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).
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).