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Global Cooling is only one such dire prediction. "We are all familiar with the Litany....Our resources are running out. The population is ever growing, leaving

Global Cooling is only one such dire prediction. "We are all familiar with the Litany....Our resources are running out. The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat. The air and water are becoming ever more polluted. The planet's species are becoming extinct in vast numbers....The world's ecosystem is breaking down....We all know the Litany and have heard it so often that yet another repetition is, well, almost reassuring." Lomborg notes that there is just one problem with the Litany: "It does not seem to be backed up by the available evidence." Lomborg then proceeds to demolish the Litany. He shows how, time and again, ideological environmentalists misuse, distort, and ignore the vast reams of data that contradict their dour visions. In the course of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg demonstrates that the environmentalist lobby is just that, a collection of interest groups that must hype doom in order to survive monetarily and politically. Lomborg notes, "As the industry and farming organizations have an obvious interest in portraying the environment as just-fine and no-need-to-do-anything, the environmental organizations also have a clear interest in telling us that the environment is in a bad state, and that we need to act now. And the worse they can make this state appear, the easier it is for them to convince us we need to spend more money on the environment rather than on hospitals, kindergartens, etc. Of course, if we were equally skeptical of both sorts of organization there would be less of a problem. But since we tend to treat environmental organizations with much less skepticism, this might cause a grave bias in our understanding of the state of the world." Lomborg's book amply shows that our understanding of the state of the world is indeed biased." http://www.reason.com/news/show/28308.html http://www.reason.com/news/show/28308.html

mattmaroon 18y ago
But again, it's the boy who cried wolf. Even if they claimed the Earth was going to end 100 times, and 100 times they were incorrect, that doesn't mean time number 101 is incorrect too. So even if Lomborg is right about the environmentalists' motives, the issue still needs to be examined and addressed. And it's a lot more than just the environmentalists concerned about global warming. It's reached a broad enough consensus among scientists that it's safe to say it's time to do something about it. Combating it consists mainly of doing things that, in the long term, we should and/or need to do anyway. No matter what you think about fossil fuels in regards to the environment, the one thing we know for certain is that they won't last forever, and with China and India coming online, they probably won't last much longer. Be it in two decades or a century (and even the most optimistic geologists don't foresee us having oil for much longer than that) we will eventually have no choice but to switch to electric cars and renewable energy. And given that both are currently cost-competitive (or nearing that) and will only get cheaper, now is clearly the time to begin the process.
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  >Combating it consists mainly of doing things that, in the long term, we should and/or need to do anyway. This is a widespread, but specious, argument. The cost of moving away from fossil fuels is X% of the world's wealth with current technology and Y% of the world's wealth with technology 20 years from now. If we can expect the world to be richer 20 years from now (a reasonable assumption) and technology to be better (again a reasonable assumption) then Y is probably much less than X. It will be a much bigger sacrifice to make the change today than tomorrow. The point is, although our economy will probably naturally convert away from fossil fuel technology in the long run, forcing the process to accelerate entails significant extra costs on a significantly poorer world. It is NOT costless, as the phrase "things we should and/or need to do anyway" seems to imply. The argument is simplistic and involves a narrow view of the problem. I see no valid reason to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to other energy sources faster than what is already happening in the market.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    There's a serious problem in the market, which is that publicly traded corporations pay the people who run them largely in stock. This gives the people in charge a very short-term view, because their pay is based on the difference in share prices over a short period of time. What this means is that the market is very poor at long-term thinking and investing (which is why I agree with Andreesen about dual class stock structures). In short (and he sums it up better than I could, so read his article if you want clarification) our market has become very bad at long-term strategizing.
    - anamax 18y ago
      If you really believe that public corporations make bad economic decisions, you're investing in the correct decisions and are going to make a killing. You are betting your own money on being correct, aren't you?
- anamax 18y ago
  > But again, it's the boy who cried wolf. Even if they claimed the Earth was going to end 100 times, and 100 times they were incorrect, that doesn't mean time number 101 is incorrect too. The fact that a stopped clock is correct twice a day is no reason to consult it. It's both efficient and good to scorn and ignore folks who get it wrong consistently. > And given that both are currently cost-competitive (or nearing that) and will only get cheaper, now is clearly the time to begin the process. If they're really cost-competitive today and getting cheaper, no govt action is needed. If govt action is required to make it cost-competitive, it isn't cost-competitive.
aswanson 18y ago
The basis of his argument seems to be a character attack. There is no addressing of science in his argument, just "some people have a motive to lie to you, therefore global warming does not exist". Can't you see the logical flaw in that?
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  Most books by skeptics of the current order are simply dismissed. Lomborg's book caused a huge stir precisely because it was so packed full of data. It's really a masterpiece (though a bit dated now, it was written around 2001 or so).
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    Right, in 2001 it was probably good to be skeptical. 7 or 8 years of data in favor of the "humans are causing climate change" argument has come in since then.

