Lomborg hedges his bets

I've blogged on Dr. Lomborg previously. This is a surprising turn of events-- selling more books, being newly-convinced but trying to act as if it's no big deal, or trying to hedge his bets-- from the NYT green blog:

With the publication of his 2001 book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish economics professor, became a leading contrarian voice on global warming and a leading opponent of carbon reduction efforts like the Kyoto Protocol.

Mr. Lomborg did not dispute that adding greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide to the atmosphere was warming the climate; rather, he argued that the vast expense of reining in emissions would far outweigh the benefit deferred by the resultant effect on global temperatures....

Yet Mr. Lomborg’s latest book, “Smart Solutions to Climate Change: Comparing Costs and Benefits,” is unlikely to bolster his popularity among those opposed to drastic immediate action to curb greenhouse gas emissions. In the book, to be published in September, he calls for $150 billion in new investment annually for clean energy development, climate engineering and climate change adaptations like building sea walls to protect low-lying areas from sea-level rise — with the money to be raised through a global tax on carbon dioxide emissions....

In an interview with The Guardian, Mr. Lomborg denied making an abrupt U-turn on climate change, arguing that he has always taken the issue seriously. He blamed the highly partisan nature of the climate debate for skewing his views. Still, over the course of the last decade, Mr. Lomborg has regularly played down the probability of catastrophic climate change any time soon...