The Black Sheep

What do you make of companies that give the impression of doing something environmentally beneficial, but actually may not be doing anything at all, an idea that might be described as an eco-scam?
I don't like the using the world eco-scams because it makes us feel like somebody's trying to do the public. In any situation, you have a lot of good ideas, and some of these ideas end up getting funded, and I'm sure almost all of these people were driven by great ingenuity and want to do good. And, it only just happens to be that it was a bad idea, like with biofuels.

You've argued that climate change has been over-dramatized by people such as  Al Gore.
Gore, obviously, has gotten everybody to realize that this is a big problem, and I think in that sense he should be congratulated. Now, I think he's done so by wildly exaggerating many of the truths about climate change. He talked about a sea level rise of 6 meters, when indeed the U.N. Climate Panel envisioned something that's probably one-twentieth of that. It's very unhelpful to talk about a problem and exaggerate it by 20 times, because 30 centimeters [11.8 inches] of sea level rise is a problem, whereas 6 meters [about 19 feet] would be a catastrophe.

He will tell you about hurricanes, but the much more important part of that is to say, if you actually care about saving people from future Katrinas or future Andrews, you have to ask yourself, "Is cutting carbon emissions the best way to do so?" The answer is overwhelmingly, "No." It's about stopping subsidized insurance in Florida, which encourages people to build irresponsibly. And it's about making sure you have better levies in New Orleans.

What Al Gore and many others do is a little bit like talking to a man who's sedentary, obese and alcoholic, and saying to him, "The best way to improve your health is by wearing a seatbelt." It's not untrue that that would also help.  But it's probably not the advice to give first.

What do you think about the criticisms that have been levied against your work?
There are a lot of people out there who feel very strongly about this one issue, global warming. It must piss them off when someone points out, "Well, your solution is just not a very good one for all the main problems of the world." Yes, there's been a lot of criticism. I find the most significant one is the fact that quite a number of people tried to get me impaled for scientific dishonesty in Denmark. I've written a book with a lot of numbers, and there's no doubt that some of these numbers aren't going to be correct. But it seems to me that I've been very close in most of these areas.

© 2008