

The$US$Clean$Power$Plan$will$reduce$global$temperatures$by$maximally$

0.023°F$(0.013°C)$in$2100.

The$entire$US$climate$promises$will$reduce$global$temperatures$by$just$

0.057°F$(0.031°C)$by$2100.

The$cost$of$Paris$is$substantial.$This$submission$uses$the$best$available$

climateJeconomic$model$ensembles$from$the$Stanford$Energy$Modeling$

Forum,$the$Asia$Modeling$Exercise$and$the$EU/EPA$CLIMACAPJLAMP project.

It$finds$the$cost$for$the$US$climate$promises$are$likely$$154J172$billion$every$

Figure!1 shows!(most!clearly!in!the!enlargement!in!the!bottom!right)!that!the!

temperature!reduction!resulting!from!the!US!Clean!Power!Plan!by!the!end!of!the!

century!will!be!0.007°F!(0.004°C)!if!the!policy!is!gradually!abandoned!after!2030.!

If!the!Clean!Power!Plan!is!continued!throughout!the!century,!reducing!535Mt!

CO₂!each!year!from!the!baseline,!it!will!reduce!global!temperatures!by!0.023°F!

(0.013°C)!by!2100

year$in$lost$GDP$by$2025.$This$assumes$that$all$US$climate$policies$are$

enacted$in$the$most$efficient$way,$which$is$very$unlikely.$If$they$are$not,$the$

peerJreviewed$literature$suggests$the$costs$will$at$likely$double.

The$costs$for$the$world$is$at$least$close$to$$1$trillion$per$year$in$2030,$with$

likely$costs$due$to$policy$inefficiency$doubling$to$almost$$2$trillion$per$year:

Billion$$$per$year Most$effective$policy Most$likely$policy

USA 154 308

EU 305 610

China 200 400

Mexico 80 160

Rest$of$World 185 370

Global$cost 924 1848

cite

Tol,!Richard!S.!J.!2012.!“A!Cost–benefit!Analysis!of!the!EU!20/20/2020!Package.” Energy*Policy,!Special!Section:!Fuel!Poverty!Comes!of!Age:! Commemorating!21!Years!of!Research!and!Policy,!49!(October):!288–95.! doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2012.06.018.

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"Green 20" AGs: What is it REALLY about? | The Federalist Society

Ben Massey

Debra Ann Livingston

Devin Allan DeBacker

C. Boyden Gray

May 13 2016

Blog Post

"Green 20" AGs: What is it REALLY about?

Topics:Federalism & Separation of Powers

Last year the New York Times won a Pulitzer for reporting critically on the unsurprising and perfectly legal efforts of private businesses to encourage Republican state Attorneys General to combat federal regulations harmful to their State economies.[1] Compare that to the mainstream media’s silence about the forces behind a much less conventional group of Democratic Attorneys General who have teamed up with former Vice President Al Gore to intimidate their opponents and to suppress any dissent from the orthodoxy of the Obama Administration’s climate change strategy.

Calling themselves “AGs United for Clean Power,” this group has instigated wide-ranging investigations into the private communications of businesses and non-profit organizations, backed up by the threat of criminal prosecution.[2]

As part of this witch-hunt, the Attorney General of the Virgin Islands sent subpoenas to conservative groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, seeking ten years of private communication (for years 1997 to 2007) related to ExxonMobil and climate change.[3] This follows earlier subpoenas to Exxon covering more than 40 years—all part of a curious effort to prove that the petroleum giant somehow knew and covered up the supposed risks of climate change before they were known to the rest of the scientific community.

This is likely to be a fool’s errand, because Exxon’s knowledge about the state of the science was far from secret. The company published a wide array of mainstream, peer-reviewed climate science articles during the time period in question—a time well before the emergence of any “consensus” on the science of man-made climate change.

More fundamentally, this fishing expedition blatantly violates the First Amendment rights of the targeted organizations with no legitimate law enforcement objective in sight. The subpoenas are in reality part of a broader, systematic attempt by the Left to suppress dissent, by cutting off corporate funding to political advocacy groups they disfavor.

This is amply illustrated by the recent CEI subpoena. The subpoena rests on Exxon’s purported violation of the Criminally Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (CICO), which has a five year statute of limitations.[4] Yet the subpoena improperly seeks to compel CEI to produce a decade’s worth of documents that fall completely outside the statute of limitations. Exxon decided to cut ties with CEI and other dissenting groups in 2007, but this has not stopped the AG from harassing CEI. [5]

These actions will have the intended effect of discouraging not only scientific dissent, but also political dissent, over the costs and benefits of mitigating the risk of climate change.[6] But there are good reasons not to credit unblinkingly all of the accepted wisdom of current climate change policy. Despite a staggering price tag, current national and international climate policy has very little to show for itself in terms of projected carbon emission reductions, much less any actual change to the temperature of the globe.

At base, changing global temperatures may not be the point. When Congressman David McKinley asked U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy whether the cost of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan—$64 billion annually by one measure[7]—is worthwhile “[i]f it doesn’t have an impact on climate change around the world,” her answer was that the rule has “had enormous benefit in showing sort of domestic leadership as well as garnering support around the country for the agreement we reached in Paris.”[8] As strange as it may seem for the head of EPA to admit our nation’s climate change policy is one big PR strategy, that response was consistent with what McCarthy said about the rule when it was first proposed: “This is not about pollution control,” she said in another congressional hearing. “[I]t really is an investment opportunity.”[9]

The Paris agreement that McCarthy referred to will do little more. Even if every nation fulfilled every promise in the treaty between now and 2030, it would reduce the global temperature by less than a tenth of a degree by 2100.[10] If those promises are extended to 2100, the resulting temperature effect will still be only three tenths of a degree.

