Bjorn Lomborg, Apparently Still Alive, Finds New Soapbox For Old Lies At Whore Street Journal

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Poor people and developing countries are at greater risk and will benefit from mitigation. While Lomborg attempts to sound well-meaning and concerned about poverty, it is difficult to find any evidence that his work does anything to alleviate poverty aside from critiquing climate change policy. There is no contradiction between lifting poor people out of poverty and cutting carbon emissions. In fact, many developing countries have created their own mitigation plans in response to a growing understanding of the acute threats they face.

Developing countries are also at greater risk since weather can gravely affect their economic activities such as farming and tourism. So any effort to help reduce the negative impacts of extreme weather on these basic economic functions of developing countries would help their economic development. Recent research has shown that extreme weather hampers economic growth in developing countries to a much greater degree than in developed. While Lomborg suggests that we should focus on relieving poverty, that’s the opposite conclusion of actual researchers, who say their study is evidence that we should limit warming to less than 2°C to protect developing economies. Specifically, the study author said that on a business as usual path (like that for which Lomborg advocates), “The average annual growth rate in poor regions is cut from 3.2% to 2.6%, which means that by 2100 per-capita GDP is 40% below reference.” Contrary to Lomborg’s claims, fighting climate change will in fact ensure developing countries are able to grow their economy and prosper.

Extreme weather events are worsening and the cost of adaptation is high. Lomborg picks up a thoroughly debunked line of attack from Roger Pielke Jr. regarding hurricanes and the impacts of extreme weather. Pielke’s ploy is to first cherry pick data, then “normalize” it for development, basically blaming the increase in losses from weather on increased wealth. That sort of analysis is so flawed that it caused FiveThirtyEight to apologize for publishing Pielke and recruit a more qualified scientist to rebut Pielke (who hasn’t written any other climate pieces for the site since his response to the controversial post). For more details, see our previous rebuttal of Pielke on the extreme weather damage and cost claims. Why Lomborg would chose this particularly well-debunked myth to propagate is a testament to his willingness to deceive his audience in service of the don’t worry mantra.

Renewable energy is cheap and growing much faster than fossil fuels. It is odd that Lomborg would criticize solar and wind power as being too expensive, yet in the next sentence advocate for new battery technology to facilitate their development. In reality, clean energy is cheap and getting cheaper, and in many areas renewables have reached grid parity with fossil fuels, meaning they are no more expensive than the dirty fuels Lomborg would have us continue to rely on. Developing nations are adopting clean energy quickly—at twice the pace as rich nations. So clearly they are more than “expensive, feel-good measures” as Lomborg claims if they are quite literally bringing light to the most impoverished areas of the planet. It turns out that renewables are so promising that they seem to be leapfrogging fossil fuels, which is why Bangladesh leads the world in small solar power home installations. The success story of renewables is, contrary to Lomborg’s opinion, something to be happy about.

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http://www.desmogblog.com/2015/02/02/lomborg-sings-wsj-s-same-old-climate-change-song-don-t-worry-be-happy