In a commentary article in the Financial Post on Tuesday, Bjørn Lomborg argues that Net Zero is “on its way out”, as politicians across the world face up to the high cost and tiny climate returns of raising energy prices. With voters “weary of soaring energy bills and annoyed by increasingly hysteric and patronising climate rhetoric”, governments from the US to UK, Germany to Australia are waking up to the “simple truth”: “aggressive Net Zero mandates are delivering economic pain for unmeasurable and far-off climate gain”. Lomborg senses “a new pragmatism” entering the climate debate.
Lomborg takes the example of United Kingdom, whose Net Zero law enacted in 2019 committed it to zero emissions by 2050. “Hailed as bold leadership, its reality has been economic sabotage” as the UK’s industrial electricity prices surged at four times the increase in the US — leaving the UK with the highest power rates in the Western world.
Tilak’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
While Prime Minister Keir Starmer is reportedly preparing to delay or dilute key green commitments to curb “voter revolt”, Reform UK, leading the national polls by far, promises to end Net Zero targets when the party comes to power. Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservatives, pledged in 2025 to repeal the Climate Change Act. Lomborg notes the retreat from penurious green policies in the EU, Germany, Australia, Japan and even in Democrat states in the US.
So how does the Western painful dalliance with Net Zero end, according to Lomborg? He finds promise in the about-turn declared by philanthropist Bill Gates who seems to have had an epiphany about the costs of Net Zero. Lomborg is on the same page as Gates. In his long memo ahead of the COP30 climate summit, Gates called for attending states to face up to “three tough truths”: climate change is serious but “will not lead to humanity’s demise”, temperature is not the best measure of progress, and our best defences against climate change are better health and increased prosperity.
What can governments – made more “pragmatic” in the face of voter revolts – do in response to all the money wasted on futile Net Zero policies which cost far more than their presumed (and speculative) long-term ‘benefits’? Lomborg, like Gates, is a techno-optimist, and he sees hope in government-funded research “to achieve breakthroughs in nuclear, carbon capture, geo-engineering and far more efficient green-energy generation and storage”.
The Lomborg Conundrum
Bjørn Lomborg occupies a curious and increasingly uncomfortable position in the climate wars. To climate activists, he is a dangerous heretic who undermines the urgency of ‘The Science’ by questioning the costs of Net Zero. To many sceptics, he is a frustrating near-ally who dismantles the climate policy edifice brick by brick — only to stop short of questioning its foundations.
Lomborg insists that climate change is real, that CO2-driven warming is a problem and that humanity must ultimately ‘solve’ it. Yet he also argues, persuasively, that the costs of current climate policies vastly exceed their benefits, and that trillions are being squandered on symbolic decarbonisation while far more urgent human needs go unmet.
This intellectual tension — between scepticism about policy and faith in the premise — defines Lomborg’s conundrum. He rightly rejects Net Zero as economically ruinous but still accepts the moral framing that elevates man-made CO2 to a civilisational threat in the first place. He denounces coercive regulation and carbon taxes but places hope in large-scale, government-funded research and development to deliver future technological salvation. In doing so, Lomborg offers a critique that is incisive but incomplete — and ultimately justifying the very climate orthodoxy he seeks to reform.
Lomborg’s most valuable contribution has been to puncture the illusion that climate mitigation is a ‘free lunch’ or ‘win-win’. He draws on the work of William Nordhaus, the Nobel prize winning economist who is well known for “integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis”. Lomborg treats climate change as a long-term economic externality whose damages, while real, are modest relative to the benefits of growth. The central error of Net Zero policies, he argues, is not that they fail to reduce emissions but that they impose crushing costs today for vanishingly small benefits decades hence.
Events have vindicated Lomborg, at least as far as the costs are concerned. The green consensus is unravelling across Europe under the weight of high energy prices, deindustrialisation and voter revolt. Britain’s political class, once united in climate sanctimony, now speaks openly of delaying or diluting Net Zero commitments. Australia’s centre-Right Liberal party and Japan’s new PM Sanae Takaichi are retreating from official Net Zero targets. Even the Tony Blair Institute has urged suspending carbon taxes on gas in the name of cheaper power.
