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Bjorn Lomborg - Mendacious Scumbag

a_unique_person

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a_unique_person
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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...superstorm-sandy/story-e6frgd0x-1226519124440

But, unfortunately, it is by focusing on cutting CO2 that we really dishonour human suffering, because any realistic carbon cuts will do virtually nothing for the next 50-100 years.

Consider sea-level rise, which caused by far the most damage in New York. Models show that the world's most ambitious climate policy, the EU's "20-20-20" plan, will have a net cost of roughly $US250 billion ($241bn) a year for the rest of the century, or about $US20 trillion in total. Yet it will reduce sea-level rise by just 9mm by 2100.

If the US embarked on a similar plan, the cost and the benefit would probably be on a similar scale: a 2cm reduction in sea-level rise by the end of the century at an annual net cost of about $US500bn.

Consider this extremely unrealistic scenario: even if we almost immediately could get the entire world - including China and India - on board for drastic carbon cuts, and even if we would suck CO2 out of the atmosphere towards the end of the century, we could reduce sea-level rise by only 18-45cm by the end of the century. Models show that the cost, by then, would be at least $US40 trillion annually.

Contrast this with what New York City is rightly concerned about: the 3.3 per cent chance each year (entirely without global warming) that a Category 3 hurricane will hit New York.

This would cause sea surges of up to 7.5m (about 3m higher than Sandy), putting Kennedy Airport under 6m of water.

Much of the risk could be managed by erecting seawalls, building storm doors for the subway, and simple fixes such as porous footpaths - all at a cost of about $US100 million a year.
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http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...superstorm-sandy/story-e6frgd0x-1226519124440

This is paywalled. However, if you google the title, you will find an unlocked article.

How many errors of logic can you make in one article? He is not stupid, but he makes errors that can only be intentional, and intentionally misleading, on an issue that is of vital importance to all of us, globally.

One argument that is a massive fail is his claim that this is only about New York, yet it is about a massive weather event that affected much more than New York.

He says that to fix just New Yorks problems will be $100 million a year, but a global response will cost 20 trillion by the end of the century. Is it possible to make a more misleading comparison? He makes no distinction about the net present value of what the money will be worth that far into the future. He makes no evaluation of the global effect of global warming.

He is misleading about the sea level rise. The current research, evaluated by the World bank, indicates that sea level rise will be worse than originally estimated, because we now have a better idea of the contribution by the cryosphere, not just the sea level rise due to a warming ocean.

He ignores the sea level surge due to the record low pressure from Sandy. This was an unusual hurricane in that even though it was only a Cat1, it had a massive flooding effect and sea level surge for a relatively low power. The ability of the atmosphere to hold more water because it is warmer, and because of warming seas, contributed more to the combined effect than just a few millimetres of surge.

There are doubtless other errors he has made, I just don't have time to find and list them all.

He could only have come to such a fallacious and misleading argument intentionally.

I put this in the SI&CE forum because this is not a scientific article, but a politically based one that has ignored all the current research.
 
According to a World Bank study the total cost of adapting to a 2 degree rise in temperature by 2050 would be about $70 to $100 billion / year.

http://climatechange.worldbank.org/content/adaptation-costs-global-estimate

Just for a point of reference for discussion.

I think it still makes sense to pursue development of renewable energy for its own reasons, without even considering climate change. In the long term we are going to need energy sources other than fossil fuels anyway. The sooner we develop that infrastructure the better.
 
Fishstick said:
That's much less than I thought it would be, especially in terms of international costs.
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Me too, quite frankly. Maybe there are other estimates out there. I googled it for this thread and it was the first thing I found that looked like a reputable source without an obvious axe to grind either way.

It could be worse than 2 degrees for one thing. Then there's also the question of the next 50 years and the next 50, and so on.
 
Puppycow said:
Maybe there are other estimates out there.
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Lucky timing. The World Bank today just released a new report today.

News article here

Executive Summary here (PDF)

Full report here (PDF)

I read the Executive Summary. Interestingly this report does not put a dollar figure on the damage due to climate change, but says that not enough is known to put a dollar figure on it.

