No, this is not another "How many carbon credits would Jesus take out" post. Bjorn Lomborg has suffered a torrent of abuse for trying to be thoughtful about environmental issues. Here is an example from his New York Post article about Al Gore:
Global warming is indeed real, as has been pointed out several times by the U.N. Climate Panel (the so-called IPCC). Over the coming century, temperatures will likely increase about 5ºF. The total cost of global warming is anything but trivial, about $15 trillion. Yet it is only about one-half of 1 percent of the total net worth of the 21st century, about $3,000 trillion.
Yes, the media often carry far more dire descriptions of warming's consequences. Gore, for example: "We have just 10 years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced." A fine phrase for such talk is "climate porn": This kind of language makes any sensible policy dialogue about our global choices impossible.
If Gore's rhetoric was sound, the only alternative to global catastrophe would be for all of us to gird up our loin cloths and go back to herding sheep. Lomborg's analysis, by contrast, gives us a way to think about reasonable alternatives. Can we halt global warming for less than the half percent of the world's economy that global warming is estimated to cost? No one is offering a solution for that kind of price tag. While we are trying to balance the ledger on dollars, what about lives?
W E often hear about global warming causing more heat deaths - but very little about cold deaths. It is true that, for example, the temperature rise from global warming will probably cause 2,000 more heat deaths in the United Kingdom by 2080. Yet studies indicate that the same temperature increase will also decrease cold deaths - 20,000 fewer U.K. cold deaths by 2080. Mentioning 2,000 more deaths, but not the 20,000 fewer cold deaths that go with them, is no basis for sound policy.
For the United States, the net lower death count from global warming in 2050 is estimated at 174,000 per year.
More people die of heat exhaustion due to global warming. That is bad. A lot fewer people freeze their nuts off. That is good. And what about those rising sea levels?
The 2007 U.N. report on the issue esti mated that sea levels will rise a little over a foot during the rest of the century. This is not a trivial amount - but it is also not outside historical experience. Since 1850, we have experienced a sea level rise of about one foot, yet this has clearly not caused major disruptions.
Ask a very old person about the most important issues that took place in the 20th century. She will likely mention two world wars, the Cold War, the internal combustion engine and perhaps the IT revolution. But it is very unlikely that she will add: Oh, and sea levels rose.
Gore wants to scare us. Lomborg wants to inform us. Only the latter is of any use in forming policy.
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