What was sold as ‘green growth’ has now revealed itself as no growth.
Lomborg has been clear-eyed about this retreat, describing it not as moral failure but as political reality. He notes that governments are discovering that climate virtue cannot be eaten, worn or used to heat homes. The lived experience of voters has finally punctured the abstractions of climate modelling. On this terrain, Lomborg, the sceptical environmentalist has done more than most to restore economic realism to a debate long dominated by moral theatrics.
Yet for Lomborg this retreat from Net Zero seems merely tactical. The destination — deep decarbonisation — remains appropriate, only the route is wrong. This insistence is where his analysis begins to raise questions among others who also call themselves sceptics.
Techno-Optimism and the Mirage of State-Led Innovation
If Lomborg’s critique of Net Zero is grounded in economics, his proposed alternative rests on faith in the powers of planners. He repeatedly returns to the same solution: massive public investment in research and development to deliver breakthroughs in clean energy.
Advanced nuclear, carbon capture and storage, better batteries, green hydrogen, even geoengineering — all are invoked by Lomborg as future tools that will make decarbonisation cheap, painless and politically palatable. Lomborg has consistently advocated government investments in green R&D. He even cites studies that purport to show that “every dollar invested in green R&D could prevent $11 in long-term climate damages, making it arguably the most effective global climate policy available”.
Lomborg aligns closely with Bill Gates whose own climate evangelism has undergone a tactical rebranding in recent years. Gates, like Lomborg, rejects degrowth and hair-shirt austerity. He promises instead that innovation — funded and guided by governments — will square the circle between climate goals and prosperity. The link between Gates, who holds himself out as a private philanthropist, and the Lomborg solution of private-public funding of large-scale environmental R&D came under stress as the Trump administration’s DOGE initiatives began to bite.
With the end of USAID and its folding into the State Department, Gates went on record to blame the end of USAID, saying: “The things USAID fund – I fund.” Bill Gates isn’t happy about DOGE cutting funding to projects he’s also involved in. This, some would say, should tell you all you need to know.
But this shared techno-optimism is precisely where Lomborg’s brand of environmental scepticism deserts him. The history of state-directed innovation is not one of elegant breakthroughs and timely miracles. It is a history of misallocated capital, political capture, crony capitalism and technological white elephants. Governments do not ‘pick winners’; they subsidise incumbents, entrench failures and reward those best able to navigate bureaucracies rather than markets. More often than not, it is losers who pick governments.
Take the example of the Ivanpah solar power project, one of the most expensive green energy projects ever undertaken in American history, costing $2.2 billion to build. Benjamin Zycher of the American Enterprise Institute put the promise of the solar power project in California’s Mojave Desert this way:
It was the future. It would demonstrate how to save the planet. It would produce electricity clean and cheap and immune to the vagaries of international shifts in prices, interest rates, currency exchange values and the caprice of foreign governments. It was a demonstration of the massive achievements possible from public-private ‘partnerships’, that is, central planning American style.
After failing to meet its targets, it is set to shut down in 2026 “after eating up massive amounts of taxpayer dollars and killing thousands of birds”.
Britain’s disastrous carbon capture and storage (CCS) project offers another case in point. After decades and billions in subsidies, the technology remains commercially marginal, energy-hungry and dependent on permanent public support. Grid-scale batteries face material constraints that no amount of funding can wish away, as the example of Massachusetts shows. GM, Ford, and other big car makers are “waving white flags” after huge losses and layoffs from their electric vehicle ventures.
These are not failures of imagination or underfunding. They are constraints imposed by the very nature of public sector funding. Lomborg understands these realities when he criticises climate policy mandates. Yet he suspends disbelief when the same political systems are recast as benevolent patrons of innovation.
The Premise Lomborg Will Not Abandon
This is the heart of Lomborg’s conundrum. He accepts that climate change is “a problem”, even as he shows repeatedly that it is dwarfed by other challenges and grossly inflated by policy responses. He argues that adaptation is cheaper than mitigation, that growth saves lives and that energy poverty kills far more people than climate variability.
Yet he stops short of asking the obvious question: if the man-made CO2 problem is small, distant and manageable, why must it remain central at all?
