Tuesday 31 August 2010

Lomborg U-turn?

The Grauniad (I guess that's showing my age!) has an "exclusive" suggesting that Bjorn Lomborg's new book will declare that climate change is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today". The book will apparently call for significant investment in ways of resolving the climate change issue by the end of the century. That's an interesting timescale. Sure, climate effects show huge hysteresis but there's something a tad complacent about the way Lomborg's argument is put across. To be fair, it may be dodgy reporting rather than anything else but I just don't get any sense of urgency from the article. Also worrying is the implication that climate engineering is high on Lomborg's list of interventions. I quail at the thought of the law of unintended consequences once again letting rip!

Still, if the report is half-way accurate it's an interesting and timely publication given the problems that the IPCC faces at the moment. Perhaps Lomborg should not be compared with Hitler after all. (Actually I thought that was an absolutely crass statement by Pachauri and totally unworthy of someone in his position).

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