Bjorn Lomborg has found a new vocation. For years, the Danish doubter has been hectoring the scientific community about their shoddy understanding of climate science – a discipline he has never published a peer reviewed paper about.

Now he is championing the dangerous prospect of geo-engineering as his latest reason to ignore ballooning carbon emissions. Specifically he believes a fleet of 1,900 robotic ships patrolling the Pacific Ocean churning seawater into the upper atmosphere will negate the need to do anything about climate change.

Problem solved!

This loopy prospect emerged from the Copenhagen Consensus - Lomborg’s personal climate conference where hand-picked attendees parrot his fringe notion that climate change is simply to expensive to deal with. Real economists around the world have come to exactly the opposite conclusion.

And now Lomborg finds himself at odds with actual experts yet again. The same week he was courting press attention for his robot ship solution, a gathering of independent scientists was warning the world about the dangers of relying on geo-engineering instead of emission cuts.

"Playing with the Earth's climate is a dangerous game with unclear rules," said Robert Jackson, director of Duke University's Center on Global Change and organizer of a symposium on geo-engineering at the Ecological Society of America's Annual Meeting.

It must be sad for professional contrarians like Bjorn Lomborg when their well worn speaking points become more laughably wrong with each emerging study on the dangers of climate change.

That of course does not stop Lomborg from holding forth his increasingly loopy opinions at every opportunity - most recently in the Australian, where Lomborg hectors incoming President Obama for his shoddy understanding of climate science. (By the way, Lomborg’s training is in political science)

Lets get stared on pulling apart this polemic and the laundry list of errors and misinformation.

Lomborg starts by calling into question the link between tropical cyclones and climate change. The doubting Dane intones:

“It is simply wrong to say that storms are growing stronger every hurricane season… hurricanes across the world for the past year have been about as inactive as at any time since records began to be kept.”

Strange. That’s not what scientific community thinks.

Amazon has apparently sent my copy of The Deniers, Lawrence Solomon's book version of his tiresome Denier series in the National Post, a review of which will follow when it arrives.

But Amazon also followed up with a list of books they think might also interest me: a handsome reading list for anyone who is determined to remain delusional about global warming.

Well-known climate change apologist Bjorn Lomborg is at it again. In May 2008, the “skeptical environmentalist” will be hosting the latest Copenhagen Consensus 2008 conference in Denmark.

For the uninitiated, this event is where a group of right wing economists, hand picked by Bjorn Lomborg, paid for by the conference organized by Bjorn Lomborg, will rank a laundry list of the Earth’s ills based on an arbitrary budget and timeline.

Prize honors those who sow confusion and delay on Climate Change

Update: DeSmogBlog withdraws Obama Award
 

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has captured the inaugural 2007 SmogMaker Award for blowing smoke on global warming, the DeSmogBlog announced today.

Global warming is an environmental problem, not a political one. And people who try to ‘solve’ it with political or public relations spin are just making the problem worse,” said James Hoggan, co-founder of the DeSmogBlog.

Here's a review out this weekend in Canada's Globe and Mail on Bjorn Lomborg's new book, Cool it.

Choice quote:

I remember wondering, after I interviewed Lomborg, whether he was intellectually dishonest or just not very bright. Cool It has convinced me that it doesn't matter. Lomborg has now proved beyond a doubt that he is incapable of contributing anything of merit to scientific discourse."