Global Warming – Missing of the Minds

George Rebane

[This commentary was broadcast tonight on KVMR-FM 89.5 as the latest offering of my bi-weekly series that is gratefully tolerated by the station's management.]

We have spent at least the last ten years talking past each other about global warming.  The combatants divide themselves mostly into two camps, each with provocative names for the other.  Most often heard from are the so-called True Believers who are convinced that 1) global warming is real and catastrophic, 2) that it is manmade, and 3) that drastic cuts in carbon emissions is the only workable solution.

From the other side the so-called Deniers believe that 1) global warming, or whatever is happening today, is part of normal climate change, 2) human activity has minimal effect on climate, and 3) drastic cuts in carbon emissions will destroy the economies that make all environmental progress possible.

And then there are the Skeptics who somehow get lost in the shouting, and wind up being pushed into one camp or the other.  The Skeptics believe that 1) climate change is occurring, 2) while it may true, man-made catastrophic global warming has yet to be proved scientifically – i.e. the debate is not over, and 3) drastic cuts in carbon emissions will not affect the course of earth’s climate, and will definitely impair our ability to improve our environment, and deal with many more pressing problems in the world.

Dr Bjorn Lomborg, founded and runs Copenhagen Consensus Center, a world-renown think tank in that city.  Lomborg also authored The Skeptical Environmentalist, and more recently Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming.  He and an invited panel of noted scientists recently did a cost/benefit analysis of solutions to ten of the world’s most pressing problems such as malnutrition, unsafe drinking water, malaria, and terrorism.  They found that every dollar invested in fighting malnutrition yielded almost $20 benefits.  But cutting carbon was near the bottom of the list and yielded a net loss - less than a dollar benefit for every dollar spent.

When Lomborg initially refused to join Al Gore’s global warming propaganda parade, he was immediately consigned to the Deniers’ corner without anyone having either read or understood his position and counsel.  And when Copenhagen Consensus recently published their list of the ten most important world problems that now included global warming, the propagandists immediately heralded that Lomberg had made a U-turn.  Lomberg has received a noisy welcome from the True Believers who have had some credibility problems recently.

Now all this has done is to underline the fate of reasoned debate in the public forum.  Lomborg still retains his special membership in the Skeptics club.  Actually all Skeptics have a special membership in the club, because each has a nuanced set of reasons why the global warming issue should not be treated as a rushed choice between black and white.  For example, being of a more socialist bent, Lomborg also believes in “massive increases in R&D funding for green energy technologies and geo-engineering”, these presumably coming mostly from governments.  But he does not promote the attendant command & control economies that many think should come with such funding programs.  Capitalism and free markets still have a role in the effective implementation of such new technologies.

In trying to make his voice heard over the confused celebrations of his supposed U-turn on global warming, Lomborg states that – “If we truly want to make progress on climate change, we must acknowledge a middle way—one that recognizes that while we do need to deal with the reality of global warming, solutions based on worst-case scenarios will actually do more harm than good.  The smart middle path means making green energy so cheap everyone wants it.”

And I too can live with that approach to global warming.

This is George Rebane and I also expand on these and other issues in my Union columns, on NCTV, and on georgerebane.com where this transcript appears.  These opinions are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

Comments

[Russ Steele]

Excellent George. If global warming is real, the free markets will be the right solution. Centralized command and control has failed every time it has been tried through out history. If individuals think that climate change is an issue, they will act accordingly. They do not need government funded NGOs like the Sierra Club or Sierra Business Council to tell them how to live their lives in a changing world. Humans exist today because they could adapt to the changing environment. I just hope they are preparing for the brutal cold in our future.

[Bob Hobert]

Lomborg is an excellent read for both sides. Here's an introduction by Bill Steigerwald to Lomborg's latest book. "Cool It" is not the first book Denmark's Bjorn Lomborg has written about global warming. Lomborg's heretical 2001 best-seller, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," drew a firestorm of nasty criticism and unveiled hatred from environmentalists and the global warming crowd because it said most of the bad effects of climate change have been grossly exaggerated. Named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2004, Lomborg -- a statistician by training -- believes global warming is occurring. But he also believes we should approach the problem rationally -- which means not wasting all our energy and resources today on global warming's long-run effects when there are more-pressing human-killing problems like malaria and malnutrition we should be addressing." Lomborg is a singular rational voice on the pro-warming side. I personally believe we live and thrive in one of Earth's brief interglacial (warming) periods and should therefore maximize the opportunity.

[D. King]

The problem I have with this….is this:

http://tinyurl.com/2fhm6xx

There is no way around it.

It is unforgivable!

[Anna Haynes]

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/21/book-review-the-lomborg-deception.html
("when Friel began checking Lomborg's sources, "I found problems," he says. "As an experiment, I looked up one of his footnotes, found that it didn't support what he said, and then did another, and kept going, finding the same pattern." He therefore took on the Augean stables undertaking of checking every one of the hundreds of citations in Cool It. Friel's conclusion, as per his book's title, is that Lomborg is "a performance artist disguised as an academic."")

[Anna Haynes]

Dr. Rebane, would you characterize your colleague Russ Steele as a Denier or as a Skeptic?

(Confidential to D. King: Europe is a rather small part of a much larger planet. There is variation between regions.)

[D. King]

Here, this should help.

http://tinyurl.com/ydzflss

[George Rebane]

Thanks Dave, that's an impressive graphic on which to look for catastrophic global warming.

[Bob Hobert]

Confidential to Anna - did you fact check author Howard Friel? Or Newsweek - Newsweek Predicts Dire Consequences of Global Cooling - April 28, 1975 http://denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm. There's a reason Newsweek is going out of business. I believe we should check all the facts, and check the fact checkers too. Few true scientists will remain.

[Bob Hobert]

Dang link didn't fact check....here's more

http://dogpile.com/dogpile/ws/results/Web/Newsweek%20April%2028%2C%201975/1/417/TopNavigation/Relevance/iq=true/zoom=off/_iceUrlFlag=7?_IceUrl=true

[Bob Hobert]

While fact checking myself I found my link above fails. However, if you copy and paste it into your browser it opens properly. Go figure. Here's another - may work the same way http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf

[Anna Haynes]

My KVMR commentary response to Rebane -
http://ncfocus.blogspot.com/2010/09/kvmr-climate-commentary-response-to.html

to Bob Hobert, thank you for using your real name.

> "Confidential to Anna - did you fact check author Howard Friel?"

no, but Sharon Begley (the article's author) did. (FYI: I included the link so you could read her review; perhaps when you read it you overlooked the section where she explains what she did?)

re the global cooling claim, it's best to check assertions like this against SkepticalScience.com
(the Snopes for standard climate-delay claims)
as QC to help ensure that your comments are high quality.

[Anna Haynes]

D. King, beware of cherrypickers. Given enough data (or in this case, data for enough locales), a PR guy - by selectively reporting only those parts that support his predecided conclusion (which is called intellectual dishonesty in science) - can spin just about any tale their employer pays them to.
That's PR, not science.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period.htm