Learning from mistakes

[billvon 3,132]

It's always cool to see someone who can reconsider a strongly held belief in the face of new evidence.

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Noted anti-global-warming scientist reverses course
By Brett Michael Dykes

With scientific data piling up showing that the world has reached its hottest-ever point in recorded history, global-warming skeptics are facing a high-profile defection from their ranks. Bjorn Lomborg, author of the influential tract "The Skeptical Environmentalist," has reversed course on the urgency of global warming, and is now calling for action on "a challenge humanity must confront."

Lomborg, a Danish academic, had previously downplayed the risk of acute climate change. A former member of Greenpeace, he was a vocal critic of the Kyoto Protocol -- a global U.N. treaty to cut carbon emissions that the United States refused to ratify -- as well as numerous other environmental causes.

"The Skeptical Environmentalist," published in 2001, argued that many key preoccupations of the environmental movement, including pollution control and biodiversity, were either overblown as threats or amenable to relatively simple technological fixes. Lomborg argued that the governments spending billions to curb carbon emissions would be better off diverting those resources to initiatives such as AIDS research, anti-malaria programs and other kinds of humanitarian aid.

Lomborg's essential argument was: Yes, global warming is real and human behavior is the main reason for it, but the world has far more important things to worry about.

How times have changed.

In a book to be published this year, Lomborg calls global warming "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and calls for the world's governments to invest tens of billions of dollars annually to fight climate change.
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[ryoder 1,590]

Of course the problem is that when an intelligent person weighs the evidence and comes to the conclusion he was wrong, the dogmatic crowd will be screaming:

HE FLIP-FLOPPED!!!"

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[mnealtx 0]

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It's always cool to see someone who can reconsider a strongly held belief in the face of new evidence.

Strongly held belief? Hardly.

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Lomborg is not and never has been anything other than a Warmist. Which is to say – as I wrote when I interviewed him for the Spectator two years ago – “his views on global warming are broadly in sympathy with those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” But I suppose “Danish statistician still believes in Man Made Global Warming, as he has done for ages” doesn’t make quite such a good Guardian headline.

and

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But at no stage throughout this period did Lomborg become a climate change sceptic. Perhaps on the principle of not fighting your war on too many fronts, perhaps because he actually believed it, Lomborg cleaved to the notion that the IPCC was a reasonable reliable, authoritative source of information on the state of scientific knowledge on climate change. His line on AGW has never been that it doesn’t exist. Rather, he has always argued, that for the amount of state spending needed to implement the Kyoto Protocol, you could achieve many more useful things – such as ensuring that every person in the world has access to clean drinking water.

Lomborg’s latest proposal for the creation of a $100 billion climate change fund is hardly a major divergence from his longstanding position: that Western nations should do more, much more, to alleviate third world poverty and suffering. My suspicion is that he is dressing up his international call-to-arms as a “climate change” issue as much as anything because he knows that that’s where most of the funding is and that this is where his best chance of success lies.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[lawrocket 3]

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Of course the problem is that when an intelligent person weighs the evidence and comes to the conclusion he was wrong, the dogmatic crowd will be screaming:

HE FLIP-FLOPPED!!!"

What's interesting is the heat he's catching from the warmist crowd that he's doing it for money to promote his new book.


To Bill:

He said he was wrong about the priorities. Of note with the climate change debate now is how "scientists" are maign policy pronouncements. They've been hammered by reviews, etc.

Is AGW more of a threat than, say, malaria? Which will kill more people in the next 50 years? Next 150 years? These are policy issues and not things that "scientists" have traditionally done.

My wife is hotter than your wife.

[timmyfitz 0]

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It's always cool to see someone who can reconsider a strongly held belief in the face of new evidence.

===================
Noted anti-global-warming scientist reverses course
By Brett Michael Dykes

Lomborg's essential argument was: Yes, global warming is real and human behavior is the main reason for it, but the world has far more important things to worry about.

How times have changed.

In a book to be published this year, Lomborg calls global warming "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and calls for the world's governments to invest tens of billions of dollars annually to fight climate change.
======================

You didn't read this very well did you? He was never an anti global warming activist. He just changed his mind as to what priority global warming has today. The author did try to make it seem as though he has changed his mind though. Nice try on your part and the author.





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1981 to 1988 is 7 years-Kallend (oops, it's actually 8 years Kallend)

The decade of the 80's was from 1980 to 1989. 10 years. If you remove 1980 and 1989 you have 1981 to 1988. 8 years.

[rushmc 23]

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It's always cool to see someone who can reconsider a strongly held belief in the face of new evidence.

So, will you have the same respect if those changing their minds were originally AGW propents and they switch?

Or, is this just a one sided "cool" thing.

In other words, only if you agree with them?

Inquiring minds want to know

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln