It seems there may be a bit of last minute damage control over at the Bjorn Lomborg camp.
A heavy piece of the marketing campaign for Lomborg's new book Cool It was the author's claim that polar bear populations are increasing. Lomborg uses this as evidence of his argument the consequences of global warming are more hype than reality.
And the marketing of Lomborg's contentious claim seemed to be working. That is until Salon.com's Kevin Beger took Lomborg [2] to task over the claim. Beger levels the polar bear claim leaving Lomborg's only defense to say: "OK. But I've talked to a different expert that's up in Greenland, who works for the Danish government, and he has looked over my chapter, and said that it's OK."
Yep, and I found an expert [3] last week who confirmed that the new book I'm writing on dinosaurs walking amongst humans 6000 years ago is factually correct as well.
Now, Lomborg's book review on Amazon [4] no longer carries any mention of polar bears, but the google entry for Amazon still has the original polar bear claim here for all of us to see. [5]
The unfortunate reality is that it is too late for a correction.
Lomborg's book will be launched next week and the global warming denial industry, the think tanks and their media pundits, are going to jump all over Lomborg's polar bear claim and use it to further their efforts to sow doubt about the realities of human-induced global warming.
Check out this post over at It's Getting Hot in Here [6] for a more in-depth look at Lomborg's new book and the Salon interview.