Jordan Peterson and Bjørn Lomborg

Video of a recent (December 7) discussion between Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, author and President of Copenhagen Consensus Center, a US-based think tank. and Dr. Jordan Peterson specifically on climate change and the economic arguments, for and against taking measures to address it.  Hour and a half.



101 thoughts on “Jordan Peterson and Bjørn Lomborg

      • I started there, but couldn’t watch when Bjørn Lomborg started his first rejoinder. He said that taking anomalies reduces error. It doesn’t.

        If anything taking anomalies increases uncertainty, and may increase error, too.

        I’ve heard that nonsense so many times it makes me sick.

        Bjørn Lomborg doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it gets to the nitty-gritty details of physical science. I don’t blame him. He’s otherwise trained.

        But I stopped watching. What’s the point of watching a debate based on wrong assumptions.

        • Ditto. Listened to about 3 minutes total of the yap from 30-39 minutes.
          If the CCC were actually up to date on genuine scientific publications they would have to fold up shop. Its not just wrong assumptions, but “research” perpetrated on misunderstood and wrongly applied principles.

  1. Raising the profile of Dr Peterson – nothing wrong with that. He packs more uncommon sense into an hour than most Canadian social science academics do in their careers.

    • I think the secret to his success is his radical honesty. Saying something of which he is not absolutely certain feels weak to him. To the best of his ability, he tries not to do that. That means he actually thinks about every word that comes from his mouth.

      When some slime-ball, devious, smarter-than-thou, interviewer tries to twist his words and put words into his mouth, his response is swift and forceful: “I didn’t say that. Here’s what I really said.”. It’s devastating. link

      The other thing about Peterson is his subject matter expertise. It’s very strong and, again, he doesn’t deviate from what he actually knows to be true.

      • He thinks that there is something inward that guides a man’s tongue. If it says “yay” about something, he says it; if “nay”, he doesn’t (at least that’s the rule he tries to live by). In a way he has found the secret of life.

        • None other than Jesus Christ said; “Let your yes mean yes, and no mean no, anything else comes from the EVIL one”. Words to live by.

          • He also said something like “Everyone will be judged by the words they speak. Whether of life unto life, or of death unto death” (paraphrasing, of course)

  2. higher fossil fuel taxes will benefit the earth..
    too bad about the people(ask the French how they like it)

      • Since it’s such a new technology (or technoLAHgy as an Indian friend used to say – still haven’t gotten that out of my head) that most people have probably not heard of, it’s probably good that I explain what it does. FG meters measure the concern that something has about something else. For example, when measuring the earth about its concern for higher fossil fuel taxes, zero (0) FGs are measured, i.e., zero Fuhcks Given.

  3. Actually probably the most important talk and release of the day out of Europe was Germany’s Environment minister Svenja Schulze and press release stating the new German position of “just transition” in coal regions.

    According to most they are very nervous of a Yellow Vest type group getting up in coal regions in Germany which without the taints of the far right would become a real political force. It will be interestign to see what greenies and there NGO’s make of the shift as they are becoming more and more isolated.

  4. Every now and then, a figure arises who helps us cut through the cluttered psyche of the times and get to an essential understanding of issues confronting us.
    Dr. Peterson is one who fulfills that role.

    (This in no way short sells Bjørn Lomborg.)

        • True, and I disagree with him vehemently on that issue, AND with his support of “renewable” energy being a “necessary” future path. However, he at least has the common sense to point out the fallacy of “climate action/policy/etc.” (a) having any meaningful effect, and (b) being worth the cost. And without the coveted “policy” power, the “raison d’etre” of the “green”/globalist/eco-fascist movement is gone.

          • AGW is not Science.

            It is still very interesting, as interesting as Dr. J. Peterson could make it.

            You see, is very interesting to actually be shown and explained some very interesting ideas that lead to simple very interesting conclusions.
            (like the one you disagree with)
            Like the idea of a solution to a probable AGW in a context of soft smart and responsible renewable energy approach solutions.

