5 ms·

The single most well-reasoned talk on Global Warming that I have ever seen - Lomborg

54 points by Prrometheus 18y ago

mike_organon 18y ago
Interesting talk. Lomborg is not just a skeptic, he accepts warming as true and probably caused by humans, but his talk focuses on solving problem rather than wasting effort on carbon reductions. For example, if people are dying in heat waves and your goal is to actually save lives, cutting carbon will do next to nothing, but things like trees and water in cities (or air conditioning) would save many lives and be vastly less expensive. It makes you wonder what people's real goals are.
- gibsonf1 18y ago
  I was really impressed with the polar bear example. Some scientists believe that by mid-century, 1 polar bear will die every year because of warming. At the same time, we are killing 300-400 bears a year by shooting them. Wouldn't the better solution to spending 180bil a year be to shoot fewer bears? :)
  - Prrometheus 18y ago
    All articles I have seen talking about polar bears and global warming have made it seem like they were going to go extinct because of it. It is sobering to think about how misleading journalism is.
- newt0311 18y ago
  The efforts of most environmentalists become a lot easier to comprehend if you think of environmentalism and global warming as a religion.
  - netcan 18y ago
    I think this is an inevitable consequence of politicisation. Economics, for example is much more of a religion in countries (like the US) where the cold war had that sort of a political impact. In some places, history is more of a religion.
  - davidw 18y ago
    I don't know... I grew up in Oregon, and used to ride my mountain bike around in places like this: http://local.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=43.939069,-123.437147&spn=0.038628,0.11158&t=h&z=14 http://local.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=43.939069,-123.43714... and as a consequence am quite willing to believe that people can have far ranging, destructive consequences, and am willing to consider the fact that current environmental policy may do a poor job of dealing with certain negative externalities. Posts like this one, though, are yet more evidence of why these discussions are pointless. "Environmentalism is a religion" hah! Good one! In one snarky sentence, you get to call a broad and diverse movement (which ranges from people who are a bit bonkers to plenty of very reasonable people) a bunch of illogical doodyheads. Gee, if only more people would tell them this, maybe they'd see the light.
netcan 18y ago
For those without the time, this is the jist: Accept that climate change is real & man made. Reject the panic that goes along with the acceptance of this. Most carbon reduction plans are very costly to implement & according to climate change models result in a very modest average temperature reduction. The many arguments presented in favour of climate change policy are not a rational use of these funds. Urban heat related deaths can be prevented by painting roofs white & planting trees at a tiny fraction of the cost of reducing emissions. Polar bear deaths (1 per year due to warming) can more cheaply be prevented by not shooting them. Increased malaria fatalities (weak correlation between heat & malaria) can be more cheaply & effectively prevented by treating malaria. Basically, the approach to climate change uses inefficient technologies & approaches because it is a dumb debate with alarmists promoting multi-billion dollar projects that have virtually no effect (holding global warming off by one hour at the end of 100 years). From what I understand, he recommends investing technology, saving the money, treating the symptoms for now. I disagree somewhat, but that is a different comment. The speaker is calm, rational, a good speaker. It is worth listening to.
glymor 18y ago
I agree with Lombory's philosophy of pragmatism over ideology but I think his excessive focus on things heat deaths and polar bears in this talk amounts to a straw-man argument. The big danger of Global warming is that it shifts liveable areas in three ways. water shortages eg China, India anywhere draining from the Himalayas; more slowly general temperature increases moving productive zones outwards, eg desertification in North Africa and the possibility of Greenland's ice-sheet joining the ocean and raising sea levels. Water shortages could be solved by desalination and water conservation thankfully California will probably pay for the development; general migration will require the generally richer countries in the north to take more people (or those people will come all at once) and rising water levels: lots of dykes? (this is actually one of the few costs of Global Warming that wouldn't be recuperable and could be v. expensive). By picking small things that were never really advanced as the big dangers of Global Warming he seems more deceptive than the environmentalists he's attempting to criticise.
- Tichy 18y ago
  Definitely straw-man, this is the first time I have heard about "heat deaths" as a reason to care about global warming. Personally I am more worried about people losing their place to live, and ensuing conflicts over territory. I also doubt that using food as fuel for cars happens only as an anti-global-warming measure. I suspect since oil is expensive, people are looking for alternatives. Although there might be subsidies and carbon taxes messing with the price. Hm, now I am at 10 minutes and he is still talking about heat deaths. Not interesting (<hits stop button>).
- netcan 18y ago
