They showed why he was wrong.
1 - No they didn't.
2 - They didn't even address the arguments in the video at all.
The post I'm replying to does have quotes that attempt to address it so I'll respond to them.
If we take the UK as an example, we give around 0.3% of our GNP in foreign aid. Lomborg’s argument is that if we spend money on climate change it means that there will be less available for foreign aid but actually it is how we manage our carbon emissions in the other 99.7% of our GNP that is significant. This carbon management is not necessarily about cutting things – it’s about doing things differently.
Doing things differently cost money, and effort that can be applied to other problems instead. Doing things differently in response to government subsidies or targeted tax breaks has an impact on the government's budget as well. Doing things differently in response to government direction also tends to decrease flexibility and effeciency, as political direction takes over from profit seeking, and as subsidies and rules get set in place, that don't change with changing market conditions (and likely were not well set up for current markets to begin with).
If you are going to address global warming through government policy at all the best policy would be a tax on greenhouse gas emissions, offset by other tax cuts. That would allow companies to adjust in their own way rather then in some government mandated command and control fashion.
As for sea level rise, the uncertainties work in both directions, and Lomborg's right that a wealthier future world will be more able to cope with dealing with it then the current world.
With only a modicum of lateral thinking it is clear that his $20 figure is an absurd simplification.
It is a massive oversimplification with flimsy justification. So is every other figure for the cost.
Lomborg makes an excellent point with -
"But let’s take a look at what Michael might actually propose we should do. We should cut carbon emissions, which essentially means that the woman who lives in the shadow of the glaciers in Nepal will see the diminishment of the glacier outflow in 2051 instead of 2050. Now her kids don’t have education, they probably have malaria – her brother has probably just died from malaria, or typhoid. They have very little food and what are we telling her is: “We want to help you infinitessimally in fifty or a hundred years” when what we should do is give them better infrastructure to deal with that water, yes, and what we should do is deal with those problems that they actually need. I think it’s breath-taking the amount of arrogance that lies in the argument of saying “I want to help these people by spending enormous amounts of money to do virtually no good”."
Yes Lomborg could be wrong but he could be wrong in either direction (as could everyone else participating in this issue, except perhaps those making extreme predictions like Tejek's idea of the Earth becoming like Venus)
That's still a great point if he's somewhat off. If its with massive steps to address global warming its a diminishment in 2055, instead of 2047 (so 8 times as long of delay as Lomborg imagined) it would still be a telling point. |