            Where the interesting conclusion consist that if done smartly, softly and responsibly it could work if the global economy is ran by a Bangladeshi like government, in Bangladeshi manner, when in the same time, at the very least in USA, the number of
            Republicans involved in politics and the government is far far far lower than in the present or any other time before,
            and when also there never to be a Republican President for as long as it could take for the solution offered by such interested ideas to reach actual successful conclusion in reality, making the future world a better one that it could otherwise.

            Tough, I know, but still as the saying goes “miracles do happen”, especially when ideas
            coming out of economics can develop to a very interesting degree with some very interesting political flavor.

            That is what the best I got from this discussion…

            Still, regardless of my understanding, got to say:

            Thank you very much to Dr. Peterson, for all his work and effort, including this very interesting discussion with Mr. B. Lomborg.


        • I don’t think he actually has, I think he is too busy to determine whether the IPCC is right or wrong and just starts from the premise that you have to start somewhere and that whether they are right or wrong is not important to his conclusions that money would be better spent on issues other than climate change.

        • “Bjorn Lomborg has bought the koolaid lies of climate scientists.” I disagree. I think he is just being strategic. He references Nobel Laureate William Nordhouse.

        • Bjørn Lomborg is not a scientist atmospheric, climate, meteorological or physical. He’s not an economist either though he works with economists at his institute on his social cost-benefit projects. He’s a political scientist, a politician, a community organiser, who naturally believes the IPCC, but who knows the costs, who accepts the limitations in available funds, and who wants to do the most good in terms of a quantifiable economic benefit with the available resources already being spent. One number he mentioned that sticks in my mind is that the world spends about $120 Billion per year in renewable energy subsidies for wind and solar. And that if we keep spending that amount per year the total beneficial impact of that immense amount will be a saving of some small, uncertain percentage of a total estimated GDP loss of 2-4% by the year 2100 caused by AGW/CC. Jordan Peterson respects the rational approach BL has taken to rank order the world’s problems by which ones can be largely solved with relatively small sums of cash today and the amount of financial benefit per $dollar of international aid spent. Lomborg is not a catastrophist, accepts that little benefit will be achieved and knows the high cost of climate political solutions (while the average Western citizen is only willing to pay $100) yet has never been skeptical enough to doubt the scientific validity of what the IPCC scientists have written and told him that’s been falsified or proven to be greatly exaggerated over the years.

      • Generally, the smearing from the left follows this pattern:

        1) you aren’t qualified, so shut up and listen to your intellectual betters; or

        2) you may be qualified, but obviously in the pay of Big Oil, so even though we can’t actually refute anything you say as we aren’t qualified (in things like math and science), we know you’re wrong.

        For example, Anthony is smeared (by “climate scientists”) as being unqualified in climate discussions as he is a mere meteorologist, and smeared by non-scientists (i.e., sociologists, philosophers, warmists in general) as being simply wrong.

        If we had this sort of scientific method back 2 or 3 hundred years ago, we’d be freezing in the dark without antibiotics, etc.

        Come to think of it…that looks like our future as well.

    • This is a terrific discussion. So many relevant points by BL and JP…

      Yes . LB ‘How to prioritize ‘bang for the buck.’ Good pragmatic question but JP doesn’t take the problem of cli-sci AGW, like BL, at face value on the opinion of experts.’ Think Feynman re evidence.

      BL does raise the issue, we’re not good at predicting, to which let’s add flawed climate modelling projections, JP notes errors…

      and serfs like BL reference to the NATION STAT\E decision making, not yr Soros, Big Al/Trilateral Commision/EU/UN non-elected,globalist guvuhmint from afar.

