April 30 2008
Lawrence Solomon
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/04/30/public-intellectuals-solomon.aspx
Foreign Policy/Prospect lists the world's top 100 public intellectuals,
"the thinkers who are shaping the tenor of our time," as it describes
them. Now it's up to us to select the best from among them, by choosing
our five favourites. Most of the intellectuals on offer, I confess, are
unknown to me. The rest I divide into those I admire, or not.
Al Gore falls into the latter camp. He would make my top five in many a
category but public intellectual? He epitomizes the anti-intellectual,
someone who shuts off debate by bullying people off the arena by
labelling them as deniers. He doesn't make my list.
But the list has many people whom I admire. In the global warming arena,
I'll pick Bjorn Lomborg, the Skeptical Environmentalist. Lomborg, more
than any single individual, has injected perspective into a debate
generally marked by blindness and unreason.
--
Warmest Regards
Bonzo
"Attributing global climate change to human CO2 production is akin to
trying to diagnose an automotive problem by ignoring the engine
(analogous to the Sun in the climate system) and the transmission (water
vapour) and instead focusing entirely, not on one nut on a rear wheel,
which would be analogous to total CO2, but on one thread on that nut,
which represents the human contribution." Dr. Timothy Ball, Chairman of
the Natural Resources Stewardship Project (NRSP.com), Former Professor
Of Climatology, University of Winnipeg
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