  I agree that these are straw man arguments. I also reacted to them at first. But then he doesn't seem to rely on them too much. He admits that they are a metaphor. To be really convinced I would have liked to see him address issues like the likely major food shortage (technology will probably not solve this) & the likely major regional problems caused by mass migrations and/or wars over resources. However, his general argument is that a lot of money is being spent stupidly, very stupidly. I think that he is correct & that he makes that point. I am still hesitant to take his side on this. I have some major problems with this approach: (1) World Government - At the best of times governments are inefficient. For normal maintenance issues like how to run infrastructure, hospital systems, school systems & such they make mistakes, but they get by. Once issues become election winning issues, the debate gets really dumb. this is not only a central focus issue, it is a very technical issue. As he suggests, this is complicated & technical & every action needs to be weighed up. It's inefficient to simply take an ideological stance (renewable energy, energy efficiency, hybrid cars, etc) & get behind anything that promotes it. It is exponentially more rational to make this decision like an accountant creating a cash flow strategy. Unfortunately, it is impossible for a political process such as this to take on an accountant like decision making process. Political debates need to be much more dumbed down to be possible. In this case, this process can be seen as being conducted by the 'Government of the World,' a body very weak in the existence department, never mind the efficiency department. So in a real sense, if a policy can't be chanted by a mob, it cannot be pursued. Certainly not over the 50+ year period necessary. I just don't think that his 'plan' is a possibility. The political structure & decision making process here is our tool. We have a wood. He is proposing building a house from bricks. (2) Maybe panic is Necessary - Many predict that there is indeed a need for panic. That is possibly because of point of no return due to feedback. There are two kinds of feedback: the physical kind such as methane releases from melting permafrost, the political kind due to climate related political consequences such as a Chinese famine or a Pakistan/India war related to river flows. (3) Economic models break down at these sorts of concepts. Comparing economic outputs between two scenarios where one of them includes mass starvation is apples to oranges.
netcan 18y ago
At the end of the talk he cites a list of top Economists 'Best bang for you buck.' Anyone know any more about that? A link would be appreciated.
- berryg 18y ago
  http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=953 http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=953
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - netcan 18y ago
    Thank you
jsmcgd 18y ago
How can he not mention the significant threats posed by climate change and only mention polar bears and heat-wave deaths? What about the collapse of the Gulf Stream? What about the world's major cities and low lying countries being submerged in water? etc etc If climate change only amounted to the things he mentioned, I'd say pollute away but it has the potential for a genuine global catastrophe. Also where does he get his amazingly precise figures from and why does he keep mentioning Al Gore?
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  He starts with the UN IPCC estimates for what the effects of Global Warming are likely to be in the next 100 years, and bases his recommendations on that. If he doesn't address some doomsday scenario, then it is probably because no scientist thinks it particularly likely. It is a 30 minute talk, after all.
- jerf 18y ago
  The alternative is not "believe the worst global warming case" or "pollute away". The alternative isn't even "mankind is adversely affecting the environment" or not, since it's pretty obvious some things are being hurt. It's "what shall we spend our money on?", and if Global Warming is being grossly oversold, let's put that money into things that will actually matter, like fixing the Pacific dead zone or researching the amelioration of other real problems. If Global Warming hysteria is wrong, than panicking and destroying our economies over it is not noble. It is not even neutral. It is destructive, because of the resources that could have been spent solving real problems that got wasted instead. If Global Warming is hysteria and not fact, the hysteria itself is the single greatest threat facing the environment today. Skeptics like myself are often painted as anti-environmental; frankly, I return the change with gusto back to those who won't even consider the question of how to best spend our resources, but assume (with varying and often low degrees of justification) that they already know the answer. First we find the truth, then we figure out the solutions. I think the order has been inverted and that's bad engineering no matter how you slice it. (Not to mention the solutions sold for global warming that won't even fix the problem even if they work perfectly....)
jerry5 18y ago
Ah yes, hacker news, the haven for climate change denial. Be it denial that it's happening at all or denial that we should be doing something about it. I for one agree with netcat that panic might be necessary and will probably happen.
numair 18y ago
Whoa, weird! How did I end up on Climatologist News? Does anyone know where Hacker News went?
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  You can always form the connection by making sure your site is green certified: http://www.co2stats.com/certpro.php?s=1138&ref=http://news.ycombinator.com/news http://www.co2stats.com/certpro.php?s=1138&ref=http://ne... Nothing like the latest fad for making money.
peregrine 18y ago
Lets face it we are at a cossroads. Our population is growing exponentially, our technology is pacing with us. Our planet cannot sustain people and nature successfully without one giving way. I'd make the argument that spending money on technology to improve our well being with things like, Better plants, better growing techniques, safer drugs, more sustainable energy, cheaper housing, better schools and space travel technology. Improving all of those will help us take the next step as humanity and thats towords the moon.
- anamax 18y ago
  If you believe that population will continue to grow exponentially, reducing resource use per person linearly doesn't help. I note that population growth varies significantly with technology. Folks with TVs have fewer kids than those without. Folks with computers have even fewer.
  - netcan 18y ago
    OLPC as birth control?

