Tim Blair, Bjørn Lomborg, Michael Hanlon, Andrew Bolt, Bob Carter, and the need for sawdust ... lots of sawdust ...

(Above: eek, oh no, say it ain't so).

It's been awhile since we dropped in on Tim Blair.

We only like to hit our heads with a baseball bat on even numbered days.

What do do with a heretic, we wondered, roaming in the faith healing corridors of an expert journalist scientist? How to respond when confronted by apostasy in the troubling matter of climate change?

Way back when, you see, Mr. Blair was a lover of the works of Bjørn Lomborg and the way he took a baseball bat to the likes of the Stern Report:

Selective, flawed, fear-mongering, hastily put-together, sloppy, unlikely, problematic, unrealistically pessimistic, alarmist: Bjorn Lomborg reviews the Stern Report. (here)

That was in 2006. Funny that. Here's Lomborg in 2010, courtesy that pinko leftie rag The Guardian, in Bjørn Lomborg: the dissenting climate change voice who changed his tune:

Not unexpectedly, however, Lomborg denies performing a U-turn. He reiterates that he has never denied anthropogenic global warming, and insists that he long ago accepted the cost of damage would be between 2% and 3% of world wealth by the end of this century. This estimate is the same, he says, as that quoted by Lord Stern, whose report for the British government argued that the world should spend 1-2% of gross domestic product on tackling climate change to avoid future damage.

Great statisticians calculate alike? Not exactly:

The Stern report estimated that damage at 5-20% of GDP, however, not 2-3%. The difference, according to Lomborg, is that the two use a different "discount factor". This is the method by which economists recalculate the value today of money spent or saved in the future – or, to put it another way, the value today of this generation's grandchildren's lives. Neither is measurably "right", he says: they are judgments, albeit ones with a profound impact on subsequent analysis of the costs and benefits of spending money now to stop climate change.

Lomborg says false views of his position are held mostly by people who have never read his work. He says: "I keep trying to fight this, mainly because people often hear what I say through others." These intermediaries are often hostile critics, he adds.

Or perhaps through devoted cheerleaders with a patch over one eye?

Back in the good old days, Blair celebrated Lomborg's rise up the Amazon bestseller charts, and chortled at the consternation he created in the likes of Tim Flannery:

"I was all geared up to recommend this review of Bjorn Lomborg’s new book Cool It , written by The Weather Makers author Tim Flannery,” enthuses David Roberts, “but it turns out to be pretty bad. It’s kind of scattered all over the place ...”

One can appreciated Roberts’ alarm at a rash of Flannerisms, but even a whole page load of Flannery-style scatterthoughts won’t deter this brave site. Let’s take a look:

Bjorn Lomborg is a Danish statistician and darling of those who believe that markets should not be regulated and that concerns about the environment are overblown.

Flannery is an Australian paleontologist and darling of those who believe that concerns about the environment should be overblown. Certain of his opinions? Hell, yes!

Indeed, so compelling and entertaining are the grains of truth that adorn his latest book, Cool It, that you are certain to hear them soon in dinner table conversation.

Listen to those Flannery teeth grind.

Will Blair's teeth be grinding when he gets down to the job of reading Lomborg's latest outing, Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits?

You see, Blair seems astonishingly certain that climate change isn't happening, and that even if the planet cools or warms a little, humanity has nothing to do with it, while Lomborg wants to discuss cost effective ways to fix the people-related changes to climate currently going down:

This result is where Lomborg is most vulnerable to allegations of a volte-face on the need to take action on climate change and the value of doing so. But he says circumstances have changed. The first Copenhagen Consensus considered only the predominant idea of cutting carbon emissions through a cap or tax. When the exercise was repeated in 2008, however, the team examined new ideas. Lomborg says he then challenged himself and selected economists to look at eight different "solutions" (comprising 15 policy suggestions). These included boosting R&D in technology, cleaning up soot and methane, which also contribute significantly to global warming, planting more trees, and climate engineering. Critics may argue he should have carried out this study before rubbishing climate policies.

Now there's a generous range of solutions to something that's supposedly not a problem. Climate engineering? Will that give more horsepower to a V8?

