Energy and Environmental Policy

By Bjorn Lomborg – … the global elite has an unhealthy obsession with climate change…. First, it has distracted the Western world from real geopolitical threats. …the United Nations…whose main purpose is ensuring world peace—was focused instead on “climate catastrophe,” … This at a time when nuclear weapons are posing the biggest risk of literal mutually assured destruction in half a century….Second, the narrow focus on immediate climate objectives undermines future prosperity…the best economic estimates … all show that the total impact of unmitigated climate change—would be … less than a 4% hit to global GDP by the end of the century. Read More

By Tunku Varadarajan , Nathan Myhrvold – …“There are activists who oppose funding or experiments. There’s no evidence I can see that many of the people involved in the climate debate want a solution.”…

Geoengineering would appear to be the application of science par excellence. …

“Opponents worry that once you have geoengineering, people won’t make sacrifices to cut emissions. They want a sword of Damocles hanging over humanity as a means to force us to follow their ideology.”….. In climate change, he says, this moralistic attitude takes the following form: “I don’t like aspects of our society, I don’t like technology, I don’t like capitalism, and this is nature’s retribution. And so we have to change the way we live.” Such beliefs “have become a very powerful disincentive, particularly for academic researchers.”

…He calls it “insane” not to fund such research and invokes another analogy: heart surgery and stents.

“You could imagine a world in which cardiology doesn’t exist because the medical profession said, ‘You fat bastards. You did it to yourselves. We’re not going to help you.’ ” Read More