I’m an economist. If you look, if you ask some of the smartest scientists, even very skeptical scientists like Dick Lindzen from MIT or Pat Michaels, they tell us global warming is happening and it is manmade. But the point is it’s not the end of the world as it’s been told.Surprised to hear that the ranks of the skeptics had been thinned of two of its stars, I checked wth Lindzen and Michaels. Lindzen told me,
My statement has always been that there has probably been some increase in global mean temperature anomaly and that man’s activities make some contribution to this. From what I’ve seen, Lomborg probably doesn’t understand that this is profoundly different from what he claims I am saying.Michaels told me that while he has always believed that manmade greenhouse gas emissions have some effect on global climate, that effect is not great or even necessarily harmful. Being an economist, as Lomborg claims, does not excuse him from culpability for such a flagrant misstatement. The reality about Lomborg is that he is more like Al Gore in relevant part than not. Gore believes that manmade CO2 emissions are a problem and need to be reduced/eliminated. So does Lomborg. Gore says untrue things about skeptics. So does Lomborg. Here’s how I distinguish Gore from Lomborg. Gore is a scowling, straight, fat carnivore with dark hair. Lomborg is not. Lomborg’s schtick is glibly surfing the global warming alarmist wave as a T-shirted, Scandanavian Greenpeace-turncoat-cum-skeptic-poseur. So far, only genuine skeptics have clued into to his scam, but no longer. As Hearst movie reviewer Amy Biancolli put it,
But it’s also hard to shake the sense that Lomborg is promoting more than just a different perspective on climate debate. He’s promoting his book – and himself.You can watch Varney’s interview with Lomborg below:
Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and GreenHellBlog.com and is the author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them
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