With Paris looming, Bjorn Lomborg published a new paper just in time for it to serve as a talking point for opponents of climate action. Based on Lomborg's concocted analysis, headlines are claiming the Paris deal "cuts warming by just 0.05°C."
So far, the only mainstream media to cover the story has been the paywalled Australian, the paywalled UK Times, and the (basically-a-tabloid) Express. On the denier front, all the usual suspects—Bishop Hill, WUWT and JoNova—have offered their support in the form of unquestioning write-ups.
It's obvious these self-pronounced skeptics applied zero skepticism to the study, because someone who did uncovered stark deficiencies in Lomborg's analysis. Joe Romm at ThinkProgress did what other journalists couldn't be bothered to do: he read the paper and reached out to actual experts to check its accuracy. So what did Romm find? The title of his response piece says it all: "Bjorn Lomborg's New Paper 'Appears To Have No Basis In Fact.'"
Romm lays out the many, many reasons why Lomborg's paper should have failed peer review, and seems to have been succesful in that the journal is now soliciting further responses. The biggest failing is that Lomborg basically ignored China's commitment, which reduces future temps—in and of itself—by 0.4°C, or almost an order of magnitude greater than Lomborg's estimate. Bjorn's other missteps include assuming that Europe will reverse its decades-long trend of increasing renewables and efficiency in 2030, ignoring the pledges of developing nations as well as significant emitters like Canada, Australia Japan and Mexico, and finally, underestimating those pledges he does see fit to include.
So while real academics point to the fact that Paris would cut projected warming by a full degree C, on the conservative side, and by nearly half, if countries continue to reduce emissions after 2030, Lomborg offers this clearly deficient analysis. In his defense, it's probably pretty hard to write studies from a shipping center.
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