The projected costs of the Paris agreement—at least $154 billion per year in lost GDP in the United States alone[11]—would be much better spent on research and development, the kind of work that ExxonMobil has been doing for decades without any government mandate.[12] Indeed, it would be interesting to know what portion of the enormous public expenditure on climate change “policy”—direct budget outlays and indirect regulatory costs—has actually funded practical research with the potential to solve the problem at hand. What the public sees, by contrast, is a magnificent PR machine, but few if any answers.

Setting aside the Left’s failure to offer any viable affirmative-climate change strategy of its own, the Democratic-Attorney-General-led witch hunt against Exxon is terribly counterproductive. It discourages companies from the kind of pioneering research that Exxon undertook before climate change was a household term, and it penalizes a company that has been more engaged than most in promoting efficient carbon reduction policies. Since 2007, Exxon has advocated a revenue-neutral carbon tax, which even the Sierra Club’s chief climate counsel agreed was “the best approach to climate policy,” and which would be best implemented at a time of low energy prices.

At bottom, this program of intimidation is not really about climate change. It is about using a hot-button political issue to exert speech control over as wide a swath of the economy as possible. It bears a troubling similarity to recent attempts to monopolize speech and association in other fields, as well as in academia where much of speech suppression started. There was a time when the United States could justifiably criticize China and its ilk for stamping out dissent. These days, centralized government authorities in both countries seem to be converging on a strangely similar method of suppressing freedom of speech and association.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html

[2] http://cleantechnica.com/2016/04/02/al-gore-ny-attorney-general-launch-ags-united-for-clean-power-coalition/

[3] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/434167/competitive-enterprise-institute-subpoena-attack-exxon-us-all

[4] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/434167/competitive-enterprise-institute-subpoena-attack-exxon-us-all

[5] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/16593606/ns/us_news-environment/t/exxon-cuts-tiesglobal-warming-skeptics/

[6] http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-11-10/schneiderman-s-dangerous-crusade-against-exxon-mobil

[7] http://www.americaspower.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/NERA-CPP-Final-Nov-7.pdf.

[8] http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/23/epa-chief-climate-regs-meant-to-show-leadership-not-fight-global-warming/#ixzz45Y4p43k7

[9] http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/epa-chief-not-about-pollution-controlits-investment-strategy (“And the great thing about this proposal is it really is an investment opportunity. This is not about pollution control. It’s about increased efficiency at our plants . . . . It’s about investments in renewables and clean energy. It’s about investments in people’s ability to lower their electricity bills by getting good, clean, efficient appliances, homes, rental units.”).

[10] http://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY00/20151201/104257/HHRG-114-SY00-Wstate-LomborgB-20151201.pdf.

[11] http://docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY00/20151201/104257/HHRG-114-SY00-Wstate-LomborgB-20151201.pdf.

[12] http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/04/21/climate-change-real-paris-treaty-costly-few-benefits-research-green-energy-column/83292440/.

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field eror bad code?

gmail

 Marc Morano

Weekly update ⋅ August 4, 2023

NEWS 

How data is manipulated to sell the climate hysteria narrative | Marc Morano - Rebel News

Rebel News

... pick and choose small samples of data to make extreme weather events seem like bigger issue than they are, says Climate Depot's Marc Morano.

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New York's Falling Tower Of Pizzas - Forbes

Forbes

ClimateDepot.com's publisher, Marc Morano, compared the emissions of a wood-burning stove with the emissions from the private plane routinely used ...

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Strangely, an awful lot of these "climate change" wildfire were started by arsonists, not excess CO2

HotAir

... are other forces at work' | Climate Depot https://t.co/XJtGThKJ69 pic.twitter.com/DxDJ64gxPu. — Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) July 29, 2023.

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HotAir

ED MORRISSEY SHOW

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Strangely, an awful lot of these "climate change" wildfire were started by arsonists, not excess CO2

TWITTER 12:35 PM on July 30, 2023

fox chryon is it gw or arson? watters? twet

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Watch: Morano on Fox News w/ Jesse Watters on how arsonists are responsible for ‘climate’ wildfires – Not ‘climate change’ – ‘There are other forces at work’ | Climate Depot https://climatedepot.com/2023/07/29/watch-morano-on-fox-news-w-jesse-watters-on-how-arsonists-are-responsible-for-climate-wildfires-not-climate-change-there-are-other-forces-at-work/

bad code?

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https://www.climatedepot.com/2023/07/29/watch-morano-on-fox-news-w-jesse-watters-on-how-arsonists-are-responsible-for-climate-wildfires-not-climate-change-there-are-other-forces-at-work/

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Watch: Morano on Fox News w/ Jesse Watters on how arsonists are responsible for ‘climate’ wildfires – Not ‘climate change’ – ‘There are other forces at work’

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Fox News Channel - Jesse Watters Primetime - Broadcast July 28, 2023 - Are arsonists responsible for global wildfires? 'The Green Fraud' author Marc Morano says there are 'other forces at work' as wildfires rage across the planet on 'Jesse Watters Primetime.'

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Morano: "Arson, of course, happened in the United States. Jesse, you mentioned the Yosemite fires. What that was a Democratic donor who had actually given to Democratic candidates started the fire. So we have Democratic politicians blaming wildfires on climate change when in reality it was one of their donors who actually started the wildfire.  And this goes on in Australia 42 percent of the Australian fires were said to be caused by mankind. They've had 700 unnatural fires started and over 250 arrests a few years ago in Australia. 

