Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday 1/9/2010 Page: 7
THE world's most high-profile climate change sceptic is to declare that global warming is "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and "a challenge humanity must confront", in an apparent U-turn that will give a huge boost to the embattled environmental lobby. Bjorn Lomborg, the self-styled "sceptical environmentalist" once compared to Adolf Hitler by the United Nations' climate chief, is famous for attacking climate scientists, campaigners, the media and others for exaggerating global warming and its effects on humans, and the costly waste of policies to stop the problem.
But in a new book to be published this month. Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. "Investing $US100 billion ($112 billion) annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century", the book concludes.
Examining eight methods to reduce or stop global warming. Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pouring money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and more work on climate engineering ideas such as "cloud whitening" to reflect the sun's heat back into the outer atmosphere. Lomborg said he would finance this investment through a tax on carbon. His declaration comes at a crucial point in the debate, with international efforts to agree a global deal on emissions stalled amid a resurgence in scepticism over the reliability of the scientific evidence for global warming.
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