The full scope of damages in a 4°C world has not been assessed to date.
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As the scale and number of impacts grow with increasing global mean temperature, interactions between them might increasingly occur, compounding overall impact. For example, a large shock to agricultural production due to extreme temperatures across many regions, along with substantial pressure on water resources and changes in the hydrological cycle, would likely impact both human health and livelihoods. This could, in turn, cascade into effects on economic development by reducing a population´s work capacity, which would then hinder growth in GDP.

With pressures increasing as warming progresses toward 4°C and combining with nonclimate–related social, economic, and population stresses, the risk of crossing critical social system thresholds will grow. At such thresholds existing institutions that would have supported adaptation actions would likely become much less effective or even collapse. One example is a risk that sea-level rise in atoll countries exceeds the capabilities of controlled, adaptive migration, resulting in the need for complete abandonment of an island or region. Similarly, stresses on human health, such as heat waves, malnutrition, and decreasing quality of drinking water due to seawater intrusion, have the potential to overburden health-care systems to a point where adaptation is no longer possible, and dislocation is forced.

Thus, given that uncertainty remains about the full nature and scale of impacts, there is also no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible. A 4°C world is likely to be one in which communities, cities and countries would experience severe disruptions, damage, and dislocation, with many of these risks spread unequally. It is likely that the poor will suffer most and the global community could become more fractured, and unequal than today. The projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur—the heat must be turned down. Only early, cooperative, international actions can make that happen.
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a_unique_person said:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...superstorm-sandy/story-e6frgd0x-1226519124440



http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...superstorm-sandy/story-e6frgd0x-1226519124440

This is paywalled. However, if you google the title, you will find an unlocked article.

How many errors of logic can you make in one article? He is not stupid, but he makes errors that can only be intentional, and intentionally misleading, on an issue that is of vital importance to all of us, globally.

One argument that is a massive fail is his claim that this is only about New York, yet it is about a massive weather event that affected much more than New York.

He says that to fix just New Yorks problems will be $100 million a year, but a global response will cost 20 trillion by the end of the century. Is it possible to make a more misleading comparison? He makes no distinction about the net present value of what the money will be worth that far into the future. He makes no evaluation of the global effect of global warming.

He is misleading about the sea level rise. The current research, evaluated by the World bank, indicates that sea level rise will be worse than originally estimated, because we now have a better idea of the contribution by the cryosphere, not just the sea level rise due to a warming ocean.

He ignores the sea level surge due to the record low pressure from Sandy. This was an unusual hurricane in that even though it was only a Cat1, it had a massive flooding effect and sea level surge for a relatively low power. The ability of the atmosphere to hold more water because it is warmer, and because of warming seas, contributed more to the combined effect than just a few millimetres of surge.

There are doubtless other errors he has made, I just don't have time to find and list them all.

He could only have come to such a fallacious and misleading argument intentionally.

I put this in the SI&CE forum because this is not a scientific article, but a politically based one that has ignored all the current research.
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If you have issues with his discussion of costs of adaptation vs. costs of remodeling the economy, please have at it. At least he's putting out reasonable numbers.

And those numbers he lists don't even discuss the depressive effects on the economy that, say, vastly and deliberately increasing carbon burning costs may have, slowing down economic vigor and the ability to invent and adapt.


I'll take 100 years of sea rise + 100 years of technological development at current rates, along with paltry amelioration costs, over no sea rise and, say, 50 or 70 years of technological development, 100 years from now.

Anything else would be mass murderous.
 
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a_unique_person said:
He says that to fix just New Yorks problems will be $100 million a year, but a global response will cost 20 trillion by the end of the century. Is it possible to make a more misleading comparison? He makes no distinction about the net present value of what the money will be worth that far into the future. He makes no evaluation of the global effect of global warming.
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The problem might be you not being sensible to recognize a consistent reasoning ;). Lömborg, who has an impressive ability to channel all water to his mill, succeeds in showing to the people the advantages of the egoistic scenario: preventing floods in New York not only will imply a "trillionaire" cost in three generations but other hundred similarly important -in 2100- cities would have the same advantage, for free! The fact that the per capita GDP of +100 million eastcoasters in 2100 will be some nominal 1,000,000 us dollars a year, equivalent to some actual 250,000 us dollars seems not bothering Lömborg and his navel gazing clientèle.

