Lucky Last – Change of Heart for Climate Skeptics?

Two of the world’s most influential climate sceptics appear to have had a change of heart. The Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg wrote a book in 2001 called The Skeptical Environmentalist which said climate change wasn’t that serious and we couldn’t and shouldn’t do much about it. But now he says it’s undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today.

Michael Hanlon the formerly ultra-sceptic science editor of Britain’s two-million-copies-a-day Daily Mail has also changed his mind after a recent trip to see a glacier in Greenland. The apparent about-face comes as the UN’s climate body completes a review aimed at restoring its credibility for reporting on climate change.

Paula Kruger reports for the ABC’s PM programme. Read More.

Paula Kruger reported this story on PM on ABC (31 August 2010):

Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg became famous for being a climate-change doubter after his 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist and in 2004, when he organised an event called the Copenhagen Consensus. It brought together a groups of economists and asked them what global problems should be addressed with a hypothetical budget of $50 billion. The group decided addressing climate change wasn’t a priority.

He was interviewed about that position on the Foreign Exchange show on America’s PBS network in 2006.

BJORN LOMBORG (2006): I’m not saying it’s not going to be a problem. But I’m saying we’ve got to look at, how big a problem is it? It’s not devastation. It’s a problem. The second part is you also got to ask how much change can you do? How much can you actually affect this?

PAULA KRUGER: But Bjorn Lomborg has a new book on the way and with it a new position. He has told The Guardian newspaper that global warming is “undoubtedly the chief concern facing the world today” and by investing $100 billion annually the climate change problem will be resolved.

Professor Bob Carter from James Cook University is often labelled a climate change sceptic but he prefers the term climate agnostic. And he doesn’t take Bjorn Lomborg seriously because he isn’t a climate scientist.

BOB CARTER: What’s with all these economists? It’s just astonishing. The climate change issue is an issue of science. 

Professor Shapiro who chaired the InterAcademy Council is an economist at Princeton University. We have in Australia at the moment the author of the discredited report done for the British government about three years ago, Nicholas Stern, giving talks. He’s an economist. And now we have Bjorn Lomborg who is a statistician and also in a sense an economist, a social scientist issuing a new book on climate change.

It’s about time that people especially governments started asking scientists. The economists only come into play in this debate if there is a problem. There first has to be demonstrated a problem with dangerous global warming caused by human carbon dioxide emissions. 

That has not yet been demonstrated. And until it has most of these books by economists are beside the point. They’re discussing a problem which hasn’t even yet been shown to exist. 

PAULA KRUGER: But there is another high-profile sceptic who was a science writer for Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper. Michael Hanlon has slowly been shifting his views over recent years. But it was 10 years ago he compared some warnings about climate change to the ancient Romans who blamed thunderbolts on punishing gods.

Today he still says he still believes climate change is exaggerated. But in a report filed from Greenland after a trip to see the break-up of a glacier he wrote, “it is impossible to maintain that nothing is going on”.

Ben McNeil is a senior researcher at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. He says scientific evidence is what is altering the tone of the climate change debate.

BEN MCNEIL: In the climate science community the sceptics are very few and far between. But then you’ve got on the other, the wider community side there’s obviously a lot of sceptics. Now they’re going to change their thinking as the evidence comes forward. And as we’ve seen the evidence is compelling. 

And so I think for someone who is reasonable in their assessment of things it would be easy to flip sides. But for unreasonable sceptics, which many out there many are, I don’t think they will change.

PAULA KRUGER: In an attempt to provide a more transparent process for delivering information on climate change the UN’s body on climate, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has just completed a review.

In 2007 there was controversy after a IPCC review asserted Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. The IPCC says that mistake did not change the broad picture of manmade climate change.

Ben McNeil again.

BEN MCNEIL: It’s very important for it to not play an outward advocacy role. It’s a scientific role. So I think this review is going to shore up the transparency and the trust in this process which is actually important.

PAULA KRUGER: Critics had been calling for the resignation of the IPCC’s chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri. But he says he wants to instead stay on to implement changes recommended in the review.

Source: www.abc.net.au

We’re on our way to Singapore when most of you read this. Moderating at a Sustainable Development Forum at Raffles City Friday night and staying on for a few days to get the Sustain Ability Showcase Asia underway.