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This is a global problem of people starting fires. Now is it climate change? Well, this would be the equivalent of blowing up a dam or sabotaging a dam and allowing a valley to flood and then saying 'Oh look, climate change is causing more floods.'  There are other forces at work here, Jesse."

Jesse Watters: "All right Marc. Thank you so much. You're always on top of this. We appreciate it."

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By: Marc Morano - Climate Depot July 29, 2023 

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Fox News Channel – Jesse Watters Primetime – Broadcast July 28, 2023 – 04:26

Are arsonists responsible for global wildfires? ‘The Green Fraud’ author Marc Morano says there are ‘other forces at work’ as wildfires rage across the planet on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime.’

Rough Transcript:

Jesse Watters: Author of The Green Fraud Marc Morano joins me now. So Marc, can you distinguish between an arsonist fire or winds blowing and an already hot forest?

Marc Morano: No, not really. It looks like they started these fires, the arsonists at the worst possible times, with high winds, with dry conditions, with heat. So it sounds like they may even know what they’re doing. And there are two different islands in Greece, there’s Rhodes island and Corfu island, and in both of them now, the officials are saying these are intentionally started and they actually said they’re basically sick individuals who get pleasure out of causing other people pain.

Arson of course, happened in the United States. Jesse, you mentioned the Yosemite fires. What that was a Democratic donor who had actually given to Democratic candidates started the fire. So we have Democratic politicians blaming wildfires on climate change when in reality it was one of their donors who actually started the wildfire.

And this goes on in Australia 42 percent of the Australian fires were said to be caused by mankind. They’ve had 700 unnatural fires started and over 250 arrests a few years ago in Australia.

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This is a global problem of people starting fires. Now is it climate change? Well, this would be the equivalent of blowing up a dam or sabotaging a dam and allowing a valley to flood and then saying ‘Oh look, climate change is causing more floods.’  There are other forces at work here, Jesse.

Jesse Watters: All right Marc. Thank you so much. You’re always on top of this. We appreciate it. Have a great weekend.

Marc Morano: Thank you, Jesse.

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Background Info: 

Most fires in Greece were started ‘by human hand’, government says

The Guardian, 28 July 2023Most of the 667 fires that have erupted across Greece in recent weeks were started “by human hand”, the country’s senior climate crisis official has said. As the Mediterranean country emerges from an unprecedented, 15-day period of heatwave-induced infernos, the scale of the destruction is finally being laid bare.

While weather conditions have been different from any other year – with experts calling the first three weeks of July the hottest on record – most of the fires could have been prevented, the government claimed on Friday.  Vassilis Kikilias, the Greek minister of climate crisis and civil protection, told reporters:

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 “During this time 667 fires erupted, that is more than 60 fires a day, almost all over the country. Unfortunately, the majority were ignited by human hand, either by criminal negligence or intent.  Kikilias said that, in certain places, blazes had broken out at numerous points in close proximity at the same time, suggesting the involvement of arsonists intent on spreading fires further.   He added: “The difference with other years were the weather conditions. Climate change, which yielded a historic and unprecedented heatwave, is here. There were very few days where the extreme weather was not combined with strong winds.”

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LARGE PIX OF COVER DRAMA

Full story

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Spoof headline:

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https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/set-by-human-hands-are-arsonists-burning-rhodes/

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‘Fires are set by human hands. Whether it is due to negligence or fraud will be seen [but] people have been summoned for statements and others will be summoned. As soon as we have complete information – because the investigation is in full swing, we will make announcements…’ said Vassilis Vathrakogiannis, speaking on behalf of the Rhodes Fire Department.

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Rhodes has been burning for seven days, while other tourist locations, such as Corfu, face smaller localised fires. Corfu’s fires are also believed to have been deliberately lit, with the Deputy Mayor for Tourism and Construction speaking to the BBC about suspicions that they were started ‘by a group of people’. ‘[They] get pleasure out of this with the pain of other people,’ he said.

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Fewer Europeans would die if they installed a couple of air-conditioners instead of basking under ceiling fans like it’s 1976.

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“Fires are set by human hands. Whether it is due to negligence or fraud will be seen.”

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The Mediterranean is on fire as countries have been caught unprepared for the inevitable impact of climate change due to their disastrous capitalist policies. Austerity measures have hampered responses to the deadly wildfires that have paralyzed the region

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Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni has branded EU targets “climate fundamentalism”.

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Thousands of people evacuated as devastating wildfire threats Rhodes, Greece.

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Massive explosion in a NATO ammunition warehouse in Central Greece amid wildfires.

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When climate change doesn’t increase global fires… Activists take it upon themselves. There is NO climate emergency but there is an emergency surrounding mental health and climate anxiety that is leading people to start fires to save the planet.

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Corfu’s fires are also believed to have been deliberately lit, with the Deputy Mayor for Tourism and Construction speaking to the BBC about suspicions that they were started ‘by a group of people’. ‘[They] get pleasure out of this with the pain of other people,’ he said.

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Greece has been here before. Many people were arrested and charged over the 2021 fires in Greece, which were considered to be some of the worst on record. Some of the blazes were described as a ‘deliberate organised criminal activity’. In the devastating fires of 2007, arson was listed as a major cause of the blaze and some of the blazes were even suspected to be a form of terror attack. Charges of arson and murder were eventually brought. NOTE PASSIVE NO DETAIL

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As over 32,000 precautionary evacuations are carried out for the fires on Rhodes and surrounding areas, the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, told his nation that they had ‘more difficult days ahead’.

