SOCIAL: Bjorn Lomberg, climate skeptic

[Geoff Davis]

I think Lomberg wrote The Skeptical Environmentalist about 10 years ago when
the mid-range projections for global warming were a lot less dire than they
are now - maybe 1.5C over the next century if memory serves.  At that point
his arguments made a lot more sense.

I don't think he's acting maliciously - I think it's more a response to some
of the failures of environmentalists to account for the adaptability of
society back in the 70's (e.g. the whole Ehrlich/Simon wager -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon-Ehrlich_wager).  He's a political
scientist rather than a physical/life scientist, and I think he wanted to
inject some economics/policy ideas into the debate.

I'm not saying that I agree with his conclusions or that he's right, but I
do think it's worth asking what the tradeoffs are when dealing with the
problem.  He's a lot better than the people who are out there actively
spreading disinformation and propaganda - there are a bunch of ex-tobacco
lobbyists on the job, no joke.

FWIW, during my PhD studies I did a bit of atmospheric modeling, did a lot
of coursework on the stuff underlying a lot of the existing climate models,
and I tried to get an internship with Steve Schneider one summer, so I do
know a bit about the area.  I'm not a warming skeptic at all and am quite
concerned that we are all fucked.

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 7:55 PM, Kristina Pappas
<kristina.pappas at gmail.com>wrote:

> Exhaustive data courtesy of Hunter Lovins (I've tried to set different
> articles apart for easier reading):
>
> Sure, it is an interesting academic exercise to prioritize which disaster
> you would rather face first: do we fail to act aggressively enough on global
> warming in the next ten years and face what 99.9% of the world's climatescientists are now calling "roasted world?" Do we fail to deliver real
> development to the 4.6 billion people living in the "Third World?" Or do we
> allow the 6th big period of extinction to continue to impoverish our
> biodiverstiy? Or do we focus the world's attention on AIDS?
>
> This is, however, an example of dis-integrated thinking, quite the opposite
> of whole systems thinking: use bad science to relegate the conclusion of the
> overwhelming preponderance of the world's relevant scientists that global
> warming is THE biggest problem facing humanity in its entire history to the
> "bottom of the list." Then pick a problem that is appealing, but far less
> threatening to the status quo and elevate it to crisis status - which it
> certainly is for the individuals concerned, but not for survival for life,
> as a whole, on earth. Then try to solve the top crisis in isolation, then
> the next "priority" and so on.... By the time you reach the bottom of the
> heap, time's up: we're roasted. And, incidentally, Lomborg's intellectual
> sponsors are safely retired and have not had to divert from business as
> usual.
>
> Sure, in emergencies, one triages. If there's a bus-load of folk, 40 of
> whom are hurt and CAN live if you intervene, someone who is gonna die anyway
> won't get the heroic attention they would have gotten if they were the only
> victim. So some people die who might not have, had they been given immediate
> attention. One plays the odds.
>
> Following Lomborg's advice is the equivalent of letting a screaming wife
> distract rescuers from those who have a chance of living to attend to her
> "circling the drain" husband. Or more accurately, to attend to her kid with
> a broken leg (yeah, it hurts, but it can wait) when there are people with
> sucking chest wounds: survivable with immediate attention, but if you wait,
> you'll be working a core.
>
> But behavior that serves in a one-time emergency is, again, bad logic when
> applied to global policy.
>
> Go back to the drivers of change that I present in the basic natural
> capitalism rap: climate-constrained world, peak oil, loss of every major
> ecosystem on earth, the vulnerabilities, the development challenges, and the
> sustainability imperative (just to name a few.)
>
> We have ten years to turn around climate change, to get the rate of growth
> in emissions trending down, and to put in place the institutions that can
> deliver us to 80 % reductions in green house gas emissions (not just
> reductions in the rate of growth of emissions).
>
> How can we meet this challenge in ways that also solve peak oil,
> development, reduce vulnerabilities, and help birth this new economy,
> civilization, and vision of life on earth?
>
> Watch Lomborg if you enjoy fiction. But let's don't confuse it with dealing
> with the world's biggest problems.
