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Noted anti-global-warming scientist reverses course

2010-09-01 11:20:41

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.

[Photos: The world's most polluted places]

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.

Oh, 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.

Lomborg's former foes in the environmental movement are so far unimpressed by

news of his conversion. Calling him a "shrewd self-promoter," Grist.org's

Jonathan Hiskes marveled at Lomborg's ability to "play the media" in simply

"adopting a position already held by millions of sensible people." And Friends

of the Earth climate campaigner Mike Childs told the U.K. Guardian, "It appears

that the self-styled skeptical environmentalist is beginning to become less

skeptical as he enters middle age."