  5. Another recent quote from Professor Peterson wrt to AGW.

    During the question and answer period of an invited lecture at the Cambridge Union, the oldest debating society in the world, University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson said “you can’t trust the data” behind the science used by climate alarmists to demand government action to end fossil fuel use to fight climate change, because it has been grossly politicized.
    Peterson, who served on a United Nations sustainable development committee for two years where he worked on environmental issues, including purported global warming, said,
    “[I]t’s very difficult to separate the science from the politics. …. Here’s one of the worst things about the whole mess, so, as you project outwards with regards to your climate change projections, which are quite unreliable to begin with, the unreliability of the measurement magnifies as you move forward in time, obviously, because the errors accumulate. If you go out 50 years, the error bars around the projections are already so wide that we won’t be able to measure the positive or negative effects of anything we do right now. So how in the world are you going to solve a problem when you can’t even measure the consequence of your actions?”
    Peterson cited Germany as an example of the harm resulting from futile government efforts to fight supposed anthropogenic climate change. Despite investing hundreds of billions of dollars on wind and solar energy, Germany will miss its 2020 goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, Peterson noted.
    “[Germany’s climate program] was a complete catastrophe, and all that happened was the price of electricity shot up,” said Peterson. “That’s not a solution.”
    Even if humans are contributing to climate change, the sacrifices necessary to mitigate it are far worse than harms that might result from it, Peterson argued.
    “Well, what are we going to do?” Peterson said “Are you going to stop having heat? You’re going to stop having electricity? You’re going to stop driving your cars? You’re going to stop taking trains? You’re going to stop using your iPhones? You’re not going to do any of that, and no wonder.”


      And there’s the rub, in a nutshell.

      “Fighting climate change” is futile, with or without any supposed human “influence.” It’s like having a “war on the tides.” ADAPTING is the ONLY thing we can ever do about “climate change.”

      • Precisely, AGW: If the alarmists think they ‘know’ what the effects of AGW are, I suspect they have not a clue as to the effects of the sacrifices required to, in their heads, mitigate the effect. Whose to say that the decarbonisation of the (western) world will not be a cure worse than the (supposed) disease?

    • But then how many people know that Earth is actually in one of its coldest moments in history , we are in an ice age,and that CO2 was at a critically low level, to sustain life as we know it on Earth, before humans started pumping back a little bit of all that sequestrated life giving molecule?
      Just imagine if those climate alarmists would have lived 12000 years ago how they would have panic seeing all that ice on Canada disappear and sea level rise 120 meters.
      So my question is what’s wrong with Earth being much warmer as on average temperatures in the past were much higher and life boomed and what’s good about much colder?

  6. Try googling “Jordan Peterson climate” to see PC smearing at work there, very different to the outcome on DuckDuckGo.

    • Wow! Everyone who read your suggestion should try it. Google really lays the propaganda on thick.

      You can find the same links on DuckDuckGo, but they’re interspersed with other links more favorable to Peterson, rather than all clustered on the first page. The first five results (in my case) were clearly anti-Peterson (if you include Wikipedia, which I didn’t scan, but is almost bound to be hard on Peterson.)

      DuckDuckGo’s first five were a mixed bag of anti and pro Peterson, much more objective.

      It would be interesting to know how Google tweaked its algorithm to get that result. Does it focus on climate generally, or on skeptics generally, or on Peterson in particular, or a combination of all three?

      But Google serves up different results to different people. I wonder what a warmists gets for results?

      • “It would be interesting to know how Google tweaked its algorithm to get that result.”

        A Google employee gives the algorithm a list of names and what to do with them if they pop up in a search. The Google spy network determines which names are favorable to Google’s position on any particular subject, and which names are not, and then acts to suppress those names that don’t agree with the Google Elites’ worldview.

        That would be my guess. 🙂

      • What is the difference how they do it?
        They suppress anything that runs counter to liberal narratives.
        Anything beyond that simple knowledge is irrelevant, IMO.
        A distraction from the basic fact.

    • Incidentally, given Peterson’s recent notoriety, he should consider investigating the treatment he gets from Google and discussing it in his forums. He could open a lot of eyes. Facebook and Twitter too.

    • Speaking of Google, their CEO just committed perjury yesterday when he flat out lied to congress about this. I sure hope they pursue this deliberate lie at least half as much as the unintentional lies of General Flynn.

      • Not long ago a Fox News reporter took two smart phones, removed both sim cards, put one in airplane mode and left the other in normal mode. Neither phone could connect to anything.