>
> ***************************
>
> To be precise Reuters reported, 27 Aug 2003 :
>
> Scientific Panel Dismisses Reports from Danish Environmental Skeptic
>
> Recent environmental reports produced by Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish
> environmental skeptic, were found to be unscientific and of dubious value
> yesterday by a panel of independent Scandinavian scientists.
>
> Lomborg created a stir with his controversial book "The Skeptical
> Environmentalist," in which he dismissed a wide range of environmental
> concerns as overblown.
>
> Earlier this year, a prestigious Danish scientific committee charged
> Lomborg with scientific dishonesty. The government then asked the
> independent panel to review his reports. Now, with the panel's damning
> assessment in hand, Danish politicians are calling for Lomborg's institute
> to be shut down.
>
> Tom Burke, advisor to various European Secretaries of State stated,
> "Professor Lomborg's book, sadly, is little more than a dishonest and
> dishonourable smear on the many millions of professionals and volunteers
> working to improve the environment."
>
> ***************************
>
> Grist Magazine published a whole series debunking Lomborg, including:
>
> * EXTINCTION: Biologist Dr. E.O. Wilson -- two-time Pulitzer prize winner,
> discoverer of hundreds of new species, and one of the world's greatest
> living scientists -- debunks Lomborg's analysis of extinction rates.
>
> * CLIMATE: Dr. Stephen H. Schneider, one of the foremost climatescientists in the United States, discredits Lomborg on global
> climate change and takes Cambridge University Press and the media to task
> for publishing and praising a polemic.
>
> * SPECIES DIVERSITY: Dr. Norman Myers, an Honorary Visiting Fellow of
> Oxford University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of the Sciences,
> and a recipient of several of the world's most prestigious environmental
> awards, looks at Lomborg on biodiversity and concludes that he lacks even "a
> preliminary understanding of the science in question."
>
> * POPULATION: Lester R. Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the
> Earth Policy Institute, reviews Lomborg on population and concludes that his
> analysis is so "fundamentally flawed" that other professionals would do well
> to disassociate themselves from his work.
>
> * FORESTS: Emily Matthews, a forest expert and senior associate with the
> World Resources Institute, shows that Lomborg reaches wildly inaccurate
> conclusions about deforestation by fudging data or failing to interpret it
> correctly.
>
> * ENERGY: Energy expert David Nemtzow, president of the Alliance to Save
> Energy, says Lomborg wastes his time battling a straw man: Virtually no one
> in the contemporary environmental movement disputes that fossil fuels are
> abundant, Nemtzow argues; in fact, it's precisely their abundance and their
> impact on our ecosystems that's the trouble.
>
> * STATISTICS: Al Hammond, senior scientist at World Resources Institute,
> criticizes Lomborg for mischaracterizing the contemporary environmental
> movement and committing precisely the sins for which he attacks
> environmentalists: exaggeration, sweeping generalizations, the presentation
> of false choices, selective use of data, and outright errors of fact.
>
> ***************************
>
> The New York Times described the situation thusly:
> Danish Science Panel Rips Lomborg For "Scientific Dishonesty"
> January 8, 2003
>
> Environment and Science: Danes Rebuke a 'Skeptic'
> By Andrew C. Revkin
>
> "A branch of the Danish Research Agency has concluded that Prof. Bjorn
> Lomborg, an author whose upbeat analysis fo environmental trends has been
> embraced by conservatives, displayed 'scientific dishonesty' in his popular
> book, 'The Skeptical Environmentalist.'
>
> The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty, after a six-month review
> following several complaints filed by scientists, issued a 17-page report
> yesterday concluding that the book displayed 'systematic one-sidedness.'
>
> 'Objectively speaking, the committees found, 'the publication o the work
> under consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific
> dishonesty,' as defined by Danish rules for science integrity
>
> The committee ...concluded, 'The publication is deemed clearly contrary to
> the standards of good scientific practice.'