54 points by Prrometheus 18y ago

Interesting talk. Lomborg is not just a skeptic, he accepts warming as true and probably caused by humans, but his talk focuses on solving problem rather than wasting effort on carbon reductions. For example, if people are dying in heat waves and your goal is to actually save lives, cutting carbon will do next to nothing, but things like trees and water in cities (or air conditioning) would save many lives and be vastly less expensive. It makes you wonder what people's real goals are.

gibsonf1 18y ago
I was really impressed with the polar bear example. Some scientists believe that by mid-century, 1 polar bear will die every year because of warming. At the same time, we are killing 300-400 bears a year by shooting them. Wouldn't the better solution to spending 180bil a year be to shoot fewer bears? :)
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  All articles I have seen talking about polar bears and global warming have made it seem like they were going to go extinct because of it. It is sobering to think about how misleading journalism is.
newt0311 18y ago
The efforts of most environmentalists become a lot easier to comprehend if you think of environmentalism and global warming as a religion.
- netcan 18y ago
  I think this is an inevitable consequence of politicisation. Economics, for example is much more of a religion in countries (like the US) where the cold war had that sort of a political impact. In some places, history is more of a religion.
- davidw 18y ago
  I don't know... I grew up in Oregon, and used to ride my mountain bike around in places like this: http://local.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=43.939069,-123.437147&spn=0.038628,0.11158&t=h&z=14 http://local.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=43.939069,-123.43714... and as a consequence am quite willing to believe that people can have far ranging, destructive consequences, and am willing to consider the fact that current environmental policy may do a poor job of dealing with certain negative externalities. Posts like this one, though, are yet more evidence of why these discussions are pointless. "Environmentalism is a religion" hah! Good one! In one snarky sentence, you get to call a broad and diverse movement (which ranges from people who are a bit bonkers to plenty of very reasonable people) a bunch of illogical doodyheads. Gee, if only more people would tell them this, maybe they'd see the light.

netcan 18y ago

For those without the time, this is the jist: Accept that climate change is real & man made. Reject the panic that goes along with the acceptance of this. Most carbon reduction plans are very costly to implement & according to climate change models result in a very modest average temperature reduction. The many arguments presented in favour of climate change policy are not a rational use of these funds. Urban heat related deaths can be prevented by painting roofs white & planting trees at a tiny fraction of the cost of reducing emissions. Polar bear deaths (1 per year due to warming) can more cheaply be prevented by not shooting them. Increased malaria fatalities (weak correlation between heat & malaria) can be more cheaply & effectively prevented by treating malaria. Basically, the approach to climate change uses inefficient technologies & approaches because it is a dumb debate with alarmists promoting multi-billion dollar projects that have virtually no effect (holding global warming off by one hour at the end of 100 years). From what I understand, he recommends investing technology, saving the money, treating the symptoms for now. I disagree somewhat, but that is a different comment. The speaker is calm, rational, a good speaker. It is worth listening to.

glymor 18y ago

I agree with Lombory's philosophy of pragmatism over ideology but I think his excessive focus on things heat deaths and polar bears in this talk amounts to a straw-man argument. The big danger of Global warming is that it shifts liveable areas in three ways. water shortages eg China, India anywhere draining from the Himalayas; more slowly general temperature increases moving productive zones outwards, eg desertification in North Africa and the possibility of Greenland's ice-sheet joining the ocean and raising sea levels. Water shortages could be solved by desalination and water conservation thankfully California will probably pay for the development; general migration will require the generally richer countries in the north to take more people (or those people will come all at once) and rising water levels: lots of dykes? (this is actually one of the few costs of Global Warming that wouldn't be recuperable and could be v. expensive). By picking small things that were never really advanced as the big dangers of Global Warming he seems more deceptive than the environmentalists he's attempting to criticise.