        The reporter then traveled around the city all day long with the disabled smart phones in his pocket the whole time. He then went and hooked up a piece of hardware that acted as a “man in the middle” so that when he put the sim cards back in the phones and connected, his hardware would record anything the phones sent to Google.

        Both phones sent the reporter’s entire day to Google! Everything from his location to whether he was on foot or not.

        So even when your smartphone is disabled and cannot connect, it is still gathering information on you which it will transmit to Google at the first reconnection.

        So I would have to agree with you that Google’s head committed perjury before Congress. Unless he is unaware of this type of behavior by smartphones like this reporter’s. I suppose that is possible, but I’m skeptical. 🙂

        • We were recently travelling and a friend was using Waze on his phone. We commented on passing a Jack-In-the-Box and, being Canadian, had never eaten there. That’s all we did.

          That night, the first ad on my (Android) tablet was for…Jack-In-the-Box.

          Maybe a coincidence, but these days…I’d put a little money on corporation creeping…

          • Not a coincidence.
            As for that reporter, was GPS location disabled?
            Merely putting the phone in airplane mode and removing the sim card just means you have kept it from exchanging data while airplane mode is engaged, and kept it from making phone calls.
            You need to go in settings to change what the phone is doing in real time.
            I am curious if disabling location services actually keeps the phone from keeping track of where you are?

        • That’s why at the moment they stopped promoting mandatory chip implants. Everyone carries around such a device voluntary.

  7. I watched and listened to Professor Peterson during his Cambridge Union lecture. It’s very telling what he did not add in the last paragraph sent in by Julian. The one explosive issue that no one seems to want to mention is that as renewable electricity supply becomes more unreliable and erratic and expensive the world economies will collapse especially the successful ones of the modern age. The likelihood is that we will see massive unemployment and job losses as we deindustrialise our economies. This will no doubt lead to possible serious civil unrest and I think we are starting to see this in Paris last week, once standards of living begin to diminish all hell may break loose, with the exception of the very wealthy and that may be another story for a later date.

    • I disagree. Modes of production and those necessary to infrastructure, military and public safety will receive energy from the grid as needed. All other public users will have their energy use metered to prevent grid collapse or to meet conservation targets. Why do you think you already have a smart meter installed at your house? Electric conservation will become mandatory for the peons.

      • Steve, what you say here:

        leads to what Mike says here:

        the “peons” will only take so much before they start revolting, as we see with the yellow vests

        • That electricity will be “metered” by Limiting the flow of electricity to the home/appliance, NOT by measuring the amount.
          That means that devices that use large amounts of electricity will have relays that disconnect them from the grid and from your solar panel if you have one so that more can be delivered to the grid. That means the AC, HW Heater. Dryer, Freezer, refrigerator, etc. will be shut off. Then, if it is not enough reduction the voltage will be decreased. That means the life of your refrigerator, AC, etc. will be reduced – thus you get to pay even more for the unreliable power.

          • Usurbrain


            And just “who” is going to pay for all of these modifications to 210 million existing circuit breaker boards and house wiring inspections, cleanup, repairs, and rebuilds?

          • RACookPE1978 – “And just “who” is going to pay for all of these modifications” [Is that PE mechanical? Electrical would know.]

            Here is one LARGE utility that “Gives” them away and makes you feel good doing it. – >

            I have lived in a home with utility control of the HW heater, another with timed lockout of the lower element (used for normal heating of the entire tank) of the HW heater and another with control of the AC. What do you think the internet of things is going to do? Already part of the newest home HVAC systems.

      • “All other public users will have their energy use metered to prevent grid collapse ”

        Sounds like 1984 to me Steve. It is NOT the kind of world I want to live in. And if France is a good example, us ordinary folk won’t accept that kind of world either. Green technology has no future. Only nuclear will solve the power grid shortages that you meekly accept.