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2023/07/24/greece-wildfire-island-thousands-evacuation-updates/70454961007/

Yiannis Artopios, a fire service spokesperson on Rhodes, told Greek television network Skai TV that authorities are currently questioning suspected arsonists.

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“Fires are not sparked on their own,” he told Skai TV. “They are triggered by the human hand, be it intentionally or not. We currently have several people being questioned in connection with their probable involvement.”

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In Corfu, the region’s deputy mayor for tourism and construction told the BBC the fires there were started by “a group of people.” Chariton Koutscouris said officials had a “suspicion” fires would be started this weekend.

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Officials are said to have been warned on Friday by the fire department chief that someone who started two fires last week would start another.

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“He was right,” Koutscouris said, adding that the apparent arsonists “get pleasure out of this with the pain of the other people.”

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Global wildfires are not historically unusual and have been part of the natural forest cycle for thousands of years and contribute to their regeneration.

But the media blaming ‘climate change’ anyway — even when humans start the fires!

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Arson and poor green policies of forest management cause many forest fires and increase CO2 emissions! see: U.S. Geological Survey: 2018 California Wildfires Emitted as Much CO2 as an Entire Year’s Worth of Calif. Electricity

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Recently, as Democratic politicians were blaming wildfires on climate change, it was revealed that it was Democratic donors that caused the wildfires.

Australia had the same issues with arson!

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Aussie police announce a crackdown on arsonists after investigations showed 716 fires this season did not occur naturally – 267 already charged with arson offences – The Daily Telegraph: Serial arsonists will face the full force of the law after NSW Police announced a crackdown on fire bugs in the wake of investigations which showed 716 fires this season did not occur naturally. Of that number it is unclear how many were the work of arsonists and what was the result of negligent behaviour. Dedicated investigators will now trawl through evidence to separate the two.

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Aussie ABC says Arson = 1%. NSW police say 42% of fires are man-made. 9% are ‘natural’. Rest unknown. (So far)

Australia’s Epic Fires Caused By Bad Forestry And Arson, Not ‘Climate Change’

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Then the odd thing about this is if you look at all the data on wildfires, there are dramatic drops from 100 years ago in the United States.

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There is no trend in wildfires, no trend at all the extreme weather, but it doesn’t matter. This is the narrative, and if they need an arsonist to help The Science along apparently they’re not beneath doing that at this point. And again, this is the same thing — blaming the wildfires on climate

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The Reality is Global & U.S. fires are declining.

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From my 2018 book: ‘Less fire today than centuries ago’ – Scientists, studies counter claim that wildfires due to ‘climate change’ – Book Excerpt – “There is increasing evidence that there is overall less fire in the landscape today than there has been centuries ago, although the magnitude of this reduction still needs to be examined in more detail.”…

“The ‘wildfire problem’ is essentially more a social than a natural one.” Researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid found that “climate change” is not to blame for increased forest fires in the Mediterranean basin.”…

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“In the United States, wildfires are also due in part to a failure to thin forests or remove dead and diseased trees.

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You are being conned: Data, studies & UN IPCC all reveal Canadian fires not due to ‘climate change’ – ‘There has been a significant & continuing decline in the number of fires’

Dr. Roger Pielke Jr: What the media won’t tell you about … Wildfires – ‘Wildfires used to be much more extensive in past centuries’

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Pielke Jr.: “The IPCC has not detected or attributed fire occurrence or area burned to human-caused climate change

Globally, emissions from wildfires has decreased globally over recent decades, as well as in many regions

Canada wildfire trends show no increase in recent decades

Wildfires used to be much more extensive in past centuries

Wildfires are a part of the natural eco-system.”

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Bjorn Lomborg: Climate alarmists falsely claim the world is literally on fire – Satellites reveal global area burned annually has trended downward in past 2 decades

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Lomborg on Global wildfires: For more than two decades, satellites have recorded fires across the planet’s surface. The data are unequivocal: Since the early 2000s, when 3% of the world’s land caught fire, the area burned annually has trended downward.  In 2022, the last year for which there are complete data, the world hit a record low of 2.2% burned area…The latest report by the United Nations’ climate panel doesn’t attribute the area burned globally by wildfires to climate change.  Instead, it vaguely suggests the weather conditions that promote wildfires are becoming more common in some places. Still, the report finds that the change in these weather conditions won’t be detectable above the natural noise even by the end of the century. …

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America wildfires: While the complete data aren’t in for 2023, global tracking up to July 29 by the Global Wildfire Information System shows that more land has burned in the Americas than usual. But much of the rest of the world has seen lower burning — Africa and especially Europe.  Globally, the GWIS shows that burned area is slightly below the average between 2012 and 2022, a period that already saw some of the lowest rates of burned area.

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Australian Wildfires: Likewise, while Australia’s wildfires in 2019-20 earned media headlines such as “Apocalypse Now” and “Australia Burns,” the satellite data show this was a selective narrative. The burning was extraordinary in two states but extraordinarily small in the rest of the country. Since the early 2000s, when 8% of Australia caught fire, the area of the country torched each year has declined. The 2019-20 fires scorched 4% of Australian land, and this year the burned area will likely be even less.

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When reading headlines about fires, remember the other climate scare tactics that proved duds. Polar bears were once the poster cubs for climate action, yet are now estimated to be more populous than at any time in the past half-century.  We were told climate change would produce more hurricanes, yet satellite data shows that the number of hurricanes globally since 1980 has trended slightly downward.