>
> 'The environment is a field where, when people do some light calculations
> like Lomborg did, it's easy to argue for a happy-times kind of conclusion,'
> said Dr. Peter H. Raven, the director of the Missouri Botanical Garden and
> president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
>
> But such findings should not be portrayed as science, he said, adding 'This
> is a just outcome that ought to bring his credibility to a halt except for
> those who desperately want to believe what he says.'"
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/international/europe/08SKEP.html
>
> ***************************
>
> On Lomborg's climate material referenced in the parent post, Dr. Eban
> Goodstein, Professor, and organizer of Focus the Nation wrote the following
> review of Cool It in Salon:
>
> http://www.salon.com/books/review/2007/08/29/cool_it/
> Hot air
>
> Global warming is not as bad as it's made out to be, argues Bjørn Lomborg.
> But he cherry-picks evidence to manufacture a scientific and economic
> consensus that doesn't exist.
>
> By Eban Goodstein
>
> Aug. 29, 2007 | The place is somewhere in Turkey, 5,200 years ago. Noah has
> just gotten word about an upcoming episode of abrupt climate change, and
> he and his family are hard at work building an ark. The plan is to take on
> board mating pairs of every living thing of all flesh, every creeping thing
> of the ground, in order, as God put it, to keep them alive.
>
> Up walks a man who introduces himself as an adjunct professor at the
> Copenhagen Business School. He says, "Noah, you have to stop. We've run the
> numbers and they don't add up. I agree that there may be a few days of rain,
> but if you really want to help future generations, don't build the ark. Grow
> the economy!"
>
> In "Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming,"
> that Copenhagen Business School professor, Bjørn Lomborg, is at it again,
> preaching the gospel of benefit-cost analysis. His message: Don't take any
> serious action to stop global warming pollution because doing so will slow
> down economic growth that poor people need, and anyway, it's really not
> going to rain that hard.
>
> Lomborg's first effort, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," made a splash in
> 2001 with a mixture of polemics targeted at scare-mongering
> environmentalists. With its voluminous footnotes, Lomborg appeared to have
> done his homework. But on closer examination, some of the facts were not so
> well supported and Lomborg was widely accused of cherry-picking to support
> his arguments. Eminent Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson called the work a
> "sordid mess."
>
> In "Cool It," Lomborg has three messages. First, the planet will warm up no
> more than 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit this century, and on balance, this will be
> bad, but not too bad. Second, all benefit-cost models show that serious
> limits on global warming emissions are too costly, and therefore we should
> pollute with virtual impunity. And -- surprisingly -- we should invest a
> decent amount ($25 billion per year) in clean energy technologies now so
> that, starting in a few decades, we will have tools to slow down global
> warming just a little bit through 2100.
>
> How much is a 4.7 degree warming? During the last ice age, a period of time
> during which much of North America was covered with hundreds of meters of
> ice, the world was only 9 degrees colder than it is today. Lomborg's world
> in 2100 -- what he calls the "standard" estimate from the U.N.'s
> Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- is already halfway to a shift
> in temperatures of ice age magnitude, only hotter not colder, within our
> children's lifetimes.
>
> To make his case that this "moderate" warming won't do too much harm,
> Lomborg puts much weight on the argument that as the world heats up,
> reductions in deaths from cold might significantly outweigh increased heat
> deaths. But as Frank Ackerman at Tufts has shown, such a conclusion holds
> only if one incorrectly assumes that people do not adapt to what Lomborg
> insists will be very gradual temperature changes. Here as elsewhere, Lomborg
> presents scientific and economic debates as much more settled than they are.
>
> But this really is not the point. The glaring error in "Cool It," and the
> one that disqualifies the book from making a serious contribution, is that
> Lomborg ignores the main concern driving the debate. Incredibly, he never
> mentions even the possibility that the world might heat up more than 4.7
> degrees. Although he claims IPCC science as gospel, in fact the scientific
> body gives no single "standard" estimate as its official forecast for this
> century's warming. Instead, the IPCC provides a range of up to 10.5 degrees
> -- more than double the number on which Lomborg bases his entire argument.
