Bjørn Lomborg, an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, founded and directs the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which seeks to study environmental problems and solutions using the best available analytical methods. He is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, the basis of an eponymous documentary film.
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Bjørn Lomborg
Commentaries by Bjørn Lomborg
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Hugging a Burning Tree
PRAGUE – We are all brought up to recycle paper to save trees. We get countless e-mail admonitions: “Please consider the environment before …
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The Electric Car’s Short Circuit
PRAGUE – For decades, the idea of the electric car has captured the imaginations of innovators – including Henry Ford and Thomas Edison more…
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Blinded by the Light
NEW YORK – On the evening of March 23, 1.3 billion people will go without light at 8:30, and at 9:30, and at 10:30, and for the rest of the …
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A Golden Rice Opportunity
SÃO PAULO – Finally, after 12 years of delay caused by opponents of genetically modified (GM) foods, so-called “golden rice” with vitamin A …
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The End of Pasta?
PRAGUE – Scare stories have been an integral part of the global warming narrative for a long time. Back in 1997, Al Gore told us that global…
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A Tale of Two Treaties
PRAGUE – The Doha meeting continued 20 years of failed climate negotiations, since the original Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. There, countrie…
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The Moral of Sandy
COPENHAGEN – When “superstorm” Sandy hit the east coast of the United States on October 29, it not only flooded the New York City Subway and…
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Scary Pictures
PRAGUE – Campaigners on important but complex issues, annoyed by the length of time required for public deliberations, often react by exagge…
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A Fracking Good Story
PRAGUE – Weather conditions around the world this summer have provided ample fodder for the global warming debate. Droughts and heat waves a…
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Like Water for Climate
MALMÖ – “Everyone knows” that you should drink eight glasses of water a day. After all, this is the advice of a multitude of health writers,…
Recent comment received by Bjørn Lomborg
Recent comments by Bjørn Lomborg
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Germany’s Sunshine Daydream
To Bill Thomas, October 13: I answered your cited critique already in March:
Response to "10 Huge German Solar Energy Myths Bjørn Lomborg is Trumpeting"
1. The two claims that I am “infamous for denying global warming’s existence” and then “flipped” are both wrong.
2. Regarding the “odd idea that deploying clean energy now isn’t the best way”. I think Germany’s $130bn price-tag for achieving next-to-nothing is an excellent example of why this isn’t such an “odd” idea.
3. “Solar power is already cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear”. Externalities of course should be included, but they are vastly overrepresented in most developed country fossil fuel taxes. If solar really is cheaper on a 6-8 year basis, many taxpayers would ask why, then, there is a need for subsidies.
4. “Cost of inaction”. The relevant question is whether the cost of action is greater than the benefit of that action. In this case, it is a matter of whether delaying warming by up to 23hrs is worth the $130bn expense.
5. “We MUST put up solar panels now to reduce CO2.” This is the exact strategy we’ve been trying for 20 years now, yet CO2 keeps ticking up. I’m simply pointing out that we need better and cheaper technology if we’re going to move beyond empty slogans and feel-good action.
6. “Germany’s solar panel policy has been a wild success”. Perhaps, but only if you measure “success” by how much money has been spent. This is rarely how most taxpayers see it.
7. “Solar produces green jobs”. No, actually, it simply subsidizes the creation of some jobs, while the extra taxes that fund those subsidies kill an equivalent number of jobs elsewhere. Job creation elsewhere in the economy has been shown to be cheaper and more effective. For more, read this analysis: http://bit.ly/xCjSDv
8. Germany’s subsidies are “having a tremendous, positive impact on CO2 emissions”. When Germany is part of the European ETS, more cuts in Germany simply mean others will emit more. Even if we accept the total, saved CO2 amounts over the next 20 years as estimated by the German Environment office, it only postpones global warming by 23 hours by the end of the century. Not tremendous.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/bj%C3%B8rn-lomborg/response-to-10-huge-german-solar-energy-myths-bj%C3%B8rn-lomborg-is-trumpeting/10150718165405039
Hugging a Burning Tree
Edward Ponderer: If something always fails to address a problem (or makes it work), and you continue to do it, either you are insane, you enjoy failure, or you are out of ideas and desperate. Assuming it is the last,…
Hugging a Burning Tree
marco bonvini: The post is misleading. The biomass the developed countries means to use come from poultry and cattle litter or wood chips from wood-work scratch and from forest-cleaning, and not from free standing f…