Elizabeth May of Canada's Green Party comments on Bjorn Lomborg's documented dishonesty

31. Elizabeth May says:

1. March 15, 2010 at 5:52 pm

   
   Bjorn Lomborg is a man without shame. I have debated him three times (twice when I was Executive Director of Sierra Club of Canada and once after I became leader of the Green Party of Canada.) He has invented padded footnotes to buttress points without foundation. I tracked all his footnotes for Skeptical Environmentalist. The bibiliography (Author and Work list) to footnote (Author and page number) chase is deliberately structured to defeat all but the most diligent fact-checker. What is striking is the number of quite outrageous claims where the footnoted article does not support Lomborg’s claims. A large number end up being “personal communication” or web sites that no longer exist.
   He has been found guilty of authoring a book of academic dishonesty — a charge later dismissed on a technicality.
   
   Neither skeptical, nor an environmentlist, he is a champion of sophistry over substance.
   
   He is also dangerous. His laughable calculations continue to be reported as though valid by a gullible (complicit?) media. He obfuscates and charms his way into nearly saturation media coverage.
   
   At the Copenhagen climate talks, when 20,000 NGOs were shut out in the last few days, Lomborg was always in the room. With a conservative Prime Minister in Denmark, with a record of appalling ineptitude in the managing of the conference by that same PM, one has to wonder, how much influence does this charlatan actually have?
   
    32. Dorothy says:
   
2. March 15, 2010 at 7:55 pm

   Thank you, Elizabeth May, for your comment. You have probably known Lomborg longer than most of us and understand him better. In fiction, his character would be laughable; but in real time, in our real world, he cannot be ignored.
   
   Clever catalysts like Lomborg may get through their own lives unscathed, but they can profoundly effect the fate of many innocent people. They should be confronted at every opportunity.
   
   And thank you too, Joe, for blowing on the coals of our (tired activists’) hearts.
   
   Link to Climate Progress post on Lomborg:  http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/14/the-lomborg-deception-the-septical-environmentalist-sea-level-rise/#comments