Bjorn Lomborg Delivers Nihilist Message at Manhattan Institute Climate Talk

The breakfast tables in the grand hall of the NY Yacht Club were full of suits, gathered to hear Bjorn Lomborg, who appeared as he usually does in a short sleeve polo shirt, peddling his popular brand of global warming denialism.

It was a friendly crowd, pulled together by the right wing Manhattan Institute, ready to guffaw easily at Lomborg's jokes aimed at Al Gore. The irony was that to legitimate himself, Lomborg's opening gambit was to project a photograph of himself, the blond Lilliputian, shaking hands with the former Vice President, Nobel Laureate and Oscar winner.

But the crowd was not quite prepared to deal with two things in particular that Lomborg had to say: one, that global warming is real, the science legitimate; and two, that President Bush's ethanol policy is "just very, very bad." But he more than made up for it to his hosts by saying there's no need to do much to solve climate.

Here's what he said about Bush and ethanol:

George Bush supported ethanol, which, you know, gives great policy opportunities to please the big, fat agribusiness lobby. But it's just very, very bad in the sense that it simply means that more people are going to starve, you're going to cut down more rain forests, and oh, you're probably going to make more CO2.

The Q&A was interesting to watch. Bjorn's Manhattan Institute host and handler took the mike to hand-pick the questioners. The first two questioned the legitimacy of climate science. The second of them even admitted in a preamble that he writes checks to the Manhattan Institute before questioning whether CO2 is a cause of global warming.

Lomborg gave a long-winded response that led up to this point that left his questioner crestfallen:

It's unproductive to have a conversation around the question "does CO2 cause increased warming?" It's a fairly simple physical point - yes it does.

Still Lomborg's message to the crowd presented an even darker variety of denialism than the American brand centered around intentionally casting doubt on sound science. Lomborg's variety says global warming is indeed happening, the scientists are correct, but we don't need to do anything about it. It goes beyond denial and enters the territory of nihilism.

It is astonishing to watch him defend his position with absurd statistical manipulations, watch people accept it without thought or argument, and line up to buy his little book. He has built his career defending the position that the environment is improving, and this morning he demonstrated his unique skill with intellectual contortion by arguing that global warming would be a good thing: there are more people who die of excess cold than heat, so in aggregate, global warming would mean fewer deaths.

The well-heeled crowd thought his point was brilliant and funny, without pausing to think what a global climate disruption really could mean. They unquestioningly followed him like sheep to regard "warming" to be a few degrees of temperature change, nothing more than an altered weather forecast requiring a change of clothes. Bjorn repeatedly presented all kinds of numbers from unknown sources cherry-picked to make similarly absurd points. He'd cap them all with a sarcastic comment, then move on.

It's a good thing this man is not a physician, or running Medicare, or even a hospital. He'd counsel inaction against expensive surgery, or chemotherapy, or organ transplants, or implantation of a medical device as there would be no measurable social good, merely a rationally unjustifiable expense. 

He missed his true calling: insurance clerk. An unblinking and extraordinary one at that.

Sorry, sir, or ma'am, we just cannot cover the expense of the treatment that will save the life of your mother. Or father. Or child. Or sister. Or brother. Or wife. Or husband. Or partner.

Or planet.

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