Lomborg's about-turn

Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (1998, US edition 2001) and Cool It (2009) is now calling for major action on global warming, "a challenge humanity must confront." Up until now he was a vocal critic of climate change theory and Kyoto. He argued that many key preoccupations of the environmental movement, including pollution control and biodiversity, were either overblown as threats or amenable to relatively simple technological fixes. Lomborg argued that the governments spending billions to curb carbon emissions would be better off diverting those resources to initiatives such as AIDS research, anti-malaria programs and other kinds of humanitarian aid.

In his new book Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits (2010) Lomborg calls global warming "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and calls for the world's governments to invest $100 billion a year in mitigation. However, Lomborg is only the book's editor, and some contributors such as Roger Pielke Jr are still deniers. Time magazine notes that Lomborg continues to promote dodgy geoengineering technofixes such as "cloud whitening" -- and of course, himself.

sources: New Scientist Aug 2010 and Time 31 Aug 2010