By Bjorn Lomborg
Project Syndicate News Service
This year's Nobel Peace Prize justly rewards the thousands of scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These scientists are engaged in excellent, painstaking work that establishes exactly what the world should expect from climate change.
The other award winner, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, has spent much more time telling us what to fear. While the IPCC's estimates and conclusions are grounded in careful study, Gore doesn't seem to be similarly restrained.
Gore told the world in his Academy Award-winning movie (recently labeled ``one-sided" and containing ``scientific errors" by a British judge) to expect 20-foot sea-level rises over this century.
He ignores the findings of his Nobel co-winners, the IPCC, who conclude that sea levels will rise between only a half-foot and two feet over this century, with their best expectation being about one foot. That's similar to what the world experienced over the past 150 years.
The IPCC is the influential body established by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program.
Likewise, Gore agonizes over the accelerated melting of ice in Greenland and what it means for the planet, but overlooks the IPCC's conclusion that, if sustained, the current rate of melting would add just three inches to the sea level rise by the end of the century.
Gore also takes no notice of research showing that Greenland's temperatures were higher in 1941 than they are today.
Gore also frets about the future of polar bears. He claims they are drowning as their icy habitat disappears. However, the only scientific study showing any such thing indicates that four polar bears drowned because of a storm.
The politician-turned-movie maker loses sleep over a predicted rise in heat-related deaths. There's another side of the story that's inconvenient to mention: Rising temperatures will reduce the number of cold spells, which are a much bigger killer than heat. The best study shows that by 2050, heat will claim 400,000 more lives, but 1.8 million fewer will die because of cold.
Indeed, according to the first complete survey of the economic effects of climate change for the world, global warming will actually save lives.
The IPCC has magnanimously declared that it would have been happy if Gore had received the Nobel Peace Prize alone. I am glad that he did not, and that the IPCC's work has rightfully been acknowledged.
Gore has helped the world to worry. Unfortunately, our attention is diverted from where it matters. Climate change is not the only problem facing the globe. Our blinkered focus on it _ to the detriment of other planetary challenges _ will only be heightened by the attention generated by Gore's Nobel Peace Prize.