Way back when of course Blair loved to chortle about the way that Lomborg tore apart Peter Garrett, and caused Al Gore heartburn:

Al Gore disses Sceptical Environmentalist author Bjorn Lomborg:

Oh, I don’t think he’s taken seriously by the scientific community any longer. It was such a long and densely written work that it took them a little time to sort through it, but once they did, they found gross errors, surprising for a statistician.

Sounds like Al is up for a debate. Let’s see if he fares any better than did Peter Garrett. (here)

Meanwhile, there are other heretics, who need to be fixed to a stake and given a good warming.

What to make of, what to do with, Michael Hanlon scribbling of a change of heart in the Daily Mail, in The crack in the roof of the world: 'Yes, global warming is real - and deeply worrying'?

The foolish Hanlon took the very unscientific step of heading off to the Arctic to look at what was happening, when any Blair reader knows the answer lies somewhere in the motor of a V8, an F1 car or perhaps a NASCAR race. Here's Hanlon doing his flip flop:

I have long been something of a climate-change sceptic, but my views in recent years have shifted. For me, the most convincing evidence that something worrying is going on lies right here in the Arctic.

Because while across most of the world evidence for current climate change is often inconclusive and anecdotal, the huge ice sheet which sits atop this, the largest island in the world, appears to be cracking up before our eyes. And on a timescale of decades rather than the millennia many predicted.

Dearie me, what alarmist nonsense. Fancy actually going and looking at things. How peculiar, how unscientific. In complete contrast to Blair's excellent scientific method of assembling snippets in a blog!

As well as a couple of pose down snaps showing Hanlon amongst the melting ice, the Mail published this accompanying image, claiming it showed that temperatures over the Arctic have increased due to dramatic recent decline in sea ice cover:

Naturally I turned to Tim Blair, to discover his shock and horror, and to see how he deals with the disturbing news that are new heretics flaunting themselves, turncoats as bold as brass strutting the world stage.

After all, way back when, the likes of traitor Hanlon was approvingly quoted by the likes of Andrew Bolt as providing the boring facts that conclusively disproved global warming (and you can read Bolt's reassuring quotation here).

Surely Blair would have all the answers.

Oops, not a word on the traitors so far as I could see. Perhaps I needed a better telescope, or a stronger microscope. If only I were an expert scientist like Blair, I'm sure I'd have a decent Galileo vintage model ...

Never mind, I guess this is the way it's best done, banishment, perhaps a Cicero-like exile, where heretics can eke out a humble life, ignored by the insiders still in possession of the truth. Frowned upon, muttered about, forced to step outside the tent into the Arctic gale, and wander off, never to be thought about again ...

On the other hand, if you're perplexed about Pakistan cricket match fixing, head off to read Blair ... he's your man ... (Line Crossed).

Or perhaps you might be better off joining the cardigan wearers on ABC radio, and listen to Two prominent climate change sceptics have a change of heart, wherein Bob Carter roundly denounces Lomborg as a mere statistician who should just shut up and go away.

Funny that.

Way back when, in Bob Carter: British report the last hurrah of warmaholics, Carter found Lomborg's opinions exceptionally tasty:

The opinion of Bjorn Lomborg, writing in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, suggests that it is not just Stern's science that is flawed. Lomborg accuses Stern of cherry-picking statistics to fit the argument, such as massaging future warming cost estimates from the generally accepted 0per cent of gross domestic product now to 3 per cent in 2100 to figures as high as "20 per cent now and forever".

It seems that the economics of the Stern review is as shaky as the science, given that Lomborg concludes that "its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalised, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off".

Talk about cherry picking arguments and people you like except when you don't like them. Of course that was before Lomborg became a heretic ... and needed to be shunned.

What a funny old world it is, what a funny old pond, and strange how there's all this talk of climate change being a religious faith ...

Unless you happen to be a true believer. On the other side. Talk about the Amish ...

Hey, that reminds me, with the warming weather, the pond is warming up nicely.

Time for a swim, and a chance to listen to the loons squawk about the water temperature ...

(Below: how to fix the fixers when the fix gets tricky, and climate change heretics roam the earth. Use sawdust ... lots and lots of sawdust. And a little shunning).