mattmaroon 18y ago

But again, it's the boy who cried wolf. Even if they claimed the Earth was going to end 100 times, and 100 times they were incorrect, that doesn't mean time number 101 is incorrect too. So even if Lomborg is right about the environmentalists' motives, the issue still needs to be examined and addressed. And it's a lot more than just the environmentalists concerned about global warming. It's reached a broad enough consensus among scientists that it's safe to say it's time to do something about it. Combating it consists mainly of doing things that, in the long term, we should and/or need to do anyway. No matter what you think about fossil fuels in regards to the environment, the one thing we know for certain is that they won't last forever, and with China and India coming online, they probably won't last much longer. Be it in two decades or a century (and even the most optimistic geologists don't foresee us having oil for much longer than that) we will eventually have no choice but to switch to electric cars and renewable energy. And given that both are currently cost-competitive (or nearing that) and will only get cheaper, now is clearly the time to begin the process.

Prrometheus 18y ago
>Combating it consists mainly of doing things that, in the long term, we should and/or need to do anyway. This is a widespread, but specious, argument. The cost of moving away from fossil fuels is X% of the world's wealth with current technology and Y% of the world's wealth with technology 20 years from now. If we can expect the world to be richer 20 years from now (a reasonable assumption) and technology to be better (again a reasonable assumption) then Y is probably much less than X. It will be a much bigger sacrifice to make the change today than tomorrow. The point is, although our economy will probably naturally convert away from fossil fuel technology in the long run, forcing the process to accelerate entails significant extra costs on a significantly poorer world. It is NOT costless, as the phrase "things we should and/or need to do anyway" seems to imply. The argument is simplistic and involves a narrow view of the problem. I see no valid reason to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to other energy sources faster than what is already happening in the market.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  There's a serious problem in the market, which is that publicly traded corporations pay the people who run them largely in stock. This gives the people in charge a very short-term view, because their pay is based on the difference in share prices over a short period of time. What this means is that the market is very poor at long-term thinking and investing (which is why I agree with Andreesen about dual class stock structures). In short (and he sums it up better than I could, so read his article if you want clarification) our market has become very bad at long-term strategizing.
  - anamax 18y ago
    If you really believe that public corporations make bad economic decisions, you're investing in the correct decisions and are going to make a killing. You are betting your own money on being correct, aren't you?
anamax 18y ago
> But again, it's the boy who cried wolf. Even if they claimed the Earth was going to end 100 times, and 100 times they were incorrect, that doesn't mean time number 101 is incorrect too. The fact that a stopped clock is correct twice a day is no reason to consult it. It's both efficient and good to scorn and ignore folks who get it wrong consistently. > And given that both are currently cost-competitive (or nearing that) and will only get cheaper, now is clearly the time to begin the process. If they're really cost-competitive today and getting cheaper, no govt action is needed. If govt action is required to make it cost-competitive, it isn't cost-competitive.

aswanson 18y ago

The basis of his argument seems to be a character attack. There is no addressing of science in his argument, just "some people have a motive to lie to you, therefore global warming does not exist". Can't you see the logical flaw in that?

Prrometheus 18y ago
Most books by skeptics of the current order are simply dismissed. Lomborg's book caused a huge stir precisely because it was so packed full of data. It's really a masterpiece (though a bit dated now, it was written around 2001 or so).
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Right, in 2001 it was probably good to be skeptical. 7 or 8 years of data in favor of the "humans are causing climate change" argument has come in since then.