CLIMATE SCEPTIC GETS BAKED ALASKA

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 09/04/2001 - 23:00
5.9.01

Danish anti-environmentalist author Bjorn Lomborg had pie on his face in a climate change protest in Oxford.


PRESS RELEASE
Lomborg gets pied

'Pies for damn lies and statistics' as Danish anti-green author gets his just desserts

Danish anti-environmentalist author Bjorn Lomborg today received his just desserts courtesy of a fellow writer enraged at his "dangerous and misleading" statements on crucial green issues. A pie was thrown in his face at Borders Bookshop in Oxford just after 7pm this evening.

Lomborg's heavily-promoted new book 'The Skeptical Environmentalist' claims variously that consumer waste isn't a problem, that species loss is minimal, and that it is far too expensive to do anything about global warming.

Pie-man Mark Lynas said he was unable to ignore Lomborg's comments on climate change. "I wanted to put a Baked Alaska in his smug face," said Lynas, "in solidarity with the native Indian and Eskimo people in Alaska who are reporting rising temperatures, shrinking sea ice and worsening effects on animal and bird life."

Many countries in the Third World are also experiencing the effects of climate change. In Africa, Lake Chad is now a twentieth of the size it was in the 1950s, leaving millions potentially without water. The Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is planning the evacuation of its entire population as sea levels continue to rise.

"And yet despite all this evidence," comments Lynas, "Lomborg somehow contrives to argue that it is cheaper to go on burning fossil fuels than to switch to clean energy to prevent runaway global warming. This feeds right into the agenda of profiteering multinationals like Esso."

He continued: "I don't see why the environment should suffer every time some bored, obscure academic fancies an ego trip. This book is full of dangerous nonsense."

NOTES FOR EDITORS
1. Lomborg's claims have already been discredited in his native Denmark, where several of his colleagues in Aarhus University have created a website dedicated to an articulate critique of his views. See www.au.dk/~cesamat/debate.htm
2. Lomborg's background is as a statistician, a training which has left him well-equipped to tell lies by manipulating figures in order to jump on the anti-environmentalist bandwagon.

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