Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumBill Fucking Maher Hosted Bjorn Fucking Lomborg - Fuck You Forever, You Oozing Bag Of Pseudo-Comedic Pus
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About 700,000 people watch Mahers show on HBO each week. A clip of Lomborgs appearance on YouTube, shared by the conservative commentator Dave Rubin, has been viewed more than 1.7m times (Rubin incorrectly described Lomborg as a climatologist he is actually a political scientist and a director of a thinktank). In the clip, Lomborg said two climate economists, including the Nobel-winner William Nordhaus, had come to similar conclusions this year: that if the planet warmed by 3C by the end of the century, the effect on global GDP would be just two or three percentage points. Nordhaus and others use what are known as Integrated Assessment Models. Peter Howard, a leading climate economist at New York University who researches IAMs, says the devil is really in the details.
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Lomborg regaled Maher with data he said showed the amount of coral on the Great Barrier Reef has been at the highest level since records started in 1986, and had recovered from low levels seen five years ago. He did not mention the reef had just been through probably its worst mass coral bleaching event on record. The data cited by Lomborg was taken from underwater surveys carried out by the Australian Institute of Marine Science. But the latest data from those surveys, Aims said this week, was conducted before and during the recent mass bleaching event, one of the most serious and extensive on record.
Bleached coral was still counted as alive, Aims said, and as such, the most recent coral cover result did not capture how many corals survived or died following the 2024 bleaching. The increase in coral cover over the reef has been driven by fast-growing corals that are the most susceptible to heat stress. Aims said the high levels of coral cover was due in part to a period between 2018 and 2022 that was relatively free of disturbance events that cause widespread coral mortality on the reef.
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In the clip, Lomborg didnt talk about the risks of allowing the planet to warm by 3C. Considering global heating of just over 1C has likely pushed the planet to its hottest levels for at least 100,000 years, getting to 3C would push human civilisation well past anything it had experienced before. Prof Mark Howden, director of the Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster Solutions at the Australian National University, has been involved in several UN climate change assessments. He said at 3C, heat stress would be many times worse affecting human physical and mental health, increasing the risks of food insecurity and malnutrition, threatening many species with extinction, pushing up rainfall intensity and flood risk, and increasing sea levels that could result in the displacement of 400 million people.
The world at 3C would be a poorer and riskier place, with inhabitants having diminished lives and livelihoods, Howden said.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/24/bill-maher-great-barrier-reef-bjorn-lomborg-claims-temperature-check
dutch777
(3,408 posts)I guess if all you want is 700k viewers and the paycheck that comes with that, why care about who you give voice to.
Voltaire2
(14,648 posts)Perhaps, just maybe, that is not the best way to assess the future of humanity?
Think. Again.
(17,324 posts)surfered
(2,771 posts)Most TV shows seem to have on one believer and one denier and the host moderates the debate. To put it in proper perspective, the Daily show marched out 97 believers onto the stage, wearing white lab coats, followed by two or three deniers. After some recent converts, think its actually 98-2 now
JohnSJ
(96,325 posts)hatrack
(60,701 posts)It's like arrogance X ignorance squared.
JohnSJ
(96,325 posts)The Unmitigated Gall
(4,481 posts)Never found him well-informed.
Jirel
(2,259 posts)still watch his show? It has always been a weird grab bag of mostly reich-wingers talking and yelling over each other. The only thing ever worth watching clips of (elsewhere) were some of the New Rules.