Stanford Stanford Universitys hoover institution. And of course president of the copenhagen consensus center, which brings together many of the worlds Top Economists including seven Nobel Laureates. Dr. Longboard is a frequent participant in public debates on policy issues his analysis and commentaries have appeared regularly in such prestigious publications as the wall street journal usa today the New York Times the economist and many many others his monthly column appears in multiple languages in influential newspapers across all the continents. Hes also a tv commentator on cnn fox msnbc in the bb bbc among others. Hes also been on many news programs that you watched 2020 60 minutes and many others in 2011 and 12 dr. Lamborgh was named the top 100 global thinker by Foreign Policy for looking more right than ever on the politics of Climate Change. Time magazine ranked him among the worlds 100 most influential people in 2004 and in 2008 esquire magazine named him. One of the worlds 75 most influential people of the 21st. Injury following his remarks dr. Lomborg will be joined on stage by jackie pick deason to take your questions. So be sure to submit those questions. Lets give a warm steamboat. Welcome to dr. Bjorn lombard. And make believe and we dont buy that game. While the boss man takes. Yeah, so they shouldnt have this long music right because you sort of stopped clapping while im arriving. So look, id love to talk to you about how we think about Climate Change and how we should think more smartly about this. Youve heard a lot of facts throughout this morning, and im going to be emphasizing some of them. Im also going to try and give you a sense of how do we do the whole argument because i think it is important that we start having a conversation about are we doing the right thing in climate and that actually takes multiple steps. Im going to just try to spend about 35 minutes. So we have plenty of time for q a afterwards. So look im simply going to jump in. Im a social scientist. So im not a natural scientist. I talk to a lot of them, but thats not what i do. Im simply going to say global ring. Its real. Its manmade. It is a problem, but its also often exaggerated and this is important. Because if you think this is the end of the world, i dont know if you saw at the very first show we see aoc telling us. The world is going to end in 12 years if that was really true. It makes a lot of sense what she says is if the world is ending and youre worried about how to pay for it. You should just be you know, you should if its a media or hurtling towards earth. We should just throw Everything Else aside and you know, give all the money to bruce willis and get out there and you know do something about it. So the the point here is to say its because its exaggerated that we actually making really bad decisions. And so i want to share with you some of these things and and just to give you a sense and weve heard a lot of this and and steve coonan also gave you some of these quotes guteris are un secretary general is perhaps the best sort of source for these kinds of exaggerated claims. He tells us the world is facing a great Climate Emergency every week brings new climate related devastation floods droughts heat waves why if i a super storms we hear all of this and were in a battle for our lives and Climate Change is the to the economy. These claims are mostly false. Theyre not entirely wrong, but theyre mostly false and id like to show you why again if im just going to do 35 minutes. Im just going to give you some of those tidbits and im sure we can take up some of the other ones. Of course, i describe in my book and my period articles and so on, but let me just take you through a few of these. So do we see all these super storms are hurricanes as a lot of people like to point out. Well if you look at the Un Climate Panel, thats so cool ipc. They tell us in their latest report in the past identifying past trends and tropical cyclones. Thats what they call hurricanes remains a challenge and low confidence and most reported longterm trends but for the future they do tell us we will likely see more really strong hurricanes. We will probably also see fewer future hurricanes. You need to know both now overall. Thats a net negative because stronger outweighs fewer so there is a problem and we are going to see more damage, but its also important to get a sense of proportion right . You hear this constantly that every hurricane you hear thats the end of the world and this is because of Global Warming. And again, one of the problems is we have very very bad longterm trends. This is fundamentally because its really hard to go back to 1900 and expect most hurricanes have been noticed back then of course, we notice all of them now because we have satellites. So how do we adjust for that . Well, if you look at the best longterm trend, sorry best longterm data source, thats us landfolding hurricanes because since 1900 its very unlikely that there is a hurricane that hit the us and nobody noticed so we have good evidence for this and actually what you see is not an increasing trend. Its a slightly decreasing. Its not significant, but fundamentally, its not increasing and again people will then tell you oh, but theres going to be more strong hurricanes, of course, we also have for strong hurricanes for major and again not increasing actually if anything slightly decreasing we need to tell this we also have reasonable evidence for landfalling hurricanes back from 1945 for the two major hurricane basins, and they show the same thing the fundamental point is that data does not tell us that right now things are getting out of hand, but it doesnt mean that theres not a problem. There is a problem in the future and thats one of the things that well talk about. But again, it doesnt warrant this exaggeration that we get from guterism a lot of other leaders likewise if you look at wildfire, i mean i picked