global warmists are racist, homophobic, anti-scientific, and superstitious...who'da thunk it?

Bjorn Lomberg, in the WSJ, on the opportunity cost of the resources spent-- and proposed to be spent-- on global warming...what amounts to a "war on the poor"...

The saddest fact of climate change—and the chief reason we should be concerned about finding a proper response—is that the countries it will hit hardest are already among the poorest and most long-suffering....

Over the past seven weeks, I recounted in these pages what they told us concerned them the most. In nearly every case, it wasn't global warming. Everywhere we went we found people who spoke powerfully of the need to focus more attention on more immediate problems....

There is no question that global warming will have a significant impact on already existing problems such as malaria, malnutrition, and water shortages. But this doesn't mean the best way to solve them is to cut carbon emissions.

Take malaria. Most estimates suggest that if nothing is done, 3% more of the Earth's population will be at risk of infection by 2100. The most efficient global carbon cuts designed to keep average global temperatures from rising any higher than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (a plan proposed by the industrialized G-8 nations) would cost the world $40 trillion a year in lost economic growth by 2100—and have only a marginal impact on reducing the at-risk malaria population. By contrast, we could spend $3 billion a year on mosquito nets, environmentally safe indoor DDT sprays, and subsidies for new therapies—and within 10 years cut the number of malaria infections by half. In other words, for the money it would take to save one life with carbon cuts, smarter policies could save 78,000 lives.

Many well-meaning people argue that we do not need to choose between tackling climate change and addressing these more immediate problems directly. We can, they say, do both. If only that were true....

Such people flunk the first chapter of Econ 101 and have some confused claims about the supernatural on top of that. Opportunity costs is a basic concept in economics and public policy-- spend $3 billion means you're not spending it there. In essence, such people believe that resources can be omnipresent-- able to be spent in multiple places at once.

According to Oxfam, if rich nations diverted $50 billion to climate change, at least 4.5 million children could die and 8.6 million fewer people could have access to HIV/AIDS treatment. And what would we get for that $50 billion? Well, spending that much on Kyoto-style carbon-emissions cuts would reduce temperatures by all of one-thousandth of one degree Fahrenheit over the next hundred years....

Global warmers are, apparently, homophobes-- at least by the way such arguments are commonly laid out.