>
> The global warming "alarmism" that Lomborg finds so distasteful is
> motivated by a serious, science-driven concern that hidden within our global
> climate system are powerful positive feedback loops. So that as we inch up
> from 3 to 4 and then 4 to 5 degrees of warming, we may very well cross some
> temperature threshold that would trigger a couple of degrees of further
> warming, causing a catastrophic upward spiral in global temperatures.
>
> For example, if the Amazon heats up and dries out too much, much of it
> could burn down, flipping to savannah, and releasing tens of billions of
> tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Similarly, as the permafrost in the Arctic
> melts, a huge pulse of methane may be released. The science is clear that,
> interacting, these and other biophysical and socioeconomic factors could
> drive planetary temperatures far beyond the range that Lomborg addresses. By
> ignoring the vast uncertainty underlying these forecasts, and every
> alternative outcome except his preferred "moderate" warming scenario, "Cool
> It" reduces to an uninteresting discussion of why folks alive today should
> choose 4.7 degrees of warming rather than 4.4 as the optimal outcome for our
> grandkids.
>
> On sea level rise, Lomborg assures us, with serene confidence, that it will
> stop at a serious but manageable one foot by the end of the century. The
> book omits any reference to Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA Goddard's Space
> Research Institute at Columbia University. A growing body of research led
> Hansen to declare earlier this year that Lomborg's favored business-as-usual
> scenario "would guarantee future disintegration of West Antarctica and parts
> of Greenland." This in turn would guarantee a long-run, irreversible sea
> level rise of 20 feet or more, with the potential for a several-foot
> increase this century.
>
> Given Hansen's recent work, Lomborg's insistence that "all models clearly
> show both Greenland and Antarctica making small contributions [to sea level
> rise] over the next century" is silly. Similarly quaint is his claim that
> Antarctica is a region where "little or no surface melting occurs." Earlier
> this year, NASA found that California-size lakes formed on the continent's
> surface in 2005.
>
> Lomborg's focus on a single, midrange number for global temperature
> increase is paralleled by his insistence that Kyoto-level controls, with the
> U.S. participating, would have cost the world $180 billion per year. Kyoto
> mandated a 7 percent reduction in emissions by 2010, and the European
> countries that are complying with the treaty have done so by placing a cap
> on emissions from cars and power plants. To get under the cap, industries
> have to invest in new, cleaner technologies, and to the extent that this
> increases the cost of travel or power, these higher prices can generate a
> reduction in the rate of economic growth. This in turn might lead to a small
> percentage drop in the level of global GDP at the end of each year --
> Lomborg's measured cost of Kyoto.
>
> Yet here again he imagines a consensus that does not exist. Yale economist
> Robert Repetto's well-known review of 16 cost studies concluded that the
> estimated GDP impact of Kyoto-level controls ranged from the relatively
> small negative effects that concern Lomborg, to results that were also
> small, but positive. Reducing emissions might actually spur economic growth
> by, among other reasons, increasing global energy efficiency.
>
> Lomborg manufactures yet another alleged consensus among economists
> regarding benefit-cost analyses of carbon controls: "all macroeconomic
> models show they are poor investments." This is wrong. Several benefit-cost
> analyses -- including those of William Cline and Frank Ackerman -- have
> supported serious near-term caps on carbon.
>
> Lomborg is forced to acknowledge, and try to debunk, the most recent
> counterexample: the high-profile Stern report from the U.K. Lomborg refers
> frequently to four economic Nobel laureates who agree with his position that
> carbon controls are too expensive. But professional opinion is far from
> monolithic. Stern's analysis is part of an ongoing debate among economists
> -- particularly on the choice of discount rate, a critical parameter that
> drives the results of all the benefit-cost models. The discount rate
> determines how much weight the models give to benefits (whether higher GDP
> or lower global temperatures) that occur in the future.
>
> Lomborg's preferred models choose a high discount rate of 6 percent. This
> favors reaping GDP benefits soon, while paying surprisingly little attention
> to long-run climate damages. The reasoning? Those early GDP increases can
> be productively reinvested and enrich future generations. By contrast, Stern
> picks a low discount rate of 1.4 percent, asserting on moral grounds that
> any early GDP gains should be weighed against later climate damages more
> or less equally. His model worries less about foregone investment and growth
> opportunities, should climate control efforts noticeably lower GDP over
> the next few decades.