        • My dad is 87 and lives alone in Northern Ontario. Here, we get most of our energy from hydroelectric, nukes and gas:

          Nuclear 9,831 MW
          Hydro 4,683 MW
          Gas 3,777 MW
          Wind 216 MW
          Solar 48 MW
          Biofuel 207 MW

          His electricity is intermittent, especially in winter (due to transmission lines, not production).

          As he has for the last 87 winters of his life (he lives literally a mile from where he was born at home), he uses wood, with oil furnace back up. He could “only” cut 5 cord this year on his own property (see: 87 years old), so had to buy another 15.

          God help the bureaucrat who tries to tax his wood lot, or the cash cord wood business….

      • The scary thing is that regulated electric utilities now include load shedding (load management) in their resource plans.

  8. The way to fully optimize spending, IMO, is to transfer the costs of climate research to low carbon energy research. What is the point of spending billions of dollars on climate research, when the climate researchers themselves say that climate science is settled and non-debatable, instead of spending those monies on research on what they themselves claim to be the solution to the “problem”, i.e., low carbon energy?

    Low carbon energy research is essential to a safe transition to low carbon energy because existing low carbon energy technology is unable to sustain an industrialized economy. For example, air travel/cargo, ocean cargo, etc. The system would collapse without a sensible application of feasible technology.

    Attempted transition by fiat before mature, feasible technologies are available would be disastrous. So let’s do the sensible thing and defund climate science and apply those funds to low carbon energy research. I would love to drive an electric car that performs at the same level as my existing I/C car.

      • Yeah. And good luck ‘splaining to the over-educated, under-learned uni grads who know everything that 216+48 isn’t very close at all to 9,831…

        Nuclear 9,831 MW
        Hydro 4,683 MW
        Gas 3,777 MW
        Wind 216 MW
        Solar 48 MW
        Biofuel 207 MW

        • But I’ll guarantee that the 216 + 48 takes up a Heck of a lot more area than the 9831 does even the 9831 + 3777 combined will require far less space than the 216 + 48

          • Careful: once they get over basic math like addition, we can move them onto obscure subjects like “area”. Too much to digest for those whose major academic accomplishments are using the correct gender pronouns and knowing where the safe spaces are on campus.

            I’m always amused by those “this wind farm creates enough energy to power 2,000 homes” ads that never seem to have an asterisk (for “when the wind actually blows”) or a footnote that says “1. This city has 500,000 homes”.

          • If it’s so low hanging, why doesn’t it exist in operation? While Molten Salt sounds promising, so does most vaporware. The proof is in the pudding not in the talking about how great the pudding is. When Molten Salt comes online in commercial operation (i.e. we have some real world data as to it’s power output, cost effectiveness, etc.) then and only then can we discuss how much of a low hanging clean energy source it really is.

    • Hopefully JP will continue to explore the psychology behind this crucial subject with others.
      The logic and reasoning seemed sound to me at the beginning of this discussion.
      Check out the comments on Bjorn Lomborg’s twitter page. He’s facing challenging opinions on wasting money on renewables.

  9. His arguments against pouring money into stopping climate change is still very weak. How about a reality based argument that acknowledges that the Earth is in the Quaternary Ice Age and that it is an unequivocal fact that without humans adding CO2 to the atmosphere then glaciers would eventually completely destroy many nations and reduce considerably the percent of arable land on this planet? Add that fact into the cost benefit analysis and even Ray Charles can see that CO2 emissions are a huge benefit to society, however, it is still very likely that even high emission scenarios will not stop the next glacial period.

    • Maybe that is the plan. Note which nations will be destroyed. LOL On the flip side if we are really having global warming, it is a game changer for Russia from a geo-political perspective. Massive number of new year round warm water ports and usable land area.

    • If the climate sensitivity to CO2 is as low as many suspect, which, IMO, it almost sure is (just look at the paleo record, and oh BTW the past 20 years), then the added CO2 from burning fossil fuels will have little if any mitigating effect when the interglacial decides it is over.
      For a long time I was convinced that the Milankovitch cycles explained the advances and retreats pretty much completely, but it seems that there is ample reason to doubt this is the case, or at least all there is to the story.
      IOW…we do not really know why the past 4 interglacials have lasted only about 10k years, or why for millions of years they operated on one schedule, but then suddenly changed to a different schedule more recently.
      The GISP data ought to give everyone serious reason to be more than a little worried.
      But I doubt anyone alive today will know anything about it when the interglacial ends.
      And I am certain no one alive today is going to prevent it from happening, whenever that is.

