Don’t let Lomborg piece in Washington Post distract or confuse
This morning’s Washington Post has a featured piece by famed Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg, “Don’t blame climate change for extreme weather.” & It is causing a storm. Many see it as questioning climate change, which it does not. Rather he is challenging whether a direct relationship can be shown between a warming planet and extreme weather events that are arguably extremely complicated in terms of forces and interactions. In other words, he doubts that a warming planet is responsible for, and will consistently produce more storms. There could be counteracting forces that could reduce storms. Wind shear would be one example.
Fine. Lomborg has quite a track record at finding or disputing statistical relationships. They are fascinating. Others will look at the same data and be able to persuade us of a different conclusion. Statistics can be confusing and often are skillfully used for just that purpose. Whether there is a specific link between a warming planet and more severe weather does not affect my basic analysis and conclusion that can be summarized as:
- Viewed in the long term, the planet is warming, a departure from the natural climate cycles of the last few million years, e.g. the ice ages.
- A warmer planet, will have much less ice, and the two great ice sheets and hundreds of thousands of glaciers have started to shrink. The warmer oceans are measurable and clearly indicate that the ice sheets will keep melting until they are much smaller.
- Less ice means higher sea level, tens of feet higher eventually, leaving the last few thousand years of the stable sea level far behind (or make that below).
- We have to prepare for higher sea levels and the huge change in the shoreline that will go with that. (To see a powerful chart showing the last 420,000 year correlation of CO2 levels, global average temperature, and sea level click HERE.)
Lomborg deftly did a pivot on global warming and climate change just three years ago in August 2010. In that earlier widely publicized piece in The Guardian (UK) he abandoned his previous position that economic analysis said there were much higher priorities than global warming. Headlined “Bjorn Lomborg: the dissenting climate voice who changed his tune.” Back then, he began to look at economic arguments that $100 billion a year might solve the global warming crisis, and could well be justified, coinciding with his new book. I admire Lomborg for a few things.
He is:
- very smart and writes well.
- gets the world’s attention on a regular basis, asking some very good questions.
- extremely effective at playing contrarian positions to get publicity, sell millions of books, and attract significant financial support.
He is really good at that last point. I need to pay attention to how he does that.
Regardless, let’s be clear. Nothing in his OpEd today disputes any of my four key points enumerated above. The world is warming. Inexorable sea level rise will worsen storms and extreme tides. It is time to begin intelligent adaptation now.