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Filed under: astrology, avg, heatwave, mediacd, mediacdf, wildfires

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SEEMS EMBELATIC, IMMUNE TO FACT/ REALITY2 LOM 1 SHILL

Right-wing media deny climate change in face of deadly and record-breaking extreme ...

https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/right-wing-media-deny-climate-change-face-deadly-and-record-breaking-extreme

Media Matters for America

Fox Business host Stuart Varney indulged climate change denier Marc Morano and said climate change is “a good debate.” When discussing extreme ...

as the climate crisis becomes more evident and destructive,even exceeding climate scientists’ earlier predictions, Fox News and other influential right-wing outlets and figures are downplaying the severity of climate-fueled events and pushing dangerous climate denial.

This summer has been marked by a series of record-breaking extreme weather events, illustrative of the rapidly intensifying effects of global warming. Unprecedented heat waves, wildfires, and floods have wreaked havoc across North America. Meanwhile, global sea surface temperatures have reached alarming levels, and the world just experienced its hottest day on record — four days in a row. These events align with scientists' warnings, but the acceleration of warming and the intensity of this summer’s extreme heat suggest that the climate crisis is unfolding faster than expected.

Last month, when smoke from hundreds of wildfires raging across Canada polluted the air over major population centers in the U.S., Fox News dismissed the link between the fires and climate change; meanwhile conspiracy theories seeking alternative explanations for Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season flourished online. In response to news that Earth had reached its hottest temperatures ever recorded, bad actors attempted to distract from the unsettling milestone by focusing on CNN’s use of the phrase “hottest day ever.”  As deadly heat continues to scorch parts of the U.S., Asia, and Europe with no end in sight, and with a 1,000-year flood event having left parts of Vermont and New York state underwater, right-wing media cling to talking points that deny climate science.

By flooding the zone with climate denial right when the climate crisis is most evident, right-wing media run cover for Republican decision-makers who are actively obstructing climate action, ward off accountability for the fossil fuel industry, and pollute information systems for those attempting to understand the link between extreme weather and our dependence on fossil fuels. This tactic, like the extreme heat, has no end in sight.

Right-wing media responded to deadly climate change-fueled heat and flooding with denial and delay

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https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/how-tucker-carlson-was-terrible-and-effective-megaphone-climate-misinformation

mma 5 23 see heated/drilled

Prior to his departure from Fox News on April 24, Tucker Carlson was one of the network’s most prolific purveyors of climate change misinformation. Carlson elevated fringe ideas and conspiracy theories from relative obscurity on the internet to become drum beats for right-wing media. He also dishonestly spun major news events and weaponized his viewers’ most deep-seated prejudices about race and power to push climate denial.

His absence will be a blow to the forces aiming to mock environmental justice, derail climate action, and protect polluting industries and their allies in Washington. But the end of Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show is far from the end of climate change denial on Fox News — his project is sure to be carried on by other Fox personalities who will continue the network’s awful history of climate coverage.

Carlson propelled internet misinformation and obscure conspiracy theories into right-wing media narratives against climate action

One thing that set Carlson apart at Fox was his ability to seemingly jump-start a tidal wave of misinformation. His producers seemingly scoured the internet so he could amplify right-wing grievances, as well as any obscure video or article that could be easily decontextualized to sound absurd or inflammatory. He knew his audience, and he knew exactly how to push their buttons.

Carlson’s response to the deadly Texas winter storm that killed hundreds of people in February 2021 triggered a deluge of misinformation from Fox News. He was the first Fox News host to blame the widespread power outages on wind energy. The reality was that Texas still largely relies on natural gas for power, and this infrastructure wasn’t ready for the extreme cold.

Over the last few years, Carlson helped create a misinformation crisis around climate action and even told his audience that climate activists were going to try to shrink children and force everyone to eat bugs, when there is no evidencethat those things are actually happening.

Fittingly, one of the very last things Carlson did in his final Fox segment was to promote Let Them Eat Bugs.Notably, he said that the chocolate-covered cricket was “delicious.”

Misinformation about frozen windmills was just the tip of the iceberg for Carlson’s attacks on clean energy and climate action

Often portraying climate policies as a means to control the population or create a “permanent caste system,” Carlson regularly injected fearmongering about the clean energy transition into his segments. At the core of his argument was the fossil fuel industry talking point claiming the renewable energy technology was insufficient and that transitioning away from fossil fuels would weaken the U.S. and put Americans “under the complete and total control of people who wish us ill.” In October 2021, Carlson even used his newest venture, Tucker Carlson Originals on Fox Nation, to promote wind energy misinformation in the documentary Blown Away: The People vs. Wind Power. 

Carlson continued to push climate denial even during extreme weather events, when the reality of the climate crisis was most evident

As the science connecting extreme weather to our warming planet has become more conclusive— and with other TV news outlets more frequently reporting on these connections in the aftermath of major disasters — Carlson relentlessly misinformed his audience about these connections and claimed that the media making the link between climate change and extreme weather were captured by the radical left or using the occasion to politicize tragedy.

Even beyond these extreme weather events, Carlson regularly promoted climate denial on his Fox show in order to feed doubt and discredit climate science.

Carlson platformed climate change deniers who influenced his coverage

Carlson used any excuse, such as new climate policies, initiatives, or convenings, to platform some of the most notorious climate deniers and controversial climate contrarians. For example, according to Media Matters’ internal database, from 2019 through the end of Carlson’s show in 2023, he hosted failed politician Michael Shellenberger 21 times, climate change denier Marc Morano 14 times, meteorologist Joe Bastardi 8 times, and fossil fuel shill Bjorn Lomborg 4 times. These guests pushed the “Great Reset” conspiracy theory, cherry-picked statistics to downplay the impacts of extreme weather, or suggested climate activism is a “cult” or a “new religion.”

