Bjorn Lomborg. Saw this guy do his “alternative” documentary on the Earth Summit last night on the beeb. Turning most global warming / natural resources / industrial polution / global economics received wisdom on its head. The individual mechanisms may well all be technically (scientifically) correct, but the long term emergent effects are much more complex, and all decision making based on such “scientific” information is entirely political. His (much challenged) claim is that well intentioned “conservationists” are typically calling for completely the wrong lines of action, whereas big bad US / Global economics / Dubya are probably doing the right long-run things, if not necessarily for the “highest” of motives. Wide-ranging issues covered in convincing pseudo-scientific style. Need to follow-up further links to this guy. Powerful themes around chaos and complexity, and pseudo-periodicity being mis-interpreted as trends over selected timescales (the Antarctic Survey Ice Core Records stuff – incidentally, housed in the next door office) Also the same lines around evolution and success of species and the effect of man on all of this. Magic stuff, [ post note ] but beware enormous quantity of scientific backlash against Lomborg since he first published in Danish back in 1998 – Notice however many of the counter-arguments are “statistical trend” based (Cf S J Gould). The Skeptical Environmentalist debate could be useful test-case for my thesis. When is bad science better than good-science ? – I wonder what anti-Lomborgers think of Wolfram ?)