  10. Listened to the entire program, and found it quite fascinating. Yes, Lomborg assumes the IPCC scientists are probably correct, but the interesting thing is that from a policy standpoint, it doesn’t matter because there are in fact way better, more cost-effective things to do with our money. He also seems to have fallen for the “fossil fuel subsidies” meme, but he still firmly believes we need fossil fuels, as they are a lot cheaper than “green” energy.

    • It seems to me he is not skeptical of anything regarding the science.
      What he is, is realistic: He knows and is willing to say that as long as there is fuel in the ground to be dug and pumped and burned, people are not going to willingly freeze to death, starve, or even be reduced to abject poverty.
      No chance…the politicians can try, but they will not last long when people start dying.

  11. A recent article in the Guardian makes me wonder how accurate and conclusive these climate models are. The article makes me feel that we have just considered only the visible portion of the iceberg of CO2/CH4, etc generating organisms. Yet we are worried about Cow flatulence and advising the global population change their diet accordingly.

    Scientists identify vast underground ecosystem containing billions of micro-organisms | Science | The Guardian

  12. It always impresses me, and slightly disorientates me when I hear a foreign born person speaking perfect unaccented American English.

    30 years ago someone like that would have a slight British accent. Not so much anymore.

      • Some actors are, other not so much. I’ve heard some pretty abysmal attempts at accents come out of otherwise decent actors mouths.

    • Ten years ago I met in person a guy who is a chemical engineer from Spain, who moved to the US when he was 17 or so.
      He spoke perfect unaccented English, not even a Texas accent even though he had lived in Texas since he came here.
      I could barely believe it, and asked him how he was able to do it.
      He said he decided he did not want to have any accent, so learned to speak exactly as people here speak.

      • Growing up, I knew several families who had moved to the US as a group at various times…from such places as Chile, England, etc.
        What I found out from them is that anyone who was under the age of seven has no accent at all, without ever thinking about it.
        Those over seven when they moved had an accent.
        It did not matter how long ago it was.

  13. My favourite economist-author being interviewed by my favourite psychologist-author. Too much common sense in one interview for the luke warmers and alarmists to take in, in one go.

    • Large numbers of people have their entire career and reputation on the line.
      They have painted themselves into a corner in a way which is irreversible.
      They cannot just “give it up”.
      That is one of the really big problems, even after we start cooling more than they can possibly cover up.

  14. 2,5 M dollar and 18 month to get an evaluation of Canadas spending priorities seems to be very well spent money.

  15. Bjorn Lomborg has drunk the Kool-Aid of the Warmista scientists but he the strength of some residual common sense on his side and points out the follies of mindless “climate actions”. These “climate actions” are not worth the cost they incur and people are now beginning to sense this, hence the ‘Gilets Jaunes”. The Warmista Movement is the new eco-fascist movement.

    • The only problem the climate has had the last 3.5 million years is that it is far to cold so if CO2 could change that, we need more of it not less.

  16. Loved this! These are two great men with the desire to do a great deal of good in this world. I wish them the best of success and support what they are doing.

    The thing that is standing in there way is the maxim that power corrupts. This simply truth creates the situation where the people with the power to do the most good are corrupted by that power, dissolving any desire to do the most good. Their attention gets diverted into protecting their tribe and preserving their power (not in that order).

    Bjorn Lomborg seems to understand this very well, while Jordan Peterson is still struggling with the contradictions of people in power who say they care, but continually stand in the way of a better world, often making it a lot worse. The United Nations is an excellent example. It was created in essence to do just what Peterson and Lomborg are exposing, but has become a tribe unto itself, and members work to preserve the tribe and amass their own power.