this its in public domain. Thats why im sharing but these these pictures are cool. You understand why newspapers want to print them because they get you to click on this this terrible. This looks frightening. This is something that we dont want right so clearly the sense we get when we listen to the media is that theres more more fire New York Times just recently did the world is on fire where they looked at fire across the entire world. Its a common trope to say the world is on fire because of global wine. Actually we have good data and again the point that i try to make is lets get the data to actually get a sense of what does it tell us . Well, we have good data back from 1900. The first of course is modeled because we dont actually have good evidence for the entire planet, but almost everyone accepts that this is probably what it looked like in the early part of last century about 4. 2 of the earths surface burnt and today or just around 2,000 is probably down to about three point two percent. From the late 1990s. We actually have very good data because we have satellites circling the world all the time and picking up and that satellite shows that weve seen a decreasing amount from about 3. 2 now down to about 2. 5 the world is not burning more the world is burning less. Why . Mostly because most people dont want stuff to burn. Its not really very complicated. Right and thats of course why we adapt to this we actually make sure stuff doesnt burn. Its not Rocket Science. But again if we dont want to scare our kids if we want to have a good data sense of where should we start . What should we be concerned about . We need to know this data. We very often dont whats going to happen into the future. What if you only look and this is what most climate models will do if you only look at temperature and assume temperature is going to rise that means youre going to see more fire all other things equal, but of course all the things are not equal one thing is that we also have gonna have more co2, which means we go have a greener planet, which means well have a different combination of of greenery on most places in the world if you just run that you probably get less burning not more and if you include people that is people actually act you definitely get that this trend weve seen a last 120 years. Well continue. So if we do nothing if theres no Climate Policy, the world will keep burning less and less. But if we do Climate Policy it will burn even less. Point here is and this is the important part of the conversation Global Warming is not something that make the whole world burn, you know, this is not going up. It makes the world burn slightly less than it otherwise would have been. Thats a very different kind of conversation. All right, so do i want a world thats better, or do i want to world . Thats even better. Thats a good conversation, but its a very different one from the one where we have the catastrophe waiting right around the corner, which its not. So thats the first part of it. Were vastly seeing an exaggerated argument and that of course leads to a lot of bad decisions. Why do we get this so wrong because of adaptation we typically ignore adaptation and im going to show you some of these costs also destler mentioned several times. Its a little unfair because tesla had to leave so he cant really defend himself, but im gonna do it anyway, so we have good. I talked to him out there and i told him about the the resources. Im going to send them to him as well. We have good evidence and some of these costs about adaptation and theyre not exceptional or incredible or something. Theyre about sarah point one percent of gdp. Theyre not zero, but theyre certainly not huge. So let me just show you and alex already stole my thunder and this one, but i still think its important to point out. Yeah, if people what has happened with deaths from climate related disasters. So basically flood strout storms wildfire and extreme temperatures. We have good data for about a hundred years and its not such most people would imagine that this just goes up that certainly what we get the impression from from the media. No actually in 1920s almost 500,000 people died every year from these climaterelated disasters and since then this has been declining and declining and declining so that in 2010 zoos about 18,000 people in 2020. It was 2000. Sorry. It was 14,000 and in 2021 the day or the year where you heard about all these catastrophes you remember the heat dome you remember the floods in germany . Well, there was a lot of other things you never heard about for instance a thousand people died in india floods. Theres two afghan flash floods and so on and so on if you add up all of those lesson 7,000 people died last year why do we hear that more and more people die when the truth is fewer and fewer people die. This has very little to do with Climate Change but has everything to do with the fact that when youre richer youre more resilient and hence you dont die as much we need to know this to stop being scared witless because if were scared whitlers, were unlikely to make good decisions. So, let me just show you thank you. So let me just show you another instance and this is very much on teslas point. So how much is future flighting actually going to address. This is one of the most quoted papers hinkled 2014. Wow, you cant actually read the no you can sorry. Its just my monitor 2014, so its very hard to estimate how many people are actually affected by flooding because are you affected by flooding . Thats a very elastic number. They use a lot of models and this is basically showing you what the average of all these models is they tell us that in 2000 every year 3. 4 Million People were flooded because of typically they just live terrible lives, right . This had a cost about 11 billion dollars. We also spend about 13 billion dollars in diet cost. The total cost was 0. 