Tichy 18y ago
Definitely straw-man, this is the first time I have heard about "heat deaths" as a reason to care about global warming. Personally I am more worried about people losing their place to live, and ensuing conflicts over territory. I also doubt that using food as fuel for cars happens only as an anti-global-warming measure. I suspect since oil is expensive, people are looking for alternatives. Although there might be subsidies and carbon taxes messing with the price. Hm, now I am at 10 minutes and he is still talking about heat deaths. Not interesting (<hits stop button>).
netcan 18y ago
I agree that these are straw man arguments. I also reacted to them at first. But then he doesn't seem to rely on them too much. He admits that they are a metaphor. To be really convinced I would have liked to see him address issues like the likely major food shortage (technology will probably not solve this) & the likely major regional problems caused by mass migrations and/or wars over resources. However, his general argument is that a lot of money is being spent stupidly, very stupidly. I think that he is correct & that he makes that point. I am still hesitant to take his side on this. I have some major problems with this approach: (1) World Government - At the best of times governments are inefficient. For normal maintenance issues like how to run infrastructure, hospital systems, school systems & such they make mistakes, but they get by. Once issues become election winning issues, the debate gets really dumb. this is not only a central focus issue, it is a very technical issue. As he suggests, this is complicated & technical & every action needs to be weighed up. It's inefficient to simply take an ideological stance (renewable energy, energy efficiency, hybrid cars, etc) & get behind anything that promotes it. It is exponentially more rational to make this decision like an accountant creating a cash flow strategy. Unfortunately, it is impossible for a political process such as this to take on an accountant like decision making process. Political debates need to be much more dumbed down to be possible. In this case, this process can be seen as being conducted by the 'Government of the World,' a body very weak in the existence department, never mind the efficiency department. So in a real sense, if a policy can't be chanted by a mob, it cannot be pursued. Certainly not over the 50+ year period necessary. I just don't think that his 'plan' is a possibility. The political structure & decision making process here is our tool. We have a wood. He is proposing building a house from bricks. (2) Maybe panic is Necessary - Many predict that there is indeed a need for panic. That is possibly because of point of no return due to feedback. There are two kinds of feedback: the physical kind such as methane releases from melting permafrost, the political kind due to climate related political consequences such as a Chinese famine or a Pakistan/India war related to river flows. (3) Economic models break down at these sorts of concepts. Comparing economic outputs between two scenarios where one of them includes mass starvation is apples to oranges.

netcan 18y ago

At the end of the talk he cites a list of top Economists 'Best bang for you buck.' Anyone know any more about that? A link would be appreciated.

berryg 18y ago
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=953 http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/Default.aspx?ID=953
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- netcan 18y ago
  Thank you

jsmcgd 18y ago

How can he not mention the significant threats posed by climate change and only mention polar bears and heat-wave deaths? What about the collapse of the Gulf Stream? What about the world's major cities and low lying countries being submerged in water? etc etc If climate change only amounted to the things he mentioned, I'd say pollute away but it has the potential for a genuine global catastrophe. Also where does he get his amazingly precise figures from and why does he keep mentioning Al Gore?

Prrometheus 18y ago
He starts with the UN IPCC estimates for what the effects of Global Warming are likely to be in the next 100 years, and bases his recommendations on that. If he doesn't address some doomsday scenario, then it is probably because no scientist thinks it particularly likely. It is a 30 minute talk, after all.
jerf 18y ago
The alternative is not "believe the worst global warming case" or "pollute away". The alternative isn't even "mankind is adversely affecting the environment" or not, since it's pretty obvious some things are being hurt. It's "what shall we spend our money on?", and if Global Warming is being grossly oversold, let's put that money into things that will actually matter, like fixing the Pacific dead zone or researching the amelioration of other real problems. If Global Warming hysteria is wrong, than panicking and destroying our economies over it is not noble. It is not even neutral. It is destructive, because of the resources that could have been spent solving real problems that got wasted instead. If Global Warming is hysteria and not fact, the hysteria itself is the single greatest threat facing the environment today. Skeptics like myself are often painted as anti-environmental; frankly, I return the change with gusto back to those who won't even consider the question of how to best spend our resources, but assume (with varying and often low degrees of justification) that they already know the answer. First we find the truth, then we figure out the solutions. I think the order has been inverted and that's bad engineering no matter how you slice it. (Not to mention the solutions sold for global warming that won't even fix the problem even if they work perfectly....)

jerry5 18y ago

Ah yes, hacker news, the haven for climate change denial. Be it denial that it's happening at all or denial that we should be doing something about it. I for one agree with netcat that panic might be necessary and will probably happen.

numair 18y ago

Whoa, weird! How did I end up on Climatologist News? Does anyone know where Hacker News went?

Prrometheus 18y ago
You can always form the connection by making sure your site is green certified: http://www.co2stats.com/certpro.php?s=1138&ref=http://news.ycombinator.com/news http://www.co2stats.com/certpro.php?s=1138&ref=http://ne... Nothing like the latest fad for making money.

peregrine 18y ago

Lets face it we are at a cossroads. Our population is growing exponentially, our technology is pacing with us. Our planet cannot sustain people and nature successfully without one giving way. I'd make the argument that spending money on technology to improve our well being with things like, Better plants, better growing techniques, safer drugs, more sustainable energy, cheaper housing, better schools and space travel technology. Improving all of those will help us take the next step as humanity and thats towords the moon.

anamax 18y ago
If you believe that population will continue to grow exponentially, reducing resource use per person linearly doesn't help. I note that population growth varies significantly with technology. Folks with TVs have fewer kids than those without. Folks with computers have even fewer.
- netcan 18y ago
  OLPC as birth control?