Across the Atlantic, under Donald Trump, the United States has answered that question bluntly. Climate alarmism has been labelled a hoax, international climate institutions such as the IPCC and the UNFCC defunded, Paris-style multilateralism abandoned. Whatever one thinks of Trump’s rhetoric, the underlying shift reflects a broader reassessment: climate policy has delivered higher costs, lower resilience and no measurable climatic benefit.
Lomborg watches this reversal with a mixture of admiration and unease. He welcomes the rejection of Net Zero but not the rejection of climate exceptionalism itself. He wants climate policy to be cheaper, smarter — but still morally privileged.
A more thoroughgoing realism, as put across by President Trump in his speech to the UN, would go further. It would recognise that modest warming (whatever its cause) is not an existential threat. It would abandon global temperature targets as technocratic fantasies. It would prioritise energy abundance, resilience and adaptation over decarbonisation. And it would treat climate as one variable among many in the complex equation of human welfare.
Lomborg has performed a valuable service in exposing the economic wreckage of Net Zero and the hollowness of green utopianism. But by clinging to the premise that climate change must ultimately be “solved” through policy-directed and publicly funded innovation, he gives credence to the very worldview he criticises. His halfway house reassures moderates, comforts elites, and irritates activists — while leaving untouched the deeper error that made Net Zero plausible in the first place.
Until that premise is confronted, Lomborg will remain an ambiguous figure – demonised by climate ideologues, praised by pragmatists, yet tethered to an idea whose time seems to have quietly passed.
A version of this article was first published in the Daily Sceptic https://dailysceptic.org/2026/01/27/bjorn-lomborg-is-wrong-to-say-climate-change-is-a-problem-to-be-solved/
Dr Tilak K. Doshi is the Daily Sceptic‘s Energy Editor. He is an economist, a member of the CO2 Coalition and a former contributor to Forbes. Follow him on Substack and X.
The irony is that burning fossil fuels (human contribution to CO2 increase) does not now, never has, and never will have a significant net effect on climate.
How can you be so sure?
This is ultimately where Lomborg is coming from. Any truly balanced opinion must make sure of both sides of the argument. For me personally, it’s impossible to judge. There appears to be very persuasive science on both sides of the divide. If I’m being honest, I really don’t have a clue which side persuades me more.
All I can do is to judge from the experience seen during ny 60 years on the planet. Locally, winters have become slightly milder but in general haven’t changed much. Near continental, winters slightly warmer and wetter but skiing continues in the Alps every season, well into the Spring and in most resorts. Globally, Arctic Sea Ice has been reduced somewhat but still forms over the Arctic winter to near its outer margins, while Antarctic sea ice seems more fickle. Continents seem to be getting slightly milder in winter but winter snow cover quite often exceeds the average. Spring snow cover seems to be a bit less.
Hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones etc don’t seem to have changed much except for the hype. All in all, not much has changed and I would imagine would sit inside natural climate variation. But…..and it’s a big but, these slight changes might just be the beginning of a more consistent warming, that is scientifically/theoretically plausible.
Try telling that to the BBC
And GB News.
There appears to be very persuasive science on both sides of the divide –
except that there is no scientific confirmation that CO2 in any way affects the climate – just models which have been shown to be erroneous – there is common sense that man made CO2 is such a tiny percentage of the atmosphere (something like 1 one hundredth of 1%) removing that couldn’t possibly affect the climate which is driven more by the sun and the earth’s rotation – then there are the recent scientific studies that question whether CO2 is even a GHG as unlike water (clouds, humidity), CO2 does not retain heat once the heat source (sun ) is removed – and as for slightly warmer winters isn’t that what one would expect following the end of a mini ice age (around 1870 or so)
See Eschenbach’s analysis from a year ago:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/01/22/greenhouse-efficiency-2/
The data clearly shows the atmosphere is not producing any kind of warming effect. All of the warming is due to increases in solar energy.
This also validates Miskolczi 2010 who found the same exact flat trend for IR opacity in NOAA radiosonde data.
Two quite different sets of data show the exact same result. No increasing strength of the greenhouse effect.
