Bjorn Lomborg (Common Sense re Climate Change & What to do)

Cool it – The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide

To Global Warming

Lomborg

 

A groundbreaking book that transforms the debate about global warming by offering a fresh perspective based on human needs as well as environmental concerns.

Bjorn Lomborg argues that many of the elaborate and expensive actions now being considered to stop global warming will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, are often based on emotional rather than strictly scientific assumptions, and may very well have little impact on the world’s temperature for hundreds of years. Rather than starting with the most radical procedures, Lomborg argues that we should first focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS and assuring and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply-which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and save millions of lives within our lifetime. He asks why the debate over climate change has stifled rational dialogue and killed meaningful dissent.

Lomborg presents us with a second generation of thinking on global warming that believes panic is neither warranted nor a constructive place from which to deal with any of humanity’s problems, not just global warming.

07-01-2008 – Bjorn Lomborg named one of the “50 people who could save the planet” by the UK Guardian

A Guardian panel, taking nominations from key environmental figures, met to compile a list of the Guardian “ultimate green heroes.” Bjorn Lomborg was named one of the “50 people who could save the planet”

Bjorn Lomborg~Common Sense Green

The verdict on Lomborg: “Bjørn Lomborg, 42, has become an essential check and balance to runaway environmental excitement. In 2004, the Dane made his name as a green contrarian with his bestselling book The Skeptical Environmentalist, and outraged scientists and green groups around the world by arguing that many claims about global warming, overpopulation, energy resources, deforestation, species loss and water shortages are not supported by analysis. He was accused of scientific dishonesty, but cleared his name. He doesn’t dispute the science of climate change, but questions the priority it is given. He may look increasingly out of step, but Lomborg is one of the few academics prepared to challenge the consensus with credible data.” 

Read full article

http://www.lomborg.com/

http://mensa-barbie.blogspot.com/2007/03/blog-post.html

http://mensa-barbie.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html

“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”  Alexis De Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Damn it Man! 40,000 years ago (man kills big k-roo’s)

HUMANS WIPED OUT GIANT KANGAROO

12th August 2008

 

Humans not climate change were responsible for wiping out the large prehistoric animals that once roamed Australia, say scientists.

 

New evidence shows for the first time that giant kangaroos and the marsupial equivalent of rhinos and leopards still populated Tasmania when humans first arrived on the island 43,000 years ago.

Today none of the animals survive. Since the climate was not changing dramatically at the time, scientists have concluded that the creatures were driven into extinction by over-zealous hunting.

Australia’s megafauna had by this period in history already disappeared, following the arrival of humans.

Experts have debated whether the mass extinction was due to natural effects, such as climate, or human activity.

The fact that Tasmania’s large animals only vanished after the first humans travelled to the island provides strong support for the latter theory.

Previously it was thought the Tasmanian megafauna was already gone by the time humans crossed the land bridge which then temporarily joined the island with mainland Australia.

Giant

This would have cleared humans of any involvement in the animals’ disappearance,

(CLEARED them of what???). Techniques now show that the creatures survived in Tasmania far longer than was previously thought.

Examination of the bones revealed that some animals were living in Tasmania as recently as 41,000 years ago, 2,000 years after the arrival of the first human settlers. The findings provide a clue to the fate of extinct large prehistoric animals not only in Tasmania and Australia, but around the world. (Damn humans surviving again~!)

Professor Chris Turney, from the University of Exeter, who led the research, said: “Ever since Charles Darwin’s discovery of giant ground sloth remains in South America, debate has ensued about the cause of early extinction of the world’s megafauna. Now, 150 years on from the publication of Darwin’s seminal work The Origin of Species, the argument for climate change being the cause of this mass extinction has been seriously undermined. It is sad to know that our ancestors played such a major role in the extinction of these species – and sadder still when we consider that this trend continues today.” Oh my, a climate change concept undermined?