Surprising no one, Bjorn Lomborg has distorted reality yet again in another WSJ op-ed where he argues that climate action is prohibitively expensive. Lomborg criticizes the UN for failing to tally up the costs of Paris pledges, while he fails to account for the cost of climate inaction.
By looking at pledges from the US, EU, Mexico and China, Lomborg presents readers with a price tag. He bases his numbers on Stanford Energy Modeling Forum data, but then runs his own analysis to come up with a cost. What exactly his “regression analysis” entails isn’t explained, but given his history of misinformation, it’s unlikely the analysis is accurate. And, as mentioned, Lomborg doesn’t mention the price tag of climate change, should we fail to take appropriate action.
While Lomborg makes hay out of the few percentile points climate action could temporarily shave off of the GDP, a recent Nature study finds that unchecked warming would cut average incomes by 23 percent by the end of the century and by an astonishing 75 percent in the poorest 40 percent of countries. The study looks only at the impact of warming temperatures, so it doesn’t even include the effects of drought on agriculture, storms on infrastructure, or sea level rise on coastal communities.
Yet again, we see that Lomborg misleads readers by providing a carefully selected set of information to advocate for inaction on climate change. In response to Joe Romm’s debunking of his recent paper, Lomborg only doubles down at WUWT. So with two lengthy pieces published right in a row, it doesn’t look like being headquartered in a shipping center is holding Bjorn back from his misinformation campaign!
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