In my view the description of climate as the average of weather over 30 years is simply useless. The average annual global temperature or decadal trend in sea level are meaningless as climate descriptors. The appropriate way to describe climate is the variability of various weather conditions that normally occur over long time frames in a specific location or region. One can readily observe that the climate is much less variable in the tropics and in polar regions than at mid-latitudes where weather routinely goes from beautiful to lousy from day to day, week to week and season to season.
“Hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones etc don’t seem to have changed much except for the hype.”
We cant know that definitively yet – there is to much noise from year to year variability.
This is an honest assessment from someone who doesn’t understand the science involved or cannot see the contradictions or the absurdities in the climate orthodoxy via models that make its assertions pure speculation not real science.
Luke warmer Lomborg has done a great job in highlighting the economic stupidity of the IPCC’s chosen decarbonization policies; but won’t confront the stupidity of the human-caused climate alarmism itself – fair enough-he’s not a scientist. He has made others rethink their priorities and that is a very good thing to have done, others with more credentials can follow up on the absurd climate theology practiced by the alarmist herd.
From post:”How can you be so sure?”
I can be sure because both water and CO2 are used to extinguish fires.
So what caused the PETM if it wasn’t volcanic CO2/CH4 ?
‘Lomborg insists that climate change is real, that CO2-driven warming is a problem and that humanity must ultimately ‘solve’ it. Yet he also argues, persuasively, that the costs of current climate policies vastly exceed their benefits, and that trillions are being squandered on symbolic decarbonisation while far more urgent human needs go unmet.’
Maybe the real solution to the above dilemma is to call out the phenomenological physics of radiant transfer theory:
“A physical theory is called phenomenological if it expresses mathematically the results of observed phenomena without clarifying their fundamental origin and significance. Typically, the development of a phenomenological theory is based on experience-based heuristic short cuts lacking rigorous justification. Most phenomenological theories are short-lived and get replaced by fundamental first principle theories. However, as we discuss in this Essay, some phenomenologies can survive for centuries despite their inherently limited scientific value and eventually become an impediment to scientific progress.”
“Whether spelled out explicitly or not, the key premise of phenomenological photometry as well as of the phenomenological RTT is that matter interacts with the energy of the electromagnetic field rather than with the electromagnetic field itself. This profoundly false assumption explains the deceitful simplicity of the phenomenological concepts as well as their ultimate failure. Indeed, the very outset of both phenomenological disciplines is the postulation of the existence of the radiance as the primordial physical quantity describing the “instantaneous directional distribution of the radiant energy flow” at a point in space. This is followed by a “derivation” of the scalar RTE on the basis of “simple energy conservation considerations” and the postulation that it is the electromagnetic energy rather than the electromagnetic field that gets scattered by particles and surfaces.”
Read:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20140012672/downloads/20140012672.pdf
It is not that complicated.
RGHE theory founders on two erroneous assumptions.
First error: that near Earth space is cold and the atmosphere/RGHE act as a warming blanket.
That is incorrect.
Near Earth space is hot (400 K, 127 C, 260 F) and the atmosphere/water vapor/albedo act as that cooling reflective panel propped up on the car’s dash.
Second error: Earth’s surface radiates as a near Black Body. USCRN & SURFRAD data are calibrated, i.e. “tweaked“ to conform to that assumption thereby creating “extra” “back” radiation.
That is incorrect.
IR instruments are calibrated to deliver a referenced & relative temperature while power flux is inferred using S-B equation and assuming an emissivity. Assuming 1.0 assumes wrong. TFK_bams09 shows surface emissivity as 0.16 = 63/396 which zeroes out “back” RGHE radiation.
RGHE joins caloric, phlogiston, spontaneous generation, luminiferous ether, et al in science’s dust bin of failed theories.
Miasma.
“CO2-driven warming is a problem.”
But so what . . . even if it is?!
The “problem” – if there is such a problem – will, without a shadow of a doubt, be solved all by itself, surely?!
Like, a point will be reached when fossil fuels will no longer to be economic to extract – the effective point of depletion. It won’t all happen at the same time – multiple decades at least for oil and gas and probably centuries for coal, but as the availability of these fuels declines, CO2 emissions will decline.
