Economist Global warming not priority AIDS top help govt spend $ wisely

[bimazek]

Economist Bjorn Lomborg: Global warming is not a priority

Economist Bjorn Lomborg makes a persuasive case for prioritizing the world's biggest problems, asking "If we had $50 billion to spend over the next four years to do good in the world, where should we spend it?" His recommendations - based on the findings of the 2004 Copenhagen Consensus - controversially place global warming at the bottom of the list (and AIDS prevention at the top). Lomborg was named one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine after the publication of his controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist which challenged widely-held beliefs that the environment is getting worse. Now the Danish economist is taking on the world's biggest problems with his Copenhagen Consensus. (Recorded February 2005 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 17:27)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtbn9zBfJSs

Please get this into the hands of as many politicians and decision makers before we spend billions wastefully on global warming, as this speaker states, all the billions that we would spend now is too late the problem was already too late in 1975, the only thing to do now is to move people away from low lying areas, $50 billion would only delay the death by a year in banglidesh from flood in 2019

Better to spend the money on aids prevention and cure he says.
Economist Global warming not priority AIDS top  help govt spend $ wisely

watch this video, besides he is blonde and cute

[ndrew]

Hmmm... well we could spend on AIDS/HIV AND do a lot about global warming WITHOUT spending money through conservation and sustainable practices or something.

Drew

[bimazek]

did you listen to the video by the genius guy, it is too late to make any real effect on warming and any money would be like wasted

because it would only delay be a few months what will happen in 2017 anyway

[frenchpat]

...

what did Nostradamus have to say about this? 

Pat

[Central79]

I wasn't really convinced by his economic argument for doing nothing about climate change. He acknowledges that it really happening and that the consequences are massive, but his argument is based on the idea that doing something is a) incredibly expensive and b) ineffectual. Where in his talk did he provide evidence for that?

I think the costs of doing nothing about climate change are much bigger than the costs of doing something NOW, and I don't subscribe to the "hopelessness" theory of not being able to do anything about it. Why is it some people go from denial to apathy without the intermediate step of trying to solve a problem?

It was nice that HIV/AIDS was at the top. Although he wants to let all of us die and focus our medication money on prevention. It's kind of where economics falls down - it's only there to inform a moral choice, not make the choice for us.

M.

PS - I watched "An Inconvenient Truth" at the weekend. I recommend it. I really hope Al Gore runs for president.

[bimazek]

I was on board ecology and green revolution in 1974.  But took 33 years for the world to come around.  Even then the warming problem was too great to reverse. 

there is evidence but common sense shows that to counter 555 million cars and smoke belching factories is going to cost enormous amounts, also

they have computer models that show it is not going to do much

anyway the global warming could be just caused by sun itself

i am hot on money for hiv research and luke warm on global warming

money is not well spent imho on global warming

[Grinch]

Yeah that global warming.  It's really bad. It must be the reason we're getting a foot of snow this week end.
Could someone tell me which part of the world is affected?  I'd like to move there.

[Dachshund]

Yeah that global warming.  It's really bad. It must be the reason we're getting a foot of snow this week end.
Could someone tell me which part of the world is affected?  I'd like to move there.

May I suggest the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica...better hurry though it is disappearing fast. We'll miss you!

[jack]

notice how you never hear anything from the global warming thugs when the weather is colder than usual? but give us one day a couple of degrees higher than usual and they are out following the guy who invented the internet. but didnt realize that he was fundraising at the buddhist temple or that his fortune is due to his fathers oil stocks. Too funny.
How do you forecast temps years into the future when you cant tell me if its gonna rain today? I know that is too simplistic for all the high minded warmers but it is the truth.
These are the same people who have stopped nuclear and told us the world was getting colder in early 60s.
I gonna go buy some more oil stocks.

[aupointillimite]

May I suggest the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica...better hurry though it is disappearing fast. We'll miss you!

In the words of Stephen Colbert, "It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is."

Oh, by logical extension... if the world community as a whole decides that global climate change is too much to deal with... something which stands to affect about 10 times more people than those who are currently infected with HIV (a recent study this month found that 634 million people live in low-lying coastal areas that are in very great danger of being inundated within the next century)... what's to stop them from deciding that HIV/AIDS is too much to deal with?

We only care about it because we're infected. 

[Central79]

My God, I can't beleive the scepticism shown here.

In Europe Global Warming is scientific fact. I've seen the evidence and I was convinced by it. You can dig ice cores out that show the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere for the past 600,000-odd years, and you can also work out the average temperature of that year from relative isotopes trapped in bubbles in the ice.

From that there is a clear co-relation between the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the temperature at that time. Here's the graph:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Co2-temperature-plot.svg

As you can see, in none of these ice cores is the CO2 level above 300 parts per billion. Right now it's at, or above 400 ppb, and accelarating fast. This is a bigger change (in the other direction) than the last ice age. So we can expect a serious shake up.

Global warming causes parts of the world to get colder, pardoxically. Here in Southern England, we are warmer than we would otherwise be because of the gulf stream - warm air coming up from the south. Global warming is slowly shutting off the gulf stream - so Southern England may end up colder. Global warming also redistributes rainfall - causing torrential rainfall in areas right next to ones with drought. It's a complicated system - overall the planet is getting warmer - it doesn't mean you might not get colder/drier/wetter.

If you're a sceptic I'd urge you to rent "An Inconvenient Truth" on DVD. It's only by getting the word out we can start to change things.

[aupointillimite]

I've always thought that pointing skeptics in the direction of the planet Venus is a good place to start.