Michael Shellenberger

Carlson has run with the idea that climate change is like a new religion, which Shellenberger has written about at length.

Marc Morano

Joe Bastardi

Bjorn Lomborg 

In the last several years, Carlson had started to merge his climate denial and defense of fossil fuels with overt racism and white grievance

In response to climate justice and environmental justice becoming more mainstream and being incorporated into policy, Carlson seized on the opportunity to apply his increasingly overt racism to climate and environmental issues. Notably, Carlson has insisted that climate policies, not climate change, hurt marginalized communities. He has often claimed that environmental justice has “nothing to do” with the environment — with the exception of the recent train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which the former Fox host used to stoke more conservative grievances.

Other Fox figures will carry the climate denial torch in Carlson’s absence

Carlson was far from the only Fox News personality to regularly peddle climate change misinformation, and others will continue to carry the torch:

It’s uncertain who will be placed in Carlson’s 8 p.m. slot. But whatever the outcome, one sure thing is that Fox will continue to supplement its climate coverage with racism, bigotry, misogyny, and brain-frying idiocy.

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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/sir-david-king-chernobyl-created-a-negative-view-of-nuclear-technology-i-don-t-think-it-s-the-right-view-15358.html

indep uk

when Professor Sir David King became the Government's chief scientific adviser in October 2000 he did not have to wait long for his baptism of fire. Just four months into the job, he found himself embroiled in the political turmoil caused by Britain's worst outbreak of foot- and-mouth disease.

For a man used to the relative quiet of academia - he is professor of chemistry at Cambridge University - Sir David had to contend with the glare of publicity as well as the heavy burden of providing the scientific advice on which the Government, and the Prime Minister, would be judged.

After convening a panel of experts, Sir David provided the scientific rationale for the ruthless culling of livestock on affected farms and ones with common boundaries. It was, and still is, a deeply unpopular decision, especially when some commentators were calling for vaccination rather than slaughter. Even today there are those who say the Government should have used vaccines rather than culling, a strategy vehemently defended by Sir David who insists many people still do not understand why Britain had no choice but to kill and burn or bury thousands of animals.

"The option to vaccinate but not to subsequently kill the animals was actually not with us," Sir David says. "The Dutch government used vaccination and we did not; as a result the Dutch government had to slaughter vaccinated animals subsequently before they could begin exporting again."

The issue typifies the problems faced by science advisers having to grapple with the complexities of such an issue with major political ramifications. Vaccines against foot-and-mouth exist, but under international rules outside the Government's control, a country that uses vaccines cannot claim to be free of foot-and-mouth, which incurs heavy financial penalties in terms of exports.

The reason for not going down the vaccine route is that there is as yet no validated test to distinguish between a healthy but vaccinated animal with antibodies to the virus and an animal that is infected but shows no obvious clinical symptoms. Such facts are often overlooked, generating further misconceptions. "We need a validated test," Sir David says. "My worry is that if there were an epidemic tomorrow, the British public might be expecting vaccination to be used."

Another misconception was that vastly more cattle and sheep were killed during the epidemic than in normal years, he says. "In the year of the epidemic something like 17 million animals were culled or slaughtered. The average slaughtered in a given year was between 19 and 20 million. So we actually culled or slaughtered fewer animals than we would have slaughtered in a normal year.

"Why was that? Well something like five or six million were probably slaughtered in connection with the epidemic. That means fewer animals were going to abattoirs for food production and we were importing meat at that time.

"It's not really an issue of saving animals, it's saving hardship for farmers that we really should be focusing on. Very few people were predicting that we would emerge with a foot-and-mouth free international status in less than a few years. On 20 January 2002, we regained our FMD-free status. It was extremely rapid for the world's biggest epidemic. I think actually it was a major victory for science."

As head of the Office of Science and Technology, housed in the Department of Trade and Industry, Sir David oils the machinery of public science funding and co-ordinates the efforts of all the chief scientists within government departments. One responsibility is to oversee the Government's Foresight initiative which scans the horizon for future problems, such as the risk of severe flooding in the coming century.

But it is his interest and deep concern over climate change and global warming that has given Sir David his highest profile. Last year, in an article for the American journal Science, which was evidently directed at the Bush administration, Sir David said climate change was a bigger threat than international terrorism. He based his argument on the exceptional summer heatwave of 2003, widely attributed to climate change, when thousands of Europeans died. This was far more than in any one terrorist atrocity.

It was not the sort of message the White House wanted to hear after declaring a global war on terror and at the same time abandoning the Kyoto treaty on limiting man-made emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Since then, Sir David has been targeted by American lobbyists wanting to cast doubt on his claims and even his scientific credentials.

Last November, for instance, Myron Ebell, from a Washington think-tank called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, launched a personal attack on Sir David in an interview with Radio 4's Today programme. "We have people who know nothing about climate science, like Sir David King, who are alarmist and continually promote this ridiculous claim," said Mr Ebell, who was introduced as a former adviser to the White House. "Sir David has no expertise in climate science."

Sir David, visibly irritated at the mention of Mr Ebell, says: "Do you know who he is and who pays for him? He works for this right-wing, so-called think-tank [but] I don't think there is much thinking going on. He's a lobbyist; he's never been an adviser to the White House. The White House has issued a statement denying he was ever an adviser. I believe Radio 4 fell for it when Myron Ebell said that he was an adviser to the President. There is no truth in that statement."

