Catalog

Bjørn Lomborg

Bjørn Lomborg (; born 6 January 1965) is a Danish political scientist, author, and the president of the think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is the former director of the Danish government's Environmental Assessment Institute (EAI) in Copenhagen. He became internationally known for his best-selling book ''The Skeptical Environmentalist'' (2001).

In 2002, Lomborg and the Environmental Assessment Institute founded the Copenhagen Consensus. In 2004, he was listed as one of ''Time's'' 100 most influential people.

In his subsequent book, ''Cool It'' (2007), and its film adaptation, Lomborg outlined his views on global warming, many of which contradict the scientific consensus on climate change. These views include the claim that the negative impacts are overstated and the opinion that too much emphasis is put on climate change mitigation at the expense of climate change adaptation. Lomborg agrees that global warming is real and man-made and will have a serious impact but enumerates other disagreements with the scientific consensus. In 2009, ''Business Insider'' cited Lomborg as one of "The 10 Most-Respected Global Warming Skeptics".

Lomborg's views and work have attracted both scrutiny and praise from the scientific community. He was formally accused of scientific misconduct over the book; The Skeptical Environmentalist. The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty concluded in an evaluation of the book that "one couldn't prove that Lomborg had deliberately been scientifically dishonest, although he had broken the rules of scientific practice in that he interpreted results beyond the conclusions of the authors he cited." His positions on climate change have been challenged by experts and characterized as cherry picking.

However, that December, Denmark's Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation published its own response to the DCSD's finding, which stated “the DCSD has not documented where [Dr Lomborg] has allegedly been biased in his choice of data and in his argumentation, and...the ruling is completely void of argumentation for why the DCSD find that the complainants are right in their criticisms of [his] working methods. It is not sufficient that the criticisms of a researcher's working methods exist; the DCSD must consider the criticisms and take a position on whether or not the criticisms are justified, and why.” Provided by Wikipedia