So, whatever the timescale is, there’s plenty of time to establish alternative forms of generation which are reliable and dispatchable. . . and that alternative, without another shadow of doubt . . . is definitely NOT wind and solar!!
Molten salts reactors are probably a good bet, and their deployment is not that far away anyway. LFTRs for example – the Chinese have a test reactor under trial right now which they recently successfully refueled without a shutdown. And Copenhagen Atomics hope to have a trial LFTR in operation next year.
Once commercially operational, these molten salt SMRs will result in the very welcome and immediate destruction of the utter stupidity and profligacy that is the wind and solar industry.
A simpler solution is to ask Lomborg a couple of questions. First, exactly what is (or are) the problem(s) associated with climate change? Second, how do you know that those are in fact problems, i.e. what proof do you have? Finally, have you made an exhaustive list of benefits, and demonstrated that the problems outweigh the benefits?
I have yet to see a problem proven to result from climate change – the human caused variety. It’s all speculation, model “predictions”, and maybes, none of which have materialized.
“Advanced nuclear, carbon capture and storage, better batteries, green hydrogen, even geoengineering — all are invoked by Lomborg as future tools that will make decarbonisation cheap, painless and politically palatable.”
And square the circle too, I’ll bet.
Internet
Space program
Nuclear energy
Came from government.
Tell that to the zillions of private contractors who did, in fact, build that. Private contractors were responsible for ninety-nine percent of everything. All the government did was take tax dollars out of the private sector economy and dish it out to the other contractors to only be told, “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”
All of these ideas you mention have their genesis in the private sector. The private sector went to government to find a ways to spread the risk of financial loss amongst the taxpayers.
No, they were appropriated by the government for weaponization, but became useful in private sector hands. Everything the government does costs more and delivers less, and is ultimately used as a tool against the people.
I know. Best example is the GPS satellites. They’re a US military toy that generates trillions of private sector revenue inside and outside USA. Garmin and Apple would lose a lot of value if their devices did not know location, yet neither of those companies had the financial means to launch a GPS satellite network in the cold war era (Apple was founded in 1976… first GPS in 1977).
I figured my comment would not be well loved amongst free market conservative enthusiasts – but nobody was walking on the moon if the US government did not get involved. It’s not a very productive activity, probably why no one has gone back for 50 years.
No Nixon and JFK means no manned moon buggy. Elon could put someone there this decade if he wanted to… but why?
By claiming “tiny climate returns”, Lomborg confirms that he still holds to the contemporary superstition that “greenhouse” gases are climate-changing and problematic. It shows the depth of indoctrination that has afflicted even highly educated people.
Indeed.
He is 10 olympic swimming pools worth of Kool-aid behind Seth Bernstein.
I almost like Bjorn’s writing at times, however, I find Seth’s on par with bad AI summaries and medieval torture.
You mean Borenstein?
Until the politics of AGW is brought to light and understood it will remain a conundrum.
Yep. Lomborg is a semi-useful idiot.
I would erase the “semi”….
As for simple physics: CO2 causes no warming whatsoever, the sun does.
Lomborg was almost burned by the Danish Inquisition and pretty much banned from work.
I would like to think that in quiet private conversation after a few drinks he would smile and agree that the carbon dioxide stuff is all a load of bollocks but he needs to say it to keep his job.
A variation of Galileo reaffirming the Sun going round the Earth. Ok it does, but it doesn’t.
UK readers may be interested to know that I had that Vince Cable admit to me that the Stern Report on climate change deliberately fiddled the figures to make things alarming as otherwise nobody would take notice.
The fiddling was done by picking a discount rate to get the result wanted.
The occasion of my conversation with Cable was him canvassing in the 2019 election and he made the mistake of wandering into my garden and after realising who he was I had a chat that hopefully he won’t forget.
By the way he is a director of a hydrogen infrastructure company so he is still earning from climate nonsense.
I was about to write a post with a similar idea, but you beat me to it!