    Peterson is probably on to something when he seeks to ‘sell’ Lomborg’s work to the masses. The only thing that people in power fear and respect is a bonafide, grass-roots movement. The only way that people in power will seek to do the most good for the least amount of resources is if the masses insist on it. It will not happen otherwise.

    • UN is a corrupt organization whose only goal it is to have dictatorial power over the planet. The IMF are the money changers for this institute so they can buy all souls to achieve that goal. Most country ‘leaders’ are just UN puppets. Free trade and individual freedom do not appear on their priority list.

      These are the people behind everything Jordan Peterson in theory is fighting in the (academic) world. He should beware not to fall in their bureaucratic trap and lose all credibility.

  17. I wonder how much good could be done if everyone who gets this far in he comments simply endorsed this video on their Facebook page and shared it.

    I will definitely do so as soon as I get off this tablet and back to my desktop.

    Then apply the concept of cost benefit analyses to their everyday lives. Hold your city administration to the responsibility of doing a certified CBA for some new measure? Hold your state or provincial government responsible for the same? And your federal government? Then the company you work for?

    Lovely video. Potentially life changing.

    • I have been waging a decades long battle, and sharing videos is only a small part of it.
      Even people whom have known me my whole life, and cannot refute a single one of the points I make, still will not change their minds, and if they are devoted progressives, they will not ever even admit they have been wrong for the past twenty years and I have been right.
      Bricks walls have nothing on liberal sensibilities…they refuse to give an inch.



    Re Lomborg, I published the following article in E&E in early 2005. Lomborg actually accepted the bogus science of catastrophic global warming (OK – he’s an economist) and simply said there are much more economical means of solving the (alleged) warming problem. For this heresy, he was stoned by the watermelons.

    Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas, Jan Veizer and Nir Shaviv received similar treatment for actually challenging the bogus CAGW science. “How dare they! The science is settled!”

    Funny how the warming alarmists keep changing their version of the “settled science”, about as often as they change their underwear. First it was Global Warming (but the warming stopped), then it was Climate Change, Weather Weirding, etc, etc.

    Regards, Allan

    The global warming debate heats up
    Energy & Environment, 2005
    Allan M.R. MacRae

    Full article:

    Drive-by shootings have moved from the slums of our cities to the realms of academia. Any scientist who dares challenge the Kyoto Protocol faces a vicious assault, a turf war launched by the pro-Kyoto gang.

    These pro-Kyoto attacks are not merely unprofessional – often of little scientific merit, they are intended to intimidate and silence real academic debate on the Kyoto Protocol, a global treaty to limit the production of greenhouse gases like CO2 that allegedly cause catastrophic global warming.

    Witness the attack on Bjorn Lomborg, author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist”. While Lomborg did not challenge the flawed science of Kyoto, he said that Kyoto was a huge misallocation of funds that should be dedicated to more important uses – such as cleaning up contaminated drinking water that kills millions of children every year in the developing world.

    In January 2003, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) declared that Lomborg’s book fell within the concept of “objective scientific dishonesty”. The DCSD made the ruling public at a press conference and published it on the internet, without giving Lomborg the opportunity to respond prior to publication.

    In December 2003, The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation repudiated the DCSD’s findings. The Ministry characterized the treatment of the Lomborg case as “dissatisfactory”, “deserving criticism” and “emotional”, a scathing rebuttal of the DCSD.

    But such bullying is not unique, as other researchers who challenged the scientific basis of Kyoto have learned…


    The author says:
    “The Guardian’s description of Bjørn Lomborg as a climate “contrarian” seems a little strong – in my opinion Lomborg is more of a lukewarmer.”

    This is true. Some time ago suggested that Lomborg should meet with Svensmark – as I recall, they were both in Copenhagen, Denmark, a country so small it would almost fit into the two largest towns (by area) in Canada. To my knowledge, that meeting did not happen.

    Still, Lomborg is a decent guy who is generally pointed in the right direction..

