Disappointment, validity and credibility



Bjorn Lomborg.

Disappointment envelops me when I see major newspapers with international credibility publishing stories of questionable validity.

Both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post recently published an opinion piece from Bjørn Lomborg, who is an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School where he directs the Copenhagen Consensus Centre.

Lomborg, the author “The Skeptical Environmentalist”, “Cool It” and “How much have global problems cost the world? A scorecard from 1900 to 2050” had his views published in the Washington Post in in story headed; “Don’t blame climate change for extreme weather”.

Lomborg’s “The Skeptical Environmentalist” had been discredited by many influential climatologists and the publication of his article drew this comment from one reader:

“I might have taken this article seriously had it been written by a research climatologist with peer-reviewed publications in climatology. I am offended, though, that the WP accepted this piece for publication, knowing full well that the author could only claim a pretense of actual knowledge (adjunct professor of business). It would have been equally meaningful for a writer to step outside the WP building and ask passers-by on the street what they think about climate change and then publish their comments as though they were scientific results. Bad journalism here and appalling editorial work”.

The Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch who, along with his cohort of editors, is known as a climate skeptic and the Washington Post was only recently bought by amazon.com owner, Jeff Bezos.