Lomborg on NPR

Partisan “fact checks” are undermining open discourse about important issues, including climate change. Earlier this month I wrote an accurate post on Facebook about the growing polar-bear population. The post undercut alarmist climate narratives, so it was wrongly tagged as a falsehood.

Though the images of abandoned cars in waterlogged East Coast streets might make you think otherwise, the relative toll that floods take on the U.S.—in property and lives—has decreased over time. Flooding costs as a share of gross domestic product declined almost 10-fold since 1903 to 0.05% of GDP, while annual flood death risk—fatalities per million—dropped almost threefold. World-wide data are sparser, but flood research shows costs relative to GDP and deaths relative to population have decreased globally from 1980 to 2010.

In January 2010, Lomborg was interviewed by Joel Malan, an Australian now living in Copenhagen. JM: The Skeptical Environmentalist drew on your background in statistics to reach a more holistic interpretation of existing research. I understand you are not a climatologist as such, but what contribution can statistics make to the climate change debate?