A Global Warming Skeptic the Media Tolerate
Most global warming skeptics are accused of being bought-and-paid for by Big Oil, especially by pundits or the media.
But that’s not the case for Bjørn Lomborg, author of “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming.” Lomborg is not a global warming denier, but he says some global warming solutions are a waste of money.
“I’m involved in something where we ask some of the world’s top economists who valued all the different proposals that are out there in the world on how we can help the world,” Lomborg said on the September 10 edition of NPR’s “Morning Call.” “They evaluate it according to bang for the buck – essentially where can you do the most good. What they tell us is if you invest for instance a dollar to prevent HIV/AIDS in Sub-Sahara Africa, you end up doing about $40 worth of social good. If you invest [a dollar] in malnutrition, you do about $30 worth of good in the world.”
Lomborg’s comparison shows just how off-kilter the global warming activism is.
“On the other hand, they say if you invest into things like the Kyoto Protocol, you end up doing about 30 cents worth on the dollar.”
Lomborg also appeared on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” on September 10 and pointed out that United Nations predictions of sea level rise aren’t all that different from the past. He said sea levels the UN predicts rising between one-half and two feet in the next 150 years because of global warming. That’s only slightly more than the one-foot rise of the last 150 years.
“[A]sk a very old person who lived through most of the 20th century and it's unlikely she'll say, ‘Oh, two world wars, we also had the suffrage of women, we had the IT revolution and sea levels rose,’” Lomborg said. “It's a problem but not the end of the world.”
But unlike many of the global warming skeptics, Lomborg hasn’t been blackballed by the media. Lomborg’s appearances not only include NPR and The Colbert Report, but he has also been featured in the September 11 New York Times, the September 11 Wall Street Journal and the September 8 Washington Post.
