Al Gore weathers confrontation at ECO:nomics summit
Gore kept his cool despite the bravado of the 'Skeptical Environmentalist'.
Fri, Mar 06 2009 at 2:11 AM EST
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Photo: from ECO:nomics Al Gore must have known going into the ECO:nomics summit in Santa Barbara today that there would be skeptics in attendance. After all, this event is put on by News Corp's Wall Street Journal, a publication historically critical of Gore's seemingly anti-free market call-to-arms. And the morning sessions featured Fox News darling Bjorn Lomborg, aka the "Skeptical Environmentalist" who launched a big career after publishing a controversial book by the same title in 2001 which denounced global warming.
Lomborg, a purported "liberal," has assembled economists to look at the return-on-investment of various humanitarian efforts — from funding education, to eliminating tuberculosis, to mitigating global warming. His results ... fighting climate change is not an "economically sound investment."
According to Lomborg, for every dollar spent fighting global warming through mechanisms like a carbon tax, 90 cents of value is provided. Whereas, every dollar spent on fighting TB yields $30 of value (accounting $1000 for every human-life-year). And every dollar spent on R&D for new energy would yield $11 of value.
So the anticipated sparks flew when Lomborg challenged Al Gore to a public debate saying, "I know you've dodged this bullet before."
Al Gore's response: "I don't want to be rude to you ... but these numbers have been debunked numerous times." To paraphrase, he said it wouldn't be worth anyone's time to enter a debate in which hypothetical economic projections are pitted against solid, real facts. Gore cited recent submarine data in the Arctic which indicates that a total thaw of the arctic ice cap could take place during summer months in less than 5 years.
The multiple, compounded repercussions from such a cataclysmic event are just beginning to be understood and (though Lomborg claims they have been addressed in his calculations) it seems far-fetched that any environmental scientist, much less an ivory tower economist, would have a realistic sense of the true total impact of climate change over the next 100 years, given a scientific landscape that changes monthly.
A few examples Gore provided — 1 foot of sea level rise displaces 1 million people with current models showing 20 feet or more of sea rise. Then there is the big "methane monster" lurking beneath the permafrost in Greenland which could release in just a few short years a giant packet of greenhouse gases equal to the amount of all the CO2 released to date. Even subtle shifts in climate effect the breeding cycles of insects and birds (which eat the insects) leading to a shift in populations of malarial mosquitos and bacteria-toting ticks. And then there is the threat to pollinator insects like bees, without whom our entire food chain could well collapse.
But Gore did end on a positive note and in fact a place of agreement with his nemesis Lomborg. R&D is key. Al Gore believes that we do have the technology we need right now to be fossil-free by 2020. But it will take strong political will, something on the order of JFK's initiative to get a man on the moon, to get that technology to scale so that it has the positive impacts we desire.
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Comments
Eduardo W.
Today 05:06 AM
Algore profound the things that will happen in the future if people today will not action on the climate that we are experiencing today. He has lots of illustrations and facts that will support these things. It is true that global warming would be one of the things that will put human into a world that is not capable in living. It pays to keep it in the 700 range, and it will pay off the sooner you get it heading in that direction. Every now and again, everyone encounters a financial crisis.... More
DAD77
03/25/2009 18:24 PM
According to the new data published by NASA, 1998 is no longer the hottest year ever in the US. 1934 is.
Four of the top 10 years of US high temperatures are from the 1930s: 1934, 1931, 1938 and 1939, while only 3 of the top 10 are from the last 10 years (1998, 2006, 1999).
NASA had a programming error that they discovered in 2007 that led to readjusting temperatures for the last 9 years. However, that didn't make the news.
Guest
03/10/2009 12:24 PM
Lomborg has not been debunked at all: rather, he has been subject to repeated ad hominem attacks, by those who apparently are incapable of engaging his evident claims. One cannot simply cite an "anti-(fill in the blank)" website and claim that a meticulous, evidence based series of claims is properly "debunked". It's curious, this slavish devotion to one set of claims, and this rabid response to contrary evidence. One longs for a world of intelligent observers, wherein these competing.... More
Guest
03/09/2009 02:08 AM
It's too bad that Al Gore or your writer did not reference the MANY, many times that poseur Bjorn Lomborg has been debunked. He is totally funded by right-wing think tanks and uses pseudo-science and fuzzy logic to delegitimate global warming. For instance there is an ENTIRE WEBSITE where scientists illustrate Bjorn's many mistakes and twisted facts: http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/
It's
Guest
03/09/2009 01:00 AM
I am not really sure where you get the idea Al Gore kept his cool. The reality is he simply refused to interact in the discussion that was going on at the conference: making ECO: friendly make economic sense.
-the tone was set by Alan Mullaly (Ford CEO) who spoke to how fuel prices meant Ford would be moving its operations into smaller cars where the demand is
-then to Prabhakar Patil (Compact Power CEO)discussing the real failure of the electric car was not appealing to the.... More
Guest
03/07/2009 15:29 PM
"seemingly anti-free market call-to-arms, "?? Mr. Karl Burkart's is repeating without thinking the old line about environmental advocates being "anti free market". Give him credit for the word "seemingly" but in fact those who want industry to continue to be able to distort markets by continuing to externalize costs, are the ones who actually sing high praise to "free markets!" while working overtime to avoid a real free market and work to distort costs as much as they can get away with,.... More
Guest
03/07/2009 20:43 PM
The perception of the right is that regulatory limitations like carbon taxes and cap & trade policies inhibit the free market. The left thinks that the "free market" is an illusion that fails to incorporate enormous externalized costs (like the cost of carbon-dumping). Both are correct. The free market does need to GUIDED and some regulation is good. In fact regulation can spur economic growth.
Guest
03/06/2009 18:07 PM
Only Al Gore can make the Earth's weather better. He can talk to mother earth like a Catholic priest can talk to God. We just need to have faith in whatever it is he tells us. Screw the skeptics.
Guest
03/06/2009 12:34 PM
Bees are already on shaky ground in some parts of the U.S.
