When world leaders meet for the climate-change summit in Copenhagen this December, they will make decisions that will affect the world for many generations. Three months before that meeting, there is an alarming absence of serious discussion about what these decisions should be. What passes for debate is usually a shouting match between those who believe that climate change is not real and those who believe that it will end life on Earth. We are all, it seems, either "deniers" or "believers." (...) 

Marine cloud whitening, and other ideas. We have precious little to show for nearly 20 years of efforts to prevent global warming. Promises in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 to cut carbon emissions went unfulfilled. Stronger pledges in Kyoto five years later failed to keep emissions in check. The only possible lesson is that agreements to reduce carbon emissions are costly, politically arduous and ultimately ineffective. But this is a lesson many are hell-bent on ignoring, as politicians plan to gather again—this time in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December—to negotiate a new carbon-emissions treaty.

Striking the right balance between preventing global warming and adapting to its effects is one of the most important – and most vexing – policy questions of our age. It is also often ignored. (...)    

Cutting future emissions is much cheaper than slashing present ones, argues Bjorn Lomborg

In The Daily Star. Saturday, August 15, 2009

Bjorn Lomborg: We Need To Spray Water Into The Air To Cool The Globe

Jay Yarow|Aug. 7, 2009, 12:52 PM

Dans son premier ouvrage – L’Écologiste sceptique, le véritable état de la planète1 –, Bjørn Lomborg analysait les évolutions et les données actuellement disponibles concernant le climat, la démographie, l’énergie ou encore la biodiversité, pour conclure, à rebours de la doxa environnementaliste, que la prospérité sans précédent de l’humanité à notre époque n’était pas menacée, malgré des déséquilibres réels et des problèmes sérieux, par un péril imminent.

Rhetorical excess undercuts the case against global warming. By John Vinocur. 

The Reuters article about Poznan quotes Lomborg's article that was published one day before in Forbes: (...) Meanwhile, Bjorn Lomborg, author of the "Sceptical Environmentalist" writes in the business magazine, Forbes, that rather than wasting money on meetings to decide global agreements which will inevitably be ignored, the world's poorest would be better served by improvements to their living conditions now. "Interventions like improving malnutrition and child health in the Third World deserve a much higher priority than carbon cuts to battle climate change," he says.

Český prezident Václav Klaus se na něj při boji proti zastáncům rychlé akce, která by zabránila globálnímu oteplování, už nejspíše nebude odvolávat. Celebrita v debatě o klimatické změně, dánský akademik Lomborg, změnil dres. Globální oteplování nyní považuje za akutní problém, který však může jako kapitán flotily plachetnic hravě vyřešit. (...)