Lomborg actually moves the discussion to its proper place, policy as opposed to science. I have no problem saying that climate change is real and to an extent man-made. The global average temperature has risen slightly over the past century, and while I believe that natural causes are probably the main reason, it’s also true that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and we’ve put more of it into the atmosphere, thus some degree of warming can be attributed to human activity.
But the question is how significant is it? If natural variation in temperature absolutely dwarfs our own contributions to it (and the geological record demonstrates that it does), and if the actual threat that warming presents to our living standards is absolutely dwarfed by the threats that the proposed solutions would present (there really is no way to argue otherwise, given that even the most radical proposals don’t affect the projects of temperatures increases very much), then it stands to reason that “climate change” is meaningless in terms of public policy, save for “no regrets” strategies such as R&D that we should do anyways, whether not climate change is a risk.
Basically, Lomborg has persuasively argued that it’s not that the “science is wrong”, it’s that the “scientists” (i.e. climate change alarmists) lack perspective on the scope and scale of the problem relative to other priorities. It’s as if we are proposing to bankrupt ourselves in order to buy insurance against an event that is not only unlikely, but also even at worst would be significantly less costly than the sum total of the premiums to be paid, and what’s worse the policy on its face only covers 5% of the estimated damages.
This happens to also neatly coincide with how most people according to polling I’ve seen look at it, they believe “the science” but aren’t concerned enough about it to favor any actions that would materially impact their lives. Which is smart!
Good comments - thanks.