It may be that he has been more clever than we think. He may have figured that he would be listened to (and reported in the media) if he was still able to claim that he wasn’t one of those mad climate sceptics. I simply can’t believe that he really does believe that climate change / CO2 is a serious problem. Does he seriously believe we would be better off if we were still in the depths of the Little Ice Age?
It does feel that climate scepticism is on the rise e.g. a recent WUWT post about newspaper editorials which have become much more sceptical. If so, then maybe Lomborg will soon have the confidence to out himself as a true climate sceptic! I can’t wait to see that….
Bjorn has no real physics background but he is a very smart guy. He knows that to get his message across (i.e that of his Copenhagen Consensus) there’s no point wasting time on what CO2 can do. I think it was obvious from the beginning he didn’t go along with the climate nonsense, but if he had made that public, his greater aim could not be met. I’m OK with that – lesser of two evils.You fight the fights you can win.
Stand in front of a blazing campfire.
Raise up a blanket between.
Hotter now or colder?
Drop the blanket.
Hotter now or colder?
That is how Sun & Earth’s atmosphere work especially the 30% albedo, making the Earth cooler not warmer and it does not take a physics PhD.
One paragraph in this excellent article should be in big bold letters
But this shared techno-optimism is precisely where Lomborg’s brand of environmental scepticism deserts him. The history of state-directed innovation is not one of elegant breakthroughs and timely miracles. It is a history of misallocated capital, political capture, crony capitalism and technological white elephants. Governments do not ‘pick winners’; they subsidise incumbents, entrench failures and reward those best able to navigate bureaucracies rather than markets. More often than not, it is losers who pick governments.
Then there is a shorter punchline
Yet he stops short of asking the obvious question: if the man-made CO2 problem is small, distant and manageable, why must it remain central at all?
…if the man-made CO2 problem is small, distant and manageable, why must it remain central at all?
Its part of the great puzzle, and I really don’t understand it. But while this particular version is a real problem for Lomborg, the mainstream of activism would get around it by arguing its not small, distant and manageable at all, its a huge threat to human civilization. Not remotely plausible, but at least its a logically coherent argument.
The more fundamental version of the same puzzle is: why do the activists keep wanting us to do things in the name of climate, which, on their own theory, will have no effect on climate?
Why, for instance, do UK activists get so heated about UK Net Zero, and about limiting or lowering UK electricity use, when the UK is such a tiny part of global emissions that none of that will have any effect? Why do they not get equally heated about countries which do substantial percentages of global emissions, but which have no intention of reducing them? Why do they get so excited, in the UK, by a planned server farm somewhere in the south of the country, when its electricity use, what they object to so much, is too small even to be noticed in the global totals of power use, and the resulting emissions are globally a rounding error?
I really wish Nick and one or two of the other AGW and renewable enthusiasts who come here would try and explain this.
The only explanation I have been able to come up with is that its an abandonment of consequentialism. Consequentialism is the view that in ethics and public policy one should be driven by, or at least take account of, the consequences of proposed policies. It is or used to be mainstream, it goes back in modern times to the English utilitarians, and particularly J S Mill.
There is another way of looking at these things: its that actions and policies have intrinsic qualities which makes them right or wrong whatever the consequences. The consequences, on this view, are irrelevant. The argument which such thinkers use against consequentialism is that it is morally corrupt, it justifies doing evil in order that good may come.
This is what I would really like to hear about from Nick et al. Do you (for instance) want to see the UK go to Net Zero because you think emissions are intrinsically wrong, and whatever the economic or social costs and consequences, eliminating them is the right thing to do? Regardless of whether it will have any effect on the global climate?
In both climate and in other areas of policy I think this view depends on an appeal to religious authority for the judgment of the merits’ rightness or wrongness. This seems to support my other conclusion about climatism, that its focused on belief rather than action. Yes, action is important, but results are not. Action is a sort of testifying, so we build wind farms without caring much how much energy they contribute, or is it usable or cost effective. See for instance the treatment of the Scottish wind farms that are paid to refrain from producing the majority of what they could produce. It does not provoke soul searching or any kind of outrage. Are they being built because building wind farms is intrinsically right, no matter what the consequences?
This also explains the role of the concept of climate “denialism” and cancellations for expressing heretical views as nothing else seems able to. Belief, not results.
