Would you be able to point to something backing up this claim? Just a word of caution because I don’t believe this to be true (as I explain below).
Lomborg’s name might be familiar (or infamous) those of us in Australia where he was at the centre of a big political scandal, where the conservative government at the time (then climate-skeptics) was perceived to be pushing universities to host the Copenhagen Centre and seen as political intereference into the academic system.
Lomborg has been described as a climate contrarian in Science:
Once the darling of Australia’s conservative government, controversial climate contrarian Bjørn Lomborg has lost his Down Under caché—and cash.
I do understand that all this criticism is centred on Lomborg/ his centre’s views on climate, which is separate to the the cause areas you bring up with e-procurement and land tenure. But, his track record on climate does make me cautious about their reputability.
FWIW I haven’t looked much into this but my surface impression is that climate change groups are eager to paint CCC as biased/bad science/climate deniers because (1) they don’t like CCC’s conclusion that many causes in global health and development are more cost-effective than climate change and (2) they tend to exaggerate the expected harms of climate change, and CCC doesn’t.
My impression is that most of Lomborg’s critics don’t understand his claims—they don’t understand the difference between “climate change isn’t the top priority” and “climate change isn’t real”.
From what I’ve read, Lomborg’s beliefs on climate change are in line with John Halstead’s Climate Change & Longtermism report.
From the Australia Climate Council link, the most egregious claim I see from Lomborg is “But the [2014 IPCC] report also showed that global warming has dramatically slowed or entirely stopped in the last decade and a half.” (The link in the article is broken but I found it via archive.org.) It looks to me like Lomborg’s claim is literally true according to Australia Climate Council (I actually thought it was false but apparently I was wrong and Lomborg was right), but possibly misleading. In the context of Lomborg’s article, it doesn’t look to me like he’s trying to claim global warming isn’t happening, but that it’s exaggerated.
Last time I talked to John Halstead about this, he was (as am I) pretty skeptical of Bjorn Lomborg on climate, so I think even if Lomborg on climate looks superficially similar to John’s report that does not mean EAs generally agree with him on climate.
Speaking for myself (working on EA Climate full-time), reading Lomborg on climate is frustrating because he (a) gets some basic things right (energy innovation is good and under-done, climate is less dramatic than some doomers make it, human development is also shaped by lots of other things etc), but (b) completely exaggerates and misportrays other things (e.g. estimating the effect of the Paris Agreement until 2030 and claims this as its entire effect when the whole point of the agreement is to change the trajectory over the long run). So, I think he is acting in bad faith or at least with questionable epistemics and tactics on climate.
That said, two things can be true at the same time—that his climate work is awful and that his GHD work is much better and I believe this view to be most consistent with the evidence, i.e. I don’t think Bill Gates would have strongly endorsed his recent book if it were as polemical and misportraying of global health than his work on climate has been (where Gates has, to my knowledge, not endorsed him).
I agree with the 2 commenters below. I wouldn’t trust him very much on climate change, but the CCC’s work on GHD is of a different nature. The CCC has many researchers, of whom Bjørn is only one. I would also like to add—if he can get Nobel Prize winning economists Vernon Smith, Tom Schelling, Finn Kydland and Douglass North to work with him, multiple times each, that’s a good indicator that the CCC’s research is good.
Would you be able to point to something backing up this claim? Just a word of caution because I don’t believe this to be true (as I explain below).
Lomborg’s name might be familiar (or infamous) those of us in Australia where he was at the centre of a big political scandal, where the conservative government at the time (then climate-skeptics) was perceived to be pushing universities to host the Copenhagen Centre and seen as political intereference into the academic system.
Lomborg has been described as a climate contrarian in Science:
Australia’s Climate Council is critical of him:
https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/the-low-down-on-lomborg/
And has made bunk claims on Australian bushfires:
https://iceds.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/controversial-commentator-bjorn-lomborgs-bushfire-claim-debunked
I do understand that all this criticism is centred on Lomborg/ his centre’s views on climate, which is separate to the the cause areas you bring up with e-procurement and land tenure. But, his track record on climate does make me cautious about their reputability.
FWIW I haven’t looked much into this but my surface impression is that climate change groups are eager to paint CCC as biased/bad science/climate deniers because (1) they don’t like CCC’s conclusion that many causes in global health and development are more cost-effective than climate change and (2) they tend to exaggerate the expected harms of climate change, and CCC doesn’t.
My impression is that most of Lomborg’s critics don’t understand his claims—they don’t understand the difference between “climate change isn’t the top priority” and “climate change isn’t real”.
From what I’ve read, Lomborg’s beliefs on climate change are in line with John Halstead’s Climate Change & Longtermism report.
From the Australia Climate Council link, the most egregious claim I see from Lomborg is “But the [2014 IPCC] report also showed that global warming has dramatically slowed or entirely stopped in the last decade and a half.” (The link in the article is broken but I found it via archive.org.) It looks to me like Lomborg’s claim is literally true according to Australia Climate Council (I actually thought it was false but apparently I was wrong and Lomborg was right), but possibly misleading. In the context of Lomborg’s article, it doesn’t look to me like he’s trying to claim global warming isn’t happening, but that it’s exaggerated.
Last time I talked to John Halstead about this, he was (as am I) pretty skeptical of Bjorn Lomborg on climate, so I think even if Lomborg on climate looks superficially similar to John’s report that does not mean EAs generally agree with him on climate.
Speaking for myself (working on EA Climate full-time), reading Lomborg on climate is frustrating because he (a) gets some basic things right (energy innovation is good and under-done, climate is less dramatic than some doomers make it, human development is also shaped by lots of other things etc), but (b) completely exaggerates and misportrays other things (e.g. estimating the effect of the Paris Agreement until 2030 and claims this as its entire effect when the whole point of the agreement is to change the trajectory over the long run). So, I think he is acting in bad faith or at least with questionable epistemics and tactics on climate.
That said, two things can be true at the same time—that his climate work is awful and that his GHD work is much better and I believe this view to be most consistent with the evidence, i.e. I don’t think Bill Gates would have strongly endorsed his recent book if it were as polemical and misportraying of global health than his work on climate has been (where Gates has, to my knowledge, not endorsed him).
I agree with the 2 commenters below. I wouldn’t trust him very much on climate change, but the CCC’s work on GHD is of a different nature. The CCC has many researchers, of whom Bjørn is only one. I would also like to add—if he can get Nobel Prize winning economists Vernon Smith, Tom Schelling, Finn Kydland and Douglass North to work with him, multiple times each, that’s a good indicator that the CCC’s research is good.