In a recent interview with the online Berliner Zeitung (BZ) here, economist Björn Lomborg said that 16-year old Greta Thunberg’s demands “will put people in danger”.
Greta, the Swedish teenage activist is calling for radical cuts in CO2 emissions – on a scale that would have profound impacts on the world’s market system. Moreover, Lomborg calls the demands immoral. Lomborg says it would be far wiser to invest money in bringing the world’s poor out of grinding poverty rather than to try to mitigate climate change.
Fear based on 30 years of lies and exaggerations
“Rich countries that tell poor countries not to use fossil energy for the benefit of the environment are acting immorally,” Lomborg told the BZ.
Lomborg also sharply criticized Thunberg, telling BILD news daily: “Greta Thunberg fears the end of the world due to climate change. This fear is the result of three decades of alarmist rhetoric based on exaggerations and lies.”
€43 billion for 0.00001°C of temperature reduction yearly
Lomborg also called Germany’s “Energiewende” – transition to green energies – “the best example of a failed climate policy” which has proven to be “incredibly costly and ineffective.”
“Global warming will be reduced by 0.001 degrees at most by 2100 for 43 billion euros a year,” he told the BZ. Lomborg blames the adults for panicking Ms Thunberg and using her “to push through an agenda that costs trillions but brings almost no benefits.”
Rather, for the trillions we will likely get us far graver problems. What a deal.
Lomborg also called Germany’s “Energiewende” – transition to green energies – “the best example of a failed climate policy” which has proven to be “incredibly costly and ineffective.”
Exactly! And if it continues then Germany’s industrial sector will decline as competitors take over more of their markets. Yes German companies may well off-shore their manufacturing but what good will that do for the Germany’s unemployment rates?
And what happens in Germany so goes the rest of the EU. France says it will decommission it’s vast nuclear infrastructure that cheaply powers the nation. Belgium, Holland, Spain and Italy are already heading down the ‘decarbonization’ route. The EU collective will become poorer and internationally less relevant. The EU’s internal stresses and strains will build as each nation tries to adapt, until finally the EU disintegrates under the huge weight of its own inept bureaucracy.
Of course the EU could always get help from Putin and buy lots of his gas — now that could be the plan!
Absolutely spot on. These alarmist activists seem to be damaging the mental well being of many young people. T
Yes, poor living conditions are much worse than a small climate change. In 1968, millions of people demonstrated for peace in the world and, above all, a stop to the Vietnam War. Today, hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women and children die in war (only in Afghanistan about 74 people each day). The climate alarmists want millions of citizens to demonstrate and strike for the climate and for the climate of our grandchildren and future generations. And for polar bears! No one seems to care about today’s war-damaged adults and children, poverty, children without school and with poor living conditions. Peace and access to cheap energy would be the solution for almost all of these today. When do our school children strike for peace and prosperity for everyonel? When do our politicians take up PEACE as the solution to all of today’s problems in the developing countries? The possible climate change is nothing compared to war and oppression.
Germans have an indomitable taste for large-scale deadly charlatanism, take the Third Reich, the Second World War or specifically “Unternehmen Barabrossa”, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Recently, I watched a documentary on the latter, I was absolutely shocked at the fatal amateurism of the invasion whose dilettantism reminded me of the Energiewende.
The most seminal hallmark of Germans is their passion for obedience: Hauptsache wir werden regiert – main thing, someone is governing us. This propensity makes them prone to totalitarianism.
Unsurprisingly, since the founding of the German nation, totalitarian forces have been dominant in the country, attracting adulation from the people, ranging from the era of an authoritarian monarchy to the years of the Weimarer Republik, which were utterly dominated by totalitarian parties (Marxist socialists, communists, Nazis etc.), to the Third Reich to the 1960s when the sons of those who had cheered Hitler took to the streets to demand totalitarian socialism/communism. These guys now occupy influential positions in the German Deep State (mostly keeping a low profile) while diligently establishing an eco-theocracy.
The passion for obedience, the passion to merge into a collective shaped by a common pattern of obedience (Selbstgleichschaltung) is so strong in the Germans, they have no problem in throwing away (a once excellent culture of) education and shunning excellent sources — that would allow them to take an adequately critical attitude toward issues like global warming and the Energiewende — in favour of a tribal cult and creed based on magical thinking.
This author argues that the Greens share roots with powerful German traditions of irrationality: https://youtu.be/nnXatjSeWWE
And yet, it’s even worse here in Finland (and in Sweden, too, for that matter).
As a people, we’ve got the exact same totalitarian mindset. But unlike the Germans, we never air our collective dirty laundry in public. Rather, it always gets swept under the rug, and thus, we never learn from our mistakes; witness f.ex. the local media here being full of all kinds of eco-nazi arseholes demanding an end to our relatively free society; ban cars, air travel, meat eating, real estate ownership, etcetera; and now a local Greenie, erm, ‘think tank’ even recommends nominating a supra-parlamental Green Synod because “the fluctuations in the democratic process” should be rectified! What IS this, if not the Thirties again with a green Hakenkreuz, I ask you?!
But there’s also a political resistance / opposition movement gathering steam now. And about time, too. Just wish it doesn’t come into blows later…
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The models are wrong for the simple reason that the underlying “physics” is wrong. Back radiation from the atmosphere (including that from carbon dioxide) CANNOT be added to solar radiation and does NOT make the effective intensity of solar radiation about three times as much, as indeed would be needed if it were direct solar radiation to the surface that was supporting the global mean surface temperature.
It isn’t. It is the non-radiative “heat creep” process that I discovered in 2013 that is enabled by gravity because it is indeed increasing entropy and thus a direct result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Over 2,000 have downloaded these papers: https://ssrn.com/author=2627605.
D. J. C., Thank you for your most interesting comment, links, and papers.
While empirical evidence does not seem to support CAGW, rather lending credence to climatological processes that do not involve CO2 in a significant way, I have always wondered why my fellow sceptics are paying rather little attention to the physics of warming — the very basics of the issue.
I welcome your contributions and shall make an effort to digest your input. Not a natural scientist, I have found your various publications lucid and accessible to a layman like myself, encouraging me to go deeper into the matter.