Bleh, now we have to go through another series of debunking, while this tripe enjoys uncritical acclaim from contrarians.

This is exactly what I hear from capital markets.  Subsidies for pv are pulling capital from the more cost effective wind turbines.  Further, risk capital does not exist for low-carbon energy because there are no market incentives for carbon displacement.

Capital institutions are threaten from the tipping points of global warming and should focus on the extinction of coal power plants.  Carbon markets derived from gas and oil are less important.  Those fuels are destined to be mined and burned eventually.  Our best chance for survival is to leave the coal in the ground.  

Grey Falcon has it right.  Another round of debunking this idiot, while real problems are ignored.  Wait for this load of rubbish to be reviewed with delight by the Economist, the right-wing media and the usual anti-AGW suspects.

What amazes me is that anyone would choose to publish any of his stuff after his previous work was shredded so conclusively by pretty much anyone who knew anything about the subject.  Oh wait - lots of idiots bought the book and everyone made money..

Gentlemen, start your blogs...

Sorry, but I've just noticed that Amazon.com (via the Grist store) has got Michael Crichton to do a review!  He starts with 'Bjørn Lomborg is the best-informed and most humane advocate for environmental change in the world today' - do we really need to read on?

Is it about time that Grist starts talking to Powells?

First, I think Lomborg is more of an environmentalist than those deniers who quote him.   They always say things like "Lomborg says we should only spend on global warming, therefore I believe we should spend nothing."  (If you parse out their positions.)  Or better yet, they imply that Lomborg (who owns not car and rides a bicycle) says they can all keep their SUVs.

Other than that, on this:

Lomborg advocates spending 0.05% of GDP on low-carbon R&D. That's about $7 billion a year for the U.S. He also advocates a maximum $2.00 per ton carbon tax. That values U.S. CO2 emissions at about $13 billion a year. To put those numbers in perspective, just consider a single statistic: Exxon alone is worth half a trillion dollars. Lomborg doesn't want Exxon's cash flow redirected by climate policy because he believes society will overspend. Instead he prefers government-backed R&D to pick the technology winners of the future.

That's a misunderstanding of what carbon taxes are for.  They aren't to hurt corporations, they are to change user behavior.  The interesting question (is there an economist in the house?) is whether a $2.00 per ton carbon tax would be sufficient to do that.

I'd think not, but that would be a different sort of proof than just how much money Exxon has.

But it does surprise me that it's that small.

FWIW, I think a gas tax can be much higher because it is so easily avoidable.  Buy a Prius and fuggetaboutit.

agreed that a carbon tax is about incentives...and that the question is how much...mit and ipcc would say that a price path of roughly $40 to $100 (real current dollars) between the start of policy and 2030 would get us to close to 450ppm/2 degrees...(i think technology will make those numbers turn out high)...also, carbon trades in europe at just under $30...even the weakest bill in congress (bingaman-spector) has a price path of $12 to $32 from start to 2030 (done by manipulating the market through a safety valve...which limits both the trading price AND upside to innovators)...in any case Lomborg's $2 is damn near worthless...in exxon, I was just trying to make a relatively simple analogy

Combustion is the culprit.

Lognormal?  Any hedge fund inside traders know what this means?  Nope, they don't have to.

They manage their risk by cheating the market with inside information.  When they are wrong, as with the junk mortgage crisis, the central banks bail them out.  Too big to fail.

But the climate of planet earth offers no such protection.  Check out the year without a summer.  And 300+ mph tornadoes.  And killer floods along side record drought and fires.

The "lognormal" fantasy world does not match the real world.

Now let's put meters on our leaders,financial and political, and see how much oxygen they are breathing and charge them 40% of their income for it.

This would be a progressive tax rate.  Only the wealthy and powerful would be charged for air.  Pay up inside trader hedge fundies, board roomies,exxon mob, and oval office cronies  or no more air.  is this too cruel?  hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

This is how I see the present: Dedicated environmentalists counting carbon and figuring out wheither its more productive to ride a bike or walk, or reuse cups, as corporations are getting better at greenwashing every day.  

This is how I see the future:  Every single person being so greenwashed that we sit in unheated homes, eating cold soy product, as super ethenol tankers drive by, origionally designed to save the planet but ended up replacing fossil fuels as the leading source of pollution.  Nanotechnologies that were railroaded through the system to address environmental concerns being used to compost the dead to be fed introveniously to the living.  

  We can't solve problems with the same thinking that created them.  Albert Einstein said that.  We can't use super technologies to keep an unrealistic standard of living, because it only results in super disasters and a lower standard of living.  Chemichal pesticides were created to solve food shortages.  They failed.  What we come up with next will fail.  Fossil fuel failed, and so will ethenol and bio-fuel and "safe" nuclear energy.  The reason: what do you think?  Major corporations turn everything into a disaster.  We could have used fossil fuel for hundreds of years without anything bad happening.  But instead of pulling out oil as we needed it, we pulled out everything all at once, as cheap as possible and got everyone to use it as much as possible.  Untill we address our acceptance of this as the standard business model, we could destroy the environment with cute bunny rabbits, bubbles and sandals.  

  I hope I can sum it up with this: Corporations have no intention of changing themselves.  They have every intention of changing us.  To them, the waste they produce is neccissary, the waste we produce is not.  They will come up with figures that say its more environmental to continue polluting, and create less, than to stop polluting and make more.  And we will accept these figures.