[dixieman]

I think Global warming... should be on everyones agenda as well as a cure for HIV...

[jack]

It is a fact that the world is in a state of warming, one of many in the past thousand years. It is also a fact that is fucking impossible to scientifically prove what is causing it. Is it the Sun? Is is it the gas engine? Is it just the fact that we exist? No one knows for sure. I am sure some Warmers are pure in their support of this movement and belief but when you see pols like Algore using it to advance his career and enrich himself, it has to make everyone wonder. I love the whole carbon trading scam. Only the rich can buy themselves out of conserving. hahahahaha.

[aupointillimite]

It is a fact that the world is in a state of warming, one of many in the past thousand years. It is also a fact that is fucking impossible to scientifically prove what is causing it. Is it the Sun? Is is it the gas engine? Is it just the fact that we exist? No one knows for sure. I am sure some Warmers are pure in their support of this movement and belief but when you see pols like Algore using it to advance his career and enrich himself, it has to make everyone wonder. I love the whole carbon trading scam. Only the rich can buy themselves out of conserving. hahahahaha.

I'm actually totally with you on this.

I think it's a very serious problem... probably the most serious problem of the 21st century... for whatever reasons are found to cause it (I suspect humans are behind most of it) but I have a hard time believing that Al Gore gives a shit beyond making himself a big deal in Hollywood.

[Dachshund]

Remember children you are not arguing skepticism...you're arguing a silly, conservative agenda, arguing personalities posed as fact. A skeptic would present researched backed data to prove a point, an ideologue must rely on defamation to obscure the truths...like a glacier their indefensible positions on just about everything continues to melt away...enjoy the freak show because they are a species that is thankfully close to extinction.

[Dachshund]

It is a fact that the world is in a state of warming, one of many in the past thousand years. It is also a fact that is fucking impossible to scientifically prove what is causing it. Is it the Sun? Is is it the gas engine? Is it just the fact that we exist? No one knows for sure. I am sure some Warmers are pure in their support of this movement and belief but when you see pols like Algore using it to advance his career and enrich himself, it has to make everyone wonder. I love the whole carbon trading scam. Only the rich can buy themselves out of conserving. hahahahaha.

Thanks for making my point...no data...nada...just the opportunity for the species neoconwrongadus to squawk before extinction.

[Central79]

It's warmer now that at any time in those ice cores I mentioned. The "warm period" experienced around 1400 just pales into comparison. Is it just an coincidence that this warming: greater than ever seen before, closely related to CO2 levels, and accelerating significantly since the industrial age happened at the same time as man started to burn huge amounts of fossil fuel, releasing CO2? I don't think so...

Al Gore is an honourable (if slightly boring and didactic) man. He's been talking global warming since the mid-70s, when it was a deeply unpopular cause, and one not at all advantageous to his career. If he's hit a popular vein now, good luck to him.

The carbon trading scam is designed to put a cost on pollution. For electricity generators, car manufacturers and us. It incentivises the need to cut carbon emissions - if you generate your electricity by producing less CO2, then you can sell it more cheaply and are more competitive. It's nothing to do with being rich or poor. It's about global co-operation.

[jack]

Carbon Trading is designed for one thing. It allows those very rich people who use the global warming issue to enrich and empower themselves to avoid the regulations they want to impose on the rest of us.
What caused all the other warming periods before we started to burn fossil fuels?
This has nothing to do with any conservative agenda, it simply the ability to study history and to use common sense.

[aupointillimite]

I believe that it's been found that warming periods in the past have been found to be due to increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere using the ice cores. 

The thing is, the current CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is much higher than at any previous time in those samples.

It all suggests that this is not a natural fluctuation.

[Dachshund]

Neoconwrongadus, using a Darwinian type scale of measurement, began to lose the ability of common sense around the time of Goldwater's run for the presidency...they lost the common sense gene the day after 9/11. Coherence is soon to follow.

[aupointillimite]

Neoconwrongadus, using a Darwinian type scale of measurement, began to lose the ability of common sense around the time of Goldwater's run for the presidency...they lost all of the common sense gene the day after 9/11. Coherence is soon to follow.

I like Barry AuH20.  He stood up to the Religious Right.

But I enjoy the Democrat response to the GOP's "In your heart, you know he's right" slogan of 1964.

"In your guts, you know he's nuts."

[Central79]

I believe that it's been found that warming periods in the past have been found to be due to increased CO2 concentration in the atmosphere using the ice cores. 

The thing is, the current CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is much higher than at any previous time in those samples.

It all suggests that this is not a natural fluctuation.

Exactly. There have been two previous "blips" of warming. The best known of these is the medieval warming period already mentioned. If you put these blips next to the current warming trend, they look like a suburban family house next to the Empire State Building.

There is also a lag between rising CO2 and temperature. The CO2 we have NOW is predictive of the temperature in the future. It's primarily on this basis that the low-end predictions for increased temperature in the future are made.

Problem is, we're still chucking out carbon at an increased rate.

I don't understand what Jack says about carbon trading. It's bigger than any individual, and covers whole countries that sign up to it. It may make our energy more expensive. But as it is going to be the poor people in the world who are most likely to suffer from the changes that come about from global warming, any defender of the "poor" is going to sign up, fast.

[Miss Philicia]

Jack must be going crazy with Newt Gingrich's confession this week at the feet of John Kerry that global warming is in fact real and we need to address it.  Expect more of that in the near future.

[Central79]

Jack going crazy, or the GOP going Green? 

[Dachshund]

With the GOP always follow the money.