He is equally dismissive of Michael Crichton, the science fiction author whose latest novel suggests concerns over global warming amount to alarmist misinformation. "The man is a fiction writer and this is another example of fiction at work," Sir David says. "There is no veracity in that book whatsoever."

The criticisms of Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish economist and global warming sceptic, are a different matter. Lomborg says climate change may be happening but there is nothing we can do about it so we should concentrate on trying to minimise its impacts, especially in the developing world.

Sir David says this is an understandable view of economists who do not look beyond the next 30 years. "The impacts of climate change over the next 30 years are virtually independent of what we do about carbon dioxide emissions and the reason for this is that Earth's system is very slow to respond, there is a very large inertia in this enormous mass, so it takes time.

"Over the next 30 years if we stop carbon dioxide levels at exactly where they are now you will not get a different forward run over the next 30 years. But if you look forward, as we did with flood and coastal defences, to 2080 then you see the impacts are critically dependent on what action we take now.

"The economists are right if we are concerned only about ourselves and possibly our children, but when you start talking about grandchildren then it all goes pear-shaped."

...

===

todayville alberta libtard self promo:

the disconnect between the global elite and the real world is growing daily. Most people are worn down by the pandemic, food and energy price hikes and general inflation, and they worry about a recession. Yet, the chattering classes are jetting into conferences in Davos or Aspen to declare that our biggest, immediate threats are climate change, environmental disasters and biodiversity loss.

This ignores most of our urgent crises. Almost a billion people are at risk of starvation this year, exacerbated by climate-concerned opposition to fertilizers made with fossil fuels. More than a billion schoolchildren have missed an average of nine months of learning because of lockdowns, which will cost their generation $1.6 trillion every year by 2040. Millions in the rich world will unnecessarily die of undiagnosed cancer and heart disease ignored during COVID, while millions more in the poor world will die unnecessarily of malaria and tuberculosis, just like they always do.

If you’re a wealthy, climate-concerned jet setter with private health insurance and a safe job, you don’t need to worry about malaria, recession, waiting in line for cancer tests or your children falling behind when schools close again. Nor are these the issues that will get you attention or airtime.

Solving the real world’s big problems is messy, and progress is slow and unspectacular. It is far more exhilarating to make grand promises to save the entire world by going net-zero or abandoning synthetic fertilizers.

Climate change is a real, man-made problem that deserves attention. It is also wildly overblown in the media, with every weather “event” turned into a televisual catastrophe. Last year, newspapers overflowed with stories of devastating hurricanes. Yet, 2021 had the fewest hurricanes globally since satellites started consistently monitoring the world in 1980. Hundreds of deaths from heat waves top the news for days, as in Europe just now, even though the data show everywhere many more people — 4.5 million globally — die of cold temperatures, often because of a lack of heating exacerbated by high energy prices.

The costs of the climate and environmental policies pushed at establishment talkfests are quickly becoming unbearable. For decades, we have been told that ending fossil fuels is cost-free or even beneficial. Now, we are seeing the immense economic and security costs of such untethered promises. Early pushback came in France with the “yellow vest” protests.

The Netherlands has been roiled by protests since the government introduced policies that would decimate the agricultural industry in the name of the environment. The policies threaten the production of the world’s second-largest food exporter right when global hunger is rising, yet the government cannot change course because environmentalists have taken legal action to lock in the lopsided policies.

It is even worse in Sri Lanka. Egged on by elite campaigners and the World Economic Forum to go organic, the government banned synthetic fertilizers in April 2021. Predictably, food production collapsed, and the currency defaulted. Large-scale protests from hungry and dissatisfied citizens who overran the presidential palace have now forced the resignation of the government.

Solving many of these problems is not rocket science. The rich should stop making food more expensive by insisting on organics. They should stop making energy more expensive by dictating intermittent renewables. Instead, we should increase research and development into better seeds to deliver more food with a lower environmental footprint. We should drive green-energy breakthroughs that could make drastic carbon-dioxide reductions cheap and feasible. And we should include the many other urgent crises that have simple and effective solutions — for instance, for tuberculosis and for securing much better learning in schools across the world with computer-assisted teaching at the right level.

Unfortunately, the elite seems to double down on climate and environment, and the Netherlands and Sri Lanka are just warnings of what will come. Net-zero will be the costliest policy that the world has ever embarked upon. The price tag just for paying for renewable assets and infrastructure alone will be more than $5 trillion every year for the next three decades, according to McKinsey &Co., a global management consulting firm. This equates to more than one-third of the global tax intake. For the United States, one study shows that getting 80 percent of the way to President Joe Biden’s climate promises by midcentury would cost each American more than $5,000 every year. Going all the way would likely more than double that cost.

every year the European Union has to pay $68.5 billion in subsidies to support its renewables. But if the bloc persists — or is forced by courts — with its even stauncher net-zero promises, this price tag could explode to more than $1 trillion annually.

As in the Netherlands, governments will find themselves caught between environmentalists who use legal action to hold them to virtue-signaling vows and working families who cannot cope with rising prices.

The wild increases in energy prices in Europe, although partly caused by poorly designed climate policies, are mostly because of Russia’s indefensible war with Ukraine. But the energy cost could increase more every year for everyone if politicians double down on net-zero.

Even under today’s policies, European Union vice president and longtime climate action advocate Frans Timmermans acknowledges that many millions of Europeans might be unable to heat their homes this winter. This, he concludes, could lead to “very, very strong conflict and strife.”

