Thursday, January 18, 2007

Al Gore refuses to meet Bjorn Lomborg

First of all my apologies for the quiet around here lately.

Anyway, the Danish Paper Jyllands-Posten reports that Former Vice President Al Gore who is spending a couple of days in Denmark on his seemingly endless Inconvenient Truth-Tour, Still won't debate with Bjørn Lomborg, who has criticized Gore for dealing with on subject in an alarmist way. (Gore's visit immediately triggered the Gore Effect, making an unusually mild Danish winter into a typical one with around-zero temperatures, chilling rain and hail and a freezing storm smashing into northern Europe.)

But back to the issue at hand. From Jyllands-Posten: (link in Danish, translation mine):

Bjørn Lomborg, together with Jyllands-Postens culture editor Flemming Rose [the man who got the idea and together with chief-editor Carsten Juste decided to publish the Motoons] were supposed to have interviewed Al Gore on Thursday. However, though his agent Wylie Agency in London, Al Gore announced Wednesday that the presence of Bjørn Lomborg was unwanted.

"This is not the first time this has happened. Several people have tried unsuccessfully to set a dialog-meeting between the two of us. It is deeply troublesome that he doesn't dare to be challanged and only want to speak to his followers", says Bjørn Lomborg.

(...)

The agent and Flemming Rose subsequently agreed that the interview would be done by Rose alone and that the subject would be the book and the movie.

However, an hour later Flemming Rose received an e-mail from the agent with the wording:

"We regret to announce that we have to cancel the interview."

No reason was giving but when the editor contacted the agent by phone, the agent said the cancellation was due to the fact that Lomborg had even been part of the process.

According to Bjørn Lomborg he's willing to debate Al Gore on global heating any time and anywhere.

So after more than a thousand lectures on "an inconvenient truth" Gore still won't meet an inconvenient opponent. Guess it must be easier to be a politician with that attitude.

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