Lomborg about Earth Day - on MSNBC

Better to leave it off. Bjørn Lomborg: Stefan Rahmstorf is a respected climate change scientist but by labelling me a 'spin doctor' who 'fools the public' he shows weakness in his argument on sea level rises Bjørn Lomborg, Guardian, Monday 9 March 2009 12.58 GMT In an article in the Guardian last month, I criticised an effort by a group of scientists and activists to cast aside the consensus view of thousands of scientists from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The group is organising an emergency summit on global warming in Copenhagen this month.

The latest alarming news about climate change is that huge swaths of densely inhabited land will be underwater by 2050, with their cities “erased.” These reports – which appeared in The New York Times and many other media outlets – are based on a good research paper by scientists at Climate Central, but they get the story wrong.

This is part of a damaging pattern. Climate change is a man-made problem that we need to tackle, but many of the news stories about its purported effects are scaring us without justification and misleading us about how to act.

The edited broadcast is available now on the NPR's website