He’s right. When people are cold, hungry and broke, they rebel. If the elite continues pushing incredibly expensive policies that are disconnected from the urgent challenges facing most people, we need to brace for much more global chaos.

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:(style="box-sizing:border-box;margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}: 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.”  

==

in contrast to climategate attacks on Mann etc, BO found to be sloppy and dishonest?

:{

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Let’s turn to the Slate reader findings. Here they are:

RANKSOLUTIONCHALLENGE
1Family PlanningPopulation Growth
2Bundled Micro-Nutrient InterventionsHunger and Malnutrition
3Tobacco TaxationChronic Diseases
4Civil War PreventionArmed Conflicts
5Schoolbased Health and Nutrition ProgramsEducation
6Effective Early Warning SystemsNatural Disasters
7Expanded Childhood Immunization CoverageInfectious Disease
8The Reinvented ToiletWater and Sanitation
9Increased Funding for Energy R&DClimate Change
10Agricultural Productivity R&DBiodiversity
11Subsidy for Malaria Combination TreatmentInfectious Disease
12R&D to Increase Yield EnhancementsHunger and Malnutrition
13Hepatitis B ImmunizationChronic Diseases
14Deworming of ChildrenInfectious Disease
15Geo-Engineering R&DClimate Change
16Extension of Protected areasBiodiversity
17Community Led Total SanitationWater and Sanitation
18Protecting All ForestsBiodiversity
19Expanding Tuberculosis TreatmentInfectious Disease
20Adaptation PlanningClimate Change
21Acute Heart Attack Low-Cost DrugsChronic Diseases
22Post-Conflict ReconstructionArmed Conflicts
23Low$1.8/tC Global Carbon TaxClimate Change
24Retrofitting Schools to Withstand Earthquake DamageNatural Disasters
25Generic Pill for Heart Attack Risk ReductionChronic Diseases
26Investing in Accelerated HIV Vaccine DevelopmentInfectious Disease
27Information Campaign on Returns to SchoolingEducation
28Sanitation as a BusinessWater and Sanitation
29Strengthening Structures Against Hurricanes and StormsNatural Disasters
30Community Walls Against FloodsNatural Disasters
31Conditional Cash Transfers for School AttendanceEducation
32Increase Competition in the Fertilizer MarketHunger and Malnutrition
33Salt Reduction CampaignChronic Diseases
34Crop Advisory Text MessagesHunger and Malnutrition
35Civil War InterventionArmed Conflicts
36High $250/tC Global Carbon TaxClimate 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

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http://www.desmogblog.com/bjorn-lomborg

Credentials

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 envisioneda 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:

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 Answerswhich 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

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

  1. "Biography," www.lomborg.com. Accessed January, 2012.
  2. "Lomborg says armada could halt global warming," The Copenhagen Post Online, August 7, 2009. Archived August 11, 2010.
  3. Joe Romm. "Lomborg flip-flop: 'Climate change is undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today'," Climate Progress, August 31, 2010.
  4. Juliette Jowit. "Bjørn Lomborg: $100bn a year needed to fight climate change," The Guardian, August 30, 2010.
  5. Howard Friel. "Bjørn Lomborg's missing questions," The Guardian, August 30, 2010.
  6. "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.
  7. Robert Collier. "Bjorn Lomborg film offers new convenient truth," San Francisco Chronicle, November 7, 2010.
  8. Allanna Mitchell. "The Pollyanna of global warming," Globe and Mail, September 29, 2007.
  9. Frank Ackerman. "Hot, It's Not: Reflections on Cool It!, by Bjorn Lomborg" (PDF), Tufts University. Accessed January, 2012.
  10. John Quiggin. "Copenhagen: conned again," Crooked Timber, December 13, 2004.
  11. "Copenhagen review," John Quiggin, January 21, 2005.
  12. Jeffrey D. Sachs. "Seeking a global Solution" (PDF), Nature, Vol. 430 (August 12, 2004). Archived  November 17, 2008.
  13. Tom Burke. "This is neither scepticism nor science - just nonsense," The Guardian, October 23, 2004.
  14. "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.
  15. "Skepticism toward The Skeptical Environmentalist," Scientific American, April 15, 2002.
  16. "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Union of Concerned Scientists.
  17. "Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark: A skeptical look at The Skeptical Environmentalist," Grist Magazine, December 12, 2001. Archived December 25, 2001.
  18. "Heartland Experts: Mr. Bjorn Lomborg," The Heartland Institute. Accessed January, 2012.
  19. "Bjørn Lomborg: Director," Copenhagen consensus center. Accessed January, 2012.
  20. "Bjorn Lomborg," SourceWatch Profile.
  21. ExxonSecrets Factsheet: Bjorn Lomborg.
  22. "Bjørn Lomborg," Wikipedia entry.
  23. "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Wikipedia entry.
  24. Stacy Feldman. "Why Isn't Anyone Laughing at Bjorn Lomborg?", Solve Climate, October 26, 2007. Archived January 5, 2009.

Tags:

bjorn lomborg

Heartland Institute

global warming

climate change

desmogblog

global warming blog

denial industry

climate change denier

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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 alsoreleasing 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´Al Gore´s `An Inconvenient Truth´
The book `Cool it!´Bjørn Lomborg versus Al Gore
The film `Cool it!´Howard Friel `The Lomborg Deception´
`Smart Solutions to Climate Change´Various special issues
Copenhagen ConsensusWho is Kåre Fog?

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}:

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