    Denmark 43,094 km2
    La Tuque, Quebec (Ville) 25,104.59 km2
    Senneterre, Quebec (Ville) 14,887.03 km2

  19. And where do all those billion of dollars come from? Most countries are broke. Just look at the US debt. It is not climate that has a problem but the world economy. An economist like Lomborg should know that.

    • Global debt hits all-time high of $184,000,000,000,000


  20. Lomborg mentions “subsidies” for petroleum based fuels. The reality is that these subsidies are tax laws that allow producers and refiners of these fuels to deduct well-defined expenses that are in some sense intangible and subject to price and technological progress. He is engaging in a rather high level deception with his choice of words. If there were no taxes at all, and if competition was assured, we would see a drop in the price of petroleum based fuels. As we add taxes, the price to consumers increases, which reduces demand. This puts a limit on the exploitation of petroleum resources, since it costs real money to produce a barrel of oil, or a thousand cubic feet of natural gases. In simple terms, the market will rank all production by order of cost, and once the demand is met using the cheapest resources, the rest will be shut in. So reducing taxes has the effect of increasing supply, but that is not the same as a subsidy. He is also ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that most poverty in the world is a feature of a country’s political machinery. It is not an aberration. Providing bread for starving people may not be the as compassionate as one might hope in such countries. The starvation is intentional, and by undercutting the existing supply of bread, meaning indigenous farmers and bakers, you drive them out of work, and into the bread lines. Also, Lomborg’s child-like faith that providing more money for education will be beneficial doesn’t take into account the corruption of our own educational system. We keep providing more and more money for public education, and we get less and less as our political masters divert that money into more and more indoctrination and less and less education. Lomborg is also naïve with regards to medical interventions and nutrition. He keeps saying all people can benefit from modern interventions. But as well learn more, we find that there are genetic factors that determine the effectiveness of these interventions. The cost of figuring out the right intervention for any given individual is high, and presuming that there are simple programs that are good for “all” is nonsense. Lomborg is also overly confident about all his projects.

    Jordan Peterson understands Pat Franks discussion of the propagation of error. He is a realist. Note that Lomborg says “we know the causal mechanism is CO2”. Wrong! We assume that CO2 is the causal mechanism at the exclusion of all others. He is a political scientist, and he is taking as a given what other scientists are telling him. What a crock!

  21. Jordan Peterson’s interview with Borg Lomborg is well worth the time. Over the course of their conversation it becomes clear that Lomborg is not claiming expertise in climate issues. He is a PhD political scientist, and his purpose is to provide an objective way of prioritizing investment in issues of global significance. The issues include AGW/ACC, tuberculosis, malaria, early childhood nutrition, and so on. Lomborg rejects the catastrophic version of Climate Change, as this is not amenable to analysis. Peterson points out that any of the globally significant problems could be posed in such a fashion, so this is not a bias. It is reality. Lomborg mentioned that his colleagues had addressed exactly that problem, and used the threat of an asteroid impact to demonstrate that even events that are known to be catastrophic do not command the investment of huge amounts of resources. Lomborg stated that our current distant warning system is 90% effective, not 99.9% for example.

    My concern in my earlier comment was that global solutions are bound to be unrealistic. Genocide is the intended purpose of several governments within the U. N., and advocating early childhood nutrition programs for their intended victims would be very much misplaced. But Lomborg is localizing his project so that priorities can be established within developing countries. This would allow the analysts to take into account local religious and political institutions and beliefs. And within those constraints, much could be done. And governments advocating genocide need not be the beneficiaries of this prioritization. This is aligned with Peterson’s advice to clean your bedroom before you attempt to save the world.

    Lomborg’s problems with the CAGW cliché arises from the bottom level ranking assigned to current “Climate Change” measures. This is logical even given the assumption that CO2 is responsible for all climate change. Lomborg explains this reality quite clearly if you want to understand the reason for this conclusion.

    • The only way you can help the poor is by providing cheap energy. Build new generation coal / gas power plants all over the world. Without cheap energy attacking tuberculosis, malaria, early childhood nutrition etc is useless.
      How fast do you think the West would change in a third world banana republic if cheap energy would no longer be available?

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