>
> In his review of the Stern report, Harvard's Marty Weitzman shows that --
> irrespective of the moral case -- both Stern's and Lomborg's preferred
> discount rate can be well justified on theoretical grounds. In the end, both
> Weitzman and Nobel laureate Ken Arrow argue that Stern might be right
> (though for the wrong reasons). And two other Nobel winners, Joseph Stiglitz
> and George Akerlof, and dozens of serious researchers support strong,
> near-term caps on global warming pollution.
>
> One glaring example: Lomborg frequently cites the Kyoto cost estimates of
> Yale economist William Nordhaus. And yet, writing in Science, Nordhaus
> supported Kyoto as a global insurance policy, calling it a "useful if
> expensive guinea pig." He continued: "It is hard to see why the United
> States should not join with other countries" in pursuing this important
> experiment in building the international institutions that can deal with
> global warming.
>
> As in his previous book, Lomborg cherry-picks the evidence to manufacture
> both a scientific and economic consensus that does not exist. By focusing
> exclusively on a single moderate warming scenario, "Cool It" fails to
> grapple with the real economic rationale for cutting carbon now: to buy
> insurance against the possibility of catastrophic outcomes.
>
> Harvard's Weitzman puts the current concerns of many economists clearly.
> Based on the findings of the U.N. climate panel, he notes that with
> roughly 3 percent probability, "we will [live in] a terra incognita
> biosphere within a hundred years whose mass species extinctions, radical
> alterations of natural environments, and other extreme outdoor consequences
> of a different planet will have been triggered by a
> geologically-instantaneous temperature change that is significantly larger
> than what separates us now from past ice ages." Facing uncomfortably high
> probabilities for these kind of catastrophic consequences, leading
> economists like Weitzman are advocating a "gradualist climate-policy ramp
> of ever-tighter greenhouse gas reductions" that will give our kids options:
> options for deep cuts if needed, and options emerging from the new
> technologies that will be driven by steadily tightening pollution caps.
>
> While "Cool It" misses the central issue in the debate, the book does show
> an interesting evolution in Lomborg's thinking. In a departure from his
> earlier work, and surprisingly, given his downplaying the impacts of global
> warming, Lomborg calls for an ambitious public investment program in clean
> energy technologies. I could not agree more. When my 19-year-old daughter
> reaches my age, her generation will have to cut global warming pollution
> 10-20 percent per decade. Their mission will be to rewire the entire planet
> with low-cost, clean energy technologies, creating tens of millions of jobs,
> stabilizing the climate, and laying the foundation for a prosperous and
> sustainable future. But if we don't invest today in fuel cells, solar
> arrays, and biofuel technologies, she simply won't have the affordable tools
> to do for her kids what she will need to.
>
> Lomborg, however, focuses exclusively on public investment, dismissing in
> one sentence the sound economic argument that a cap on carbon, by raising
> the price of dirty fuels, will be a critical spur to private investment in
> clean technologies. To foster the kind of technology revolution that can
> stabilize global warming pollution, significant government support will be
> necessary, but far from sufficient.
>
> Lomborg considers himself a friend of the world's poor. A table in his book
> shows all the good things that we could do with the hypothetical $180
> billion he argues Kyoto would have cost. But faith, hope and charity are not
> zero-sum goods. A world brought together around a common agenda of
> stabilizing the climate will be more, not less likely, to tackle other
> common projects.
>
> At the end of the day, Lomborg believes in the morality of benefit-cost
> analysis: No god but GDP. Funds diverted into capping global warming
> pollution means fewer "schools and hospitals" (as well as fewer Hummers and
> McMansions). For the half of the world's population still living in poverty,
> economic growth as conventionally measured remains an important priority.
> For the 2 billion of us living in relative comfort, however, slightly slower
> GDP growth would sacrifice little if any additional happiness. And as
> Lomborg acknowledges, most of the benefits of a moderately warmer climate(longer growing seasons, reduced cold days) accrue to the global North,
> while most of the costs (impacts on tropical agriculture, hotter summers,
> vulnerability to extreme weather) fall on the poor in the global South.
