Bjorn Lomborg believes in human caused global warming. He is also hated, yes hated, by many who share that opinion. Robert Christopherson lost control and yelled a rant at the very mention of Lomborg's name.
But that does not stop Lomborg from trying to save people's lives and find ways to curb climate change. He recently wrote an editorial called "Chill out" and proposed methods to save lives and money in a changing world. Everything from clean energies, to combating diseases, to geoengineering are discussed.
While one can debate global warming and the sources of its causation; Lomborg calls for everyone to be rational and proposes actions which can unite all people.
8 comments:
It's fine to have a conservative agenda. I don't, but I appreciate there are people who still genuinely try to believe in God and a Christian ethic. Where I think Christians fall down is in supporting people who seem to yell stridently something that is momentarily pleasing. These folks are usually charlatans if not sociopaths. Lomborg strikes me as a sociopath. He says he's for good actions...that he's a committed environmentalist and all. But I read his first book. It contained numerous stretches, half-truths and provocations...not to be intellectually challenging, but to advance a rather narrow agenda.
It's hard to be a Christian and an institutionalist now. There's just a lot of challenges and I'm sure they sting. But my unsolicited counsel is to avoid the self-promoting types...and Lomborg is a self-serving, self-promoting paragon.
Saving lives is "momentarily pleasing"? How is he "self-serving and self-promoting"?
Just check out his website!
I see basically a short resume, info on his book, and a FAQ. No different from really any other professor/scientist/author website.
What did you mean by "momentarily pleasing"? I am confused on that bit.
Are others on the GW debate (Gore et al) self-serving self-promoting sociopaths? Plus, isn't a paragon an example of excellence? Or did you mean no one else can equal his "self-serving, self-promoting" sociopathic ways? If you meant the latter than what do you call the "limousine environmentalists" who demand radical action yet fly on private jets?
I remember a few years back Pres. Bush and many people who think like him vehemently denied that Global warming was not human caused but mostly/completely natural.
Although we may not all agree what the results might be or what needs to be done, it is a breath of fresh air that this administration and many of the recent deniers finally agree that human activity is the main cause of global warming in the last century. The scientific community has mostly been unanimous on this issue, not the solutions.
I am surprised that you are citing the works of Lomborg (a statistician by profession who is largely given no credibility among the real/professional climate scientists, unless you think they are all a bunch of idiots?) But then again, the same people who thought that these scientists were idiots for proving that global warming was mostly man made seem to agree with them now. It is just a matter of time before people realize (which is and has happened) and take the appropriate actions. But, the question is, will it be too late by then?
"Why the hate people, why the hate?!?"
"among the real/professional climate scientists"
What???
Lomborg never denied human caused global warming (he's is/was a Greenpeace member). He believes in human caused global warming. Yet for some reason there is a knee jerk reaction against him.
It's interesting that you always get lots of comments when the subject is health care or global warming, usually by people who hate conservatives. I heard Lomborg a few years ago. The irrational types really dislike him because he used to be a believer in global warming. Actually, I don't think he denies that warming occurs but doubts that the human input is as mighty as environmentalists claim. He thinks that, in a world of limited resources ($$$), money should go to alleviating scourges (e.g., malaria) that we can actually have an effect on.
Lomborg IS a sociopath. That's a very exact and telling description. He claims he gave money to Greenpeace once, basically, but was never a member. His conversion to environmental denialism came after reading just one right-wing fairy tale author, Julian Simon.
Not only is he not a scientist, while trained in statistics, he doesn't research, just teaches. His books don't give confidence intervals, usually, or show the likelihood of hypotheses other than the conservative market fundamentalist one he wants to present. He takes it as good enough if he can show that such a hypothesis is not completely implausible. In other words, like most sociopaths, if no one's watching, he doesn't even do the work in his chosen field. I knew a sociopath - a friend gave him a great job checking errors on a production line. It didn't seem he was doing well, so his friend finally caused deliberate errors and defects. As he had done all along, the sociopath signed everything out as error-free and went and had coffee and hit on the secretaries.
Sociopaths are often, maybe usually, affable, charming, and superficially friendly. And they won't give an inch. Even if you can prove they broke 3 of the 4 legs off your table, they will not spot you that the table won't stand now - you'll have to corner them again and prove it.
Lomborg's denialism has saved no lives whatsoever. Even presenting his Social Darwinist market fundamentalism in the best possible light, he's saying the crumbs trickling down to the poorest are going to decline, and continue to decline, as they should, as the richest accumulate ever more fantastic multiples of ownership and more and more of the Earth is their private realm. Given that wholly good "fact," he proposes they should choose between starving or dying of disease due to no aid whatsoever, or starving and dying later due to climate change. And that he calls saving lives. And he is in league with the DDT crowd now smearing Rachel Carson - a key feature there is that they deny that organisms develop resistance. And they claim loudly that they, too, are saving lives.
And there have been few more self-promoting people - and directly to the people most able to butter his bread.
But one thing to remember. Affable, amiable sociopath Ted Bundy - who was a Good Samaritan killer of women, whom he torture murdered and raped in numbers we'll never know precisely - had plenty of defenders. Most of them were women. And he had love letters and marriage proposals right up until his execution.
So it is no shock that people will defend sociopaths. That, too, is a distinguishing trait. Along with their reckless dishonesty, incredible persistence, and utter lack of shame.
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