Posted on 01/12/2002 7:18:26 PM PST by jojo123
| THE scientist who dared to challenge the establishment view on climate change has been subjected to a campaign of personal abuse, professional vilification and threats to his safety. Last year Bjorn Lomborg claimed in his book The Skeptical Environmentalist that many of mankind’s worst fears — such as mass extinction of species, climate change and population growth — were largely unfounded. The book has provoked scientists and environmental groups into producing articles, websites and pamphlets rubbishing its author and his work. One of the most hostile, in Nature magazine, likens him to apologists for the Nazis. He has been physically attacked and has had to employ bodyguards. This weekend Lomborg repeated his claims. “My book seems to have hit a raw nerve. For years we have been hearing how the world is deteriorating. I thought that too and then I looked for the evidence and it just isn’t there. In fact, the history of the world is that things are getting better,” he said. Lomborg, a Danish statistician and former Greenpeace member, thought the book was a controversial but academic work that might do well to sell a few thousand copies. Instead it has become a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. His arguments range across almost every area of environmental concern. They include claims that there is no evidence for the wholesale loss of species and that the world’s forest cover is increasing. His arguments on climate change, however, have sparked the greatest reaction. Lomborg, a professor at Aarhus University, accepts that the world is getting warmer but says it would cost so much to stop that it is simply not worthwhile. “It would cost the world trillions of dollars a year, money which could be spent on helping the developing world to improve education and hospitals,” he said. The book was published by Cambridge University Press. Last autumn it sent Lomborg on a promotional tour of Britain and America, little realising the reaction that was building up. It began when Lomborg was heckled and booed at a book-signing at Borders bookshop in Oxford. As he was speaking, one of the crowd rushed forward and pushed a cream-laden baked Alaska pie into his face. Last week the protester, Mark Lynas, an environmentalist campaigning to save the Arctic from the effects of climate change, admitted the attack and said: “Hitting him with a baked Alaska seemed appropriate. Global warming is destroying one of the Earth’s last wildernesses and Lomborg is trying to pretend it doesn’t matter.” Even respectable scientific venues are not safe for Lomborg. When he recently gave a lecture at London’s Royal Institution he was protected by four bodyguards, and threats were made against him when he addressed the London School of Economics. The biggest shock came when Nature, the usually restrained scientific journal, printed a review comparing Lomborg to maverick academics who deny the Holocaust. The reviewers said Lomborg’s text “employs the strategy of those who argue that gay men are not dying of Aids, that Jews weren’t singled out by the Nazis and so on”. Last week Scientific American, a respected popular science journal, devoted 11 pages to an attack in which Lomborg is accused of “egregious distortions” and of being “ignorant” and “muddled”. Lester Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute, said: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Some of the most powerful vitriol is on websites. On www.anti-Lomborg.com there is a picture of Lomborg that was taken as he was hit with a pie. Lomborg has also clashed with Tom Burke, the former aide to John Gummer when he was environment secretary, at a presentation in Paris to finance ministers at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Burke, who spoke against him and is the author of a pamphlet attacking his work, said: “He is a cunning manipulator and a good communicator. He has a weak case but presents it so well that everyone switches off their crap detectors.” |
People are such morons, falling for facts that are delibrately skewed to change people's behavior. These pinkos are trying to get us all to be thin, ride bikes and eat tofu and rice for every meal. They want us all to take the bus or train, and not drive cars. They don't want us writing things down on paper, or eating meat. These same people are working to create only 2 kinds of people in the world, Owners and Slaves.
If there was a way to make these so called scientists, and eco-fascist pinkos an endangered species, we might be able to fix the things that are screwing our country into the ground.
Has anyone thought of the possibility that maybe Leap Year is nothing but a farce? When you add a day to the calendar every 4 years, within 120 years, you change the seasons a month. So, If winter ends in March where you live, in 120 years it would end in April, and thus the temperatures would appear to be screwed up. Has anyone had that idea come to them, or am I the only one?
Sounds like you are describing the National Geographic. Once a great magazine...
Try this: New Scientist
Someone here at FR pointed me in this direction but I have not had a chance to really look at it. The articles from it posted here have been pretty good.
'NITE ALL!
I find New Scientist to be at least twice as bad as SciAm. I have just discontinued my subscription to them. Scarcely an issue goes by without criticizing President Bush, American Policies or otherwise snuggling up to the enviro whackos. Especially before 9/11 they were always publishing photos of Pres. Bush with flames as a back drop or polluted air or something. They are really into graphic manipulation at New Scientist.
It began when Lomborg was heckled and booed at a book-signing at Borders bookshop in Oxford. As he was speaking, one of the crowd rushed forward and pushed a cream-laden baked Alaska pie into his face.
Good for Cambridge University Press!!!
" Democratic Socialists of America share a vision of a humane international social order based on equitable distribution of resources, meaningful work, gender and racial equality, a healthy environment, sustainable growth, and non-oppressive relationships."
The Eco-Justice Working Group-- The Eco-Justice Working Group of the National Council of Churches provides an opportunity for the national bodies of member Protestant and Orthodox denominations to work together to protect and restore God's creation. It was created in 1983. Environmental Justice is a wholistic term which includes all ministries designed to heal and defend creation. Eco-Justice is an even broader term that includes efforts to assure justice for all of creation and the human beings who live in it. A major task of the Working Group is providing program ideas and resources to help congregations as they engage in environmental justice. Several are offered:
Progressives' homepage: The Institute for Policy Studies working for Environmental Justice.
We humans are about as subtle as the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Acid rain and global warming show that we hold immense power over life on Earth, yet we wield it indiscriminately.
The damage we do is increasing. In the next 20 years, the population will increase by 1.5 billion. These people will need food, water and electricity, but already our soils are vanishing, fisheries are being killed off, wells are drying up, and the burning of fossil fuels is endangering the lives of millions. We are heading for cataclysm.
In this section you will find three scenarios - three routes to catastrophe that we face unless we can tackle the evils of overconsumption and the yawning gap between rich and poor. Climate change, pollution and population growth each has surprising and potentially devastating impacts. Aspects of all three will strike before this century is out.
This stuff would be hilarious, being so obviously off-base, except that so many take it seriously. (Hey, it's 'science' fer gosh sakes!) Note that all these disasters were previously predicted to occur is the last century. They moved the date ahead to some indefinite time to keep people scared and cover up their mistakes -- just like old-line Marxists were obliged to keep moving ahead the date of the 'inevitable' collapse of Capitalism.
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The environmental donations industry is scientifically bankrupt- it has been for years.
It's like the Catholic church trying to obtain power by coming up with ridiculous "beliefs" like- the earth is the center of the universe.
It doesn't.
has anyone actually looked to see if our revolution around the sun is perfect every single time?
Well, it's not exactly 365.25, which is why there are leap seconds and whatnot occasionally.
That difference from the exact 365.25 is also why most 'century years' are not leap years as you might expec that they would be.
If the year is also evenly divisible by 400, then it is. The years 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not leap years but 2000 was.
Well, this line shows the critics for what they are. Who in the world says that gay men are not dying of AIDS? The point of the people the reviewer is smearing is that STRAIGHT men (in the US) who are not drug users are not dying of AIDS.
Can you tell me even one stinking place on earth that wasn't colder than average in 2001?
The Earth is cooling fast, and the difference is reaching the point where it is striking.
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