The secret is just achieving people not identifying themselves with the ill-fated side of the process. For instance, if you say "it's much much cheaper to cremate the occasional dead and dump their ashes in the toilet than treating them in a hospital, saving them and years later sending them to a retirement homes, people will try to lynch you as they have a certain ability to figure themselves in that place and some atavistic feelings like dealing respectfully with human corpses. But, what matters some unknown species gone? we're doing OK without dodos! Corals bleached and half of fisheries broken? We have shell-fish allergy! Those Bengali drowned? For starters, they must've used condoms in the first place!

The problem is people thinking torturing a horse is evil but it's OK to vanish a whole species as long as they don't look like a toy or have talked to us in Cartoon Network or Disney Channel.

But we might also think that the article is Lömborg translated into Australian denialism trough Murdoch media, so Chinese whispers would be crystal understanding in comparison.

a_unique_person said:
I'll take 100 years of sea rise + 100 years of technological development at current rates, along with paltry amelioration costs, over no sea rise and, say, 50 or 70 years of technological development, 100 years from now.

Anything else would be mass murderous.
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Mass murderous like not being able to drive your SUV off into the sunset? Or mass murderous as using food to feed the SUVs? Or simply "mass murderous" because it looks so dramatic and you like Poe's?

The most committed global efforts to avoid most of the consequences have a cost that swings between half the expenditures in "defence" and two thirds of the total interests paid on public debt, any state level, worldwide.

Are we to consider defence expenditures (50% of total, USA's) to be mass murderous ;)? Are we to consider public indebtedness to be mass murderous?
 
Sorry Unique, I made a jumble with the quote tags. Now, it's fixed:

Beerina said:
I'll take 100 years of sea rise + 100 years of technological development at current rates, along with paltry amelioration costs, over no sea rise and, say, 50 or 70 years of technological development, 100 years from now.

Anything else would be mass murderous.
Click to expand...

Mass murderous like not being able to drive your SUV off into the sunset? Or mass murderous as using food to fuel SUVs? Or simply "mass murderous" because it looks so dramatic and you like Poe's?

The most committed global efforts to avoid most of the consequences have a cost that swings between half the expenditures in "defence" and two thirds of the total interests paid on public debt, any state level, worldwide.

Are we to consider defence expenditures (50% of total, USA's) to be mass murderous :wink:? Are we to consider public indebtedness to be mass murderous?
 
I wonder if this signifies the new Official Stance of the science deniers - that AGW is happening but it'll be too expensive to do anything about it - or if this is just Lomborg going of script.
 
I wonder if this signifies the new Official Stance of the science deniers - that AGW is happening but it'll be too expensive to do anything about it - or if this is just Lomborg going of script.
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Most of Lomborg's stuff has advocated spending the money on more immediate humanitarian efforts.
 
Yes, Lömborg and others have succeeded in setting the boundaries of the problem in a way what they're saying looks both reasonable and humanitarian. This is more like a movie we've seen before: a powerful "company" makes huge earnings with a technology that damages people and/or the environment; they pretend nothing or little is happening and they offer to compensate the harmed with a little money as long as they keep quiet on the whole subject. Then, reality and fiction diverge, as there's no gallant champion on a white horse struggling to save the community and unmask the wrongdoers, accomplices included. It's more like the truth lies in between that and the famous poster drawn by Walt Kelly for Earth Day in 1970 with Pogo saying "We have met the enemy and he is us".
 
uke2se said:
I wonder if this signifies the new Official Stance of the science deniers - that AGW is happening but it'll be too expensive to do anything about it - or if this is just Lomborg going of script.
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This has always been Lomborg's stance. He is entirely on script, denialism is a broad church, even if much of it is self contradictory.
 
Beeyon said:
Most of Lomborg's stuff has advocated spending the money on more immediate humanitarian efforts.
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The claim is that by spending money on preventing AGW, we are denying all these funds instead being directed to improving the quality of life of people in less wealthy countries. Since very little has actually been done to prevent AGW in comparison to what had been hoped for, where is all this money going to now? There should be extra hundreds of billions in aid being spent across the globe.
 
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