Or do you accept that consequences are relevant? And in that case, how do you justify doing things which have no climate effects and cost huge sums, with consequent neglect of health and welfare spending and provision?
Hopefully one or more of you will tell us what you think.
Well first, you won’t get an honest answer from the Climate Liars about why they lie. Partly because they actually Believe the lies, and will tell still more fairy tales to cover up those lies, such as their absurd claim that
RetardablesI mean renewables are actually cheaper.You pretty much nailed it on the motivation though: it’s all about the virtue signaling. No matter what the economic consequences (which they insist will be good), climate action is virtuous, and sends a “signal” to the rest of the world: “See? This is how you do it. We can’t do it alone, though. So, come join us! Because ultimately, you will benefit, as will “The Planet”.
‘The only explanation I have been able to come up with is that it’s an abandonment of consequentialism.’
According to the author of the attached article, such ‘arguments’ don’t work on committed socialists, hence, at least in my opinion, can’t work on committed alarmists, since they’re likely one and the same group. Paraphrasing slightly:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/socialists-it-doesnt-matter-if-socialism-works-what-matters-power
Best we stick with pointing out the junk science underlying climate alarmism.
Michel, the answer is in their own statements. They want to de-industrialize the west, remove Capitalism.
Story tip.
The next scare.
https://www.gbnews.com/science/science-breakthrough-insects-fall-silent-ominous-warning-humanity
From the article: “Lomborg insists that climate change is real, that CO2-driven warming is a problem and that humanity must ultimately ‘solve’ it.”
Based on what? Somebody should ask Lomborg that question.
There is no evidence that CO2 is causing the Earth’s climate or weather to change. None whatsoever. Lomborg is dreaming.
Stuffing your fingers in your ears and stomping out of the room will not take down the monster.
Debunking RGHE will.
This is a very good article. I think it accurately describes the Lomborg contradictions.
“Lomborg has performed a valuable service in exposing the economic wreckage of Net Zero… while leaving untouched the deeper error that made Net Zero plausible in the first place.”
But even many skeptics of climate alarm accept that incremental CO2 should be expected to result in *some* amount of warming – i.e. sensible heat gain down here. The difference with Lomborg is the counter-claim from these skeptics that any warming will be modest and benign. OK, but the core error remains unchallenged, and the debate continues about the risk of greater harm.
What to do? Stop conceding that the static radiative effect of incremental CO2 is capable of “forcing” ANY AMOUNT of energy to accumulate down here as sensible heat. No one knows that. And there is no good physical reason to expect so, in the proper context of dynamic energy conversion within the general circulation. That is why I keep posting about this, using the “vertical integral of energy conversion” values computed within the ERA5 reanalysis model.
Demonstrated in a single image here.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1knv0YdUyIgyR9Mwk3jGJwccIGHv38J33/view?usp=drive_link
And more fully explained, with references, here.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PDJP3F3rteoP99lR53YKp2fzuaza7Niz?usp=drive_link
Thank you for your patience in this consequential matter.
I’m waiting for someone to tell me why we aren’t, slowly and economically, replacing carbon-based power generation with safe, clean and reliable nuclear-based power generation. We started to move this way decades ago, but we apparently let the anti-nuclear crazies get in the way.
Chernobyl: A corrupt and incompetent government.
Fukushima: Someone decided that building the backup emergency power generator in a flood zone was a good idea.
TMI: A partial meltdown of a reactor resulted in the release of a small amount of radioactive gasses. Microsoft is bringing it back to life to power AI computing.
Is it possible that we can learn from our mistakes? I’d rather not learn from spending untold billions of dollars building windmills and solar panels and batteries.
The anti-Nuke caterwaulers pretty much destroyed the nuclear industry through activism, and through burdensome regulations, making it nearly impossible to build new plants. I think that now, it could take well beyond ten years to get a nuclear plant built, possibly fifteen, which adds $billions to the overall cost.
But as for replacing fossil fuel based generation, that would be a mistake. If we get rid of the burdensome regulations and delays, then building nuclear certainly makes sense in terms of stabilizing the grid, and the way to get rid of Retardables.