05 of global gdp. First of all, thats not a whole lot right . You hear a lot more about this than youd actually imagine that the cost are worth 0. 05. Yeah. Its a big its a problem. Its certainly not one of the biggest problems in the world what then happens if you take a look at the worst case warming the highest population and the highest gdp, so im just going to show you one. This is true for all different kinds of scenarios. Im just going to show you if you will the worst one what happens if you just assume theres no adaptation you get this you get a dramatic increase, right . By the end of the century about a hundred and eighty seven Million People are going to get flooded each and every year this number has been repeated in New York Times in Washington Post and their leaders and their opeds many other places. Its been published widely and it tells us, you know, if you know David Wallace wells, this is one of his main points. This is going to cost a 55 trillion dollars every year. Its also going to have 24 billion dollars and diet cost they cost. Theyre not going to be very high because we didnt bother to do anything about the right and its going to cost five point three percent of global gdp. The important point to remember though is this assumes that everybody over the next 80 years. Stand there. And just watch Sea Level Rise and say this is getting uncomfortable. And you know, you start getting it up over your knees and your hips and eventually you get really old and you get really uncomfortable and maybe even drown that was what Rolling Stone said. This is going to drown 187 Million People. No, i mean first of all, theyre probably move but more likely is that they would adapt. Weve actually done this right remember if you go to holland you see a very good example of people who have adapted if youve ever flown into amsterdam ship whole airport as the world 14th largest airport and it on its website points out that we are the only major airport in the world that was previously seen for a major naval battle. And and you know, its not like youre there and youre thinking oh my god, it could be flooded at any moment. We know how to do with this now. Tesla tells us this is going to be incredibly expensive. No, its not. We know this because people have done the models. So this is what happens if you assume adaptation, you almost cant see the different by the end of the century. We will have 15,000 people flooded. How come that we can have seen Sea Level Rise about three feet . And many fewer people are going to be flooded. Because well be much richer and because we know how to deal with these issues. We will also have a significantly increase in flood costs. Its not going to be 55 trillion, but 38 billion will also have to spend much more in so well be spending 48 billion dollars in dyches. Remember desolate kept on saying that houston is going to cost 10 billion dollars. Thats probably true. But this is once over the century. And of course across the whole world, this is not going to be free, but its not going to be a big imposition. So the results showed that its about 0. 1 of gdp across the world across the century. This is certainly something we can afford the total cost and this is important the total cost. Of flooding and of diecast is now going to be zero point zero zero eight percent. So despite sea levels rise because of adaptation. We will see much lower damages overall. Well see only 15,000 people instead of 3. 4 Million People and we will see less damage that is 0. 08 rather than 0. 0. Sorry 0. 08 instead of 0. 05 almost 10 times less. It shows you the ability of adaptation and when we ignore it or forget about it, we are likely to be vastly over worried about Climate Change. This does not mean that theres no problem again had we done Climate Policy here and i cant show you this because you wouldnt be able to tell the difference if we had done adaptation if sorry if we had done Climate Policy if we dramatically reduce our emissions and almost gone netzera by 2050 we could have reduced the number of people flooded in 2100 from 15,000 people all the way down to 10,000 people. Thats a better world, but its not like this is really what matters right. Its the three point four million down to 15,000 that matters. Its the adaptation that really matters not the Climate Policy. What is the cost in alex briefly alluded to that . Well again, we have good global costs from 1990 and weve again seen a decline in the cost not an increase and this of course again is because richer societies a more resilient better able able to deal with this problem. Point that i try to get through here is to say Global Warming is a problem. Yes, but thinking its the end of the world thing is going to burn the whole world that were going to have super storms everywhere and that were just going to see the cost escalate out of hand is simply not in keeping with the facts. So the problem is that right now were being told while we need to go net zero andrew deslo was setting up here and saying its going to be fantastically cheap which of course as alex also pointed out is somewhat belied by the fact that nobody seems to want to do it unless they get their arms twisted, right . It seems weird that this would be a great idea if you have to twist everybodys arm and they still really dont want to do it. But lets just take a look at what has actually happened if you take a look at the share of Renewable Energy since 1800 what weve seen since 1800 is a dramatic reduction, right . I mean we used to get almost all of our energy from renewables because we had very little then we realized oh wait we can get a lot of energy and we did that and thats what weve been doing for the last half century. Weve been down at 13 or 14 percent. This is from the International Energy agency, right what you see here in after 20 2000 is a slight increase. Thats what our Climate Policy has bought. If you look at the envelope of what were likely to see this is