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Lomborg on global warming: "a challenge humanity must confront"
Bjørn Lomborg's new book, to be published this month, examines eight methods of stopping or reducing global warming
Danish professor Bjørn Lomborg, who the UK's Guardian newspaper has previously named "one of the 50 people who could save the planet", is set to live up to the appellation with the publication this month of a new book in which he and his fellow economists examine eight methods of stopping or reducing global warming.
For those who view Bjørn Lomborg as the climate change sceptic
par excellence
, famed for accusing climate scientists and activists of exaggerating the effects of global warming on humans, the above book summary might come as something of a surprise.
But there's no doubt about it, the new book edited by the sceptical-environmentalist-in-chief will assert that global warming is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and "a challenge humanity must confront" (quotes reported in the Guardian), and will advocate spending USD 100 billion a year to fight it.
To resolve the climate change problem, Lomborg et al. recommend spending the money on R&D in renewable energy technologies such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and giving more attention to geoengineering ideas like cloud reflectivity enhancement, commonly known as "cloud whitening", as a means of reflecting incoming solar radiation back out into space.
Resolving a problem usually requires first understanding it. And most would agree that understanding global warming lies fundamentally within the disciplines of physical chemistry and thermodynamics, neither of which, according to publicly available sources like Wikipedia, are home turf to Professor Lomborg. His academic background is in political science.
Nevertheless, the Guardian writes that IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri, whose expertise in the complexities of climate science is acknowledged, has given an endorsement to the new book entitled
Smart Solutions to Climate Change - Comparing Costs and Benefits
, saying that it "raises vital questions and examines viable options on what can be done".
The 436 page book, which includes 87 black and white illustrations and 102 tables, is published by Cambridge University Press.