There are two points to be made:
1) It is difficult to safely sequester spent fuel for geological amounts of time. Most of the proposed sites had either geological (Kansas) issues or political (Nevada) issues. France resolved the problem by recycling the fuel to separate the short-lived products from the long-lived products and burning the long-lived products;
2) President Carter, using his influence as a naval nuclear engineer, and his power as president, signed an Executive Order to prohibit recycling of nuclear fuel and by-products. No subsequent president has seen fit to over-turn Carter’s EO.
I went to mass.gov and found this statement re: battery backup:
‘Energy storage is a significant strategic opportunity for Massachusetts. It can improve grid operations, reduce energy costs, provide backup power through storms, and benefit the local economy. The Energy Storage Initiative aims to make the Commonwealth a national leader in the emerging energy storage market requiring a 1,000 Megawatt hour (MWh) energy storage target to be achieved by December 31, 2025″
Anyone have any idea if they even came close and what the actual cost was? According the article linked in this post, 1 MHh of storage costs $500,000 so if correct, the cost to MA would be $500 million.
I am going to guess the answer is NO. The website for the New England power grid this morning shows $313/Mwh, 57% of that natural gas and oil generation, and nothing that resembles power storage in the mix. BTW, prices have been consistently in the $300-600/Mwh range for the past week plus, with lots of oil generation. i don’t know how you can sell power to your customers for 17-20 cents/kwh when you are paying 30-60 cents/kwh for any length of time, without going out of business.
A number of towns in western MA are fighting against large scale battery systems in their towns- but the state, I believe, has a law that takes away the right of a town to regulate them.
Can’t answer you question- but I live in this crazy state. They are going full speed ahead into Net Zero insanity. There is virtually zero resistance to it here. Well, other than a YouTube channel run by a guy named Mike Urban who courageously criticizes the state government and often on energy policies here. Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@mikeurban/videos
“It would recognise that modest warming (whatever its cause) is not an existential threat.”
Certainly not this week!
“But by clinging to the premise that climate change must ultimately be “solved” through policy-directed and publicly funded innovation, he gives credence to the very worldview he criticises.”
Maybe we define “ultimately” as the year 2525.
That song!
Climate always changes according evidence that I have seen.
I have no faith in the government being able to control the weather.
Lomborg also pointed out that every year 4 million people die because they don’t have access to fossil fuels (freezing or heating & cooking with parasite infested dung)- so guess climatistas really don’t care about humanity at all
Everyone needs an insurance policy and increasingly they need bodyguards and vests in the politicoassasin waves.
“Lomborg will remain an ambiguous figure”
and that may be intentional.
By not going all the way to the rational conclusion that the premises are incorrect, he ensures a wider audience for the factual analyses he produces.
If he said that the CO2/weather hypothesis is rubbish, he would be attacked as a tool of the fossil fuel industry and ignored totally.
This way he gets the data across.
It is no secret that Lomborg thinks CO2 is a problem, I disagree with him on that. He has other views I also disagree with. That doesn’t mean I am prepared to disregard some of the things he has to say. He is right concerning net zero and all programs like it. That is why it is important to hitch your wagon to ideas rather than individuals. Individuals will almost certainly disappoint you. I can support Lomborg’s views of things like net zero while at the same time completely dismissing his views I don’t accept.
Lomborg, Pielke jr, Tol, they all know the ‘global warming’ story is total BS but pretend its happening for fear of being professionally ostracised. Pocket-lining time-servers.
Lomborg suffers the problem many people do. He is just TOO nice to say NO! Economics is not a hard science, but it does describe limits, as encountered from a logistic function. Penetration of a policy that does not add up is always limited by $. The governments simply runs out of your money. Emblemsvag, also from liberal Scandinavia, made the economic case that Germany would have saved a few hundred billion Euros AND have achieved a working electrical power system if Germany had opted for nuclear instead of intermittent renewable energy (one could really say: irresponsible renewable energy).
The climate issue itself was a ‘red herring’ from the start so that predicating the design of energy systems on putative existential threats from a climate disaster was fundamentally a blunder for everyone but the oligarchs who made large fortunes by impoverishing everyone else.