Democrats finally passed climate legislation, does it matter?

6)Star Statistician: Bjorn Lomborg   Why: He would have appeared on CNN’s “Larry King Live” by the time you read this. In the run up to Copenhagen, the professor at the Copenhagen Business School has written for Time, Newsweek and the Hindustan Times, and his views are sought by everyone from the Economist to the government of Mali, which wants him to advise them on how to spend money they might receive to tackle the effects of climate change.

COPENHAGEN – Efforts to stem global warming have nurtured a strong urge worldwide to deploy renewable energy. As a result, the use of wind turbines has increased ten-fold over the past decade, with wind power often touted as the most cost-effective green opportunity. According to Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s commissioner for climate action, “People should believe that [wind power] is very, very cheap.” In fact, this is a highly problematic claim. (...)  

COPENHAGEN – Common sense was an early loser in the scorching battle over the reality of man-made global warming. For nearly 20 years, one group of activists argued – in the face of ever-mounting evidence – that global warming was a fabrication. Their opponents, meanwhile, exaggerated the phenomenon’s likely impact – and, as a consequence, dogmatically fixated on drastic, short-term carbon cuts as the only solution, despite overwhelming evidence that such cuts would be cripplingly expensive and woefully ineffective. (...)