>
> But give Lomborg his whole argument. Suppose, as he believes, that
> Kyoto-level controls will cost a cumulative $5 trillion over the next 100
> years. That is about two years' worth of increase in global output. Suppose
> also that we ignore Lomborg's advice and in the next few years freeze global
> warming pollution in the rich countries. That would mean that a century
> hence, our descendants, living in a much richer world, would have to wait an
> additional two years -- until 2109 -- until a growing global economy left
> them as rich as they otherwise would have been in 2107.
>
> Will they thank us? Stabilizing emissions now will open the door for deeper
> reductions should our kids need to make them, and send powerful signals to
> the marketplace about future demand for the low-carbon, low-cost
> technologies that will be critical to stabilize the climate by the end of
> the century. Continued pollution closes off those options. And unchecked, in
> the year 2107, over a third of the terrestrial creatures on the planet could
> be locked into extinction from habitat destruction due to global warming.
>
> Noah, build that ark.
>
> Eban Goodstein is a professor of economics at Lewis & Clark College. He
> directs a national educational initiative on global warming solutions, Focus
> the Nation. His latest book is "Fighting for Love in the Century of
> Extinction: How Passion and Politics Can Change the Future."
>
> ***************************
> *The following is one article until the end of the email.*
>
> THE GALLON ENVIRONMENT LETTER
> Canadian Institute for Business and the Environment
> Montreal, Quebec, Canada
> Email cibe@ web.net
> Vol. 7, No. 1, January 11, 2003
>
> BJORN LOMBORG IS OFFICIALLY DISCREDITED?
>
> Dr. Bjørn Lomborg. A self-proclaimed environmentalist, who is not. He was
> the darling of governments and industries in Canada, the United States and
> around that world, who wish to do little or nothing about climate change
> or environmental protection. But now he has apparently been discredited by
> his own scientific community in Denmark.
>
> A statistician who thought he knew environment, Lomborg wrote a simple but
> scientifically questionable book entitled, ""The Skeptical Environmentalist:
> Measuring the Real State of the World", Cambridge University Press, 2001. It
> became an immediate international hit amongst the anti-environment crowd.
> Lomborg went on to write articles and give lectures around the world about
> environment and resource mismanagement not being the serious problem other
> scientists said they were. He was embraced by conservative governments like
> his own. The new Conservative Government of Denmark made him, in March 2002,
> Director of Denmark's Institute for Environmental Valuation. This is in
> spite of the fact that he had very little formal environmental background.
> Lomborg is an associate professor of statistics in the Department of
> Political Science at Denmark's University of Aarhus.
>
> The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), ruled January 7,
> 2003, that Bjorn Lomborg's scientific positions on the environment were, in
> many cases, incorrect. DCSD is not an environment committee. It has no
> environmental bias. The Committee is made up of scientists from all sectors,
> including economics and statistics. It deals with complaints of pure
> scientific dishonesty. The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty brings
> together some of the most senior members of Denmark's scientific
> establishment. They spent much of 2002 considering the evidence against
> Bjørn Lomborg, after several formal complaints were lodged by other
> scientists. The Committee found Lomborg's work less than honest. The DCSD
> concluded that Lomborg had, "clearly acted at variance with good scientific
> practice". The Committee's ruling continued: "There has been such perversion
> of the scientific message in the form of systematically biased
> representation that the objective criteria for upholding scientific
> dishonesty have been met." Even more damning is the backhanded way the
> Committee tried to soften its ruling on Lomborg. The Committee suggested
> that Lomborg may not have known the issues well enough and therefore spoke
> and wrote from a position of ignorance. Although the Committee did not feel
> able to conclude that Lomborg had misled his readers deliberately, this was
> only because the scientists considering the case, felt that Lomborg might
> simply have misunderstood the issues he was working on. Some are now saying
> that Bjorn Lomborg is "damaged goods", stating that he may well be asked to
> step down from the Director of Denmarks Institute of Environmental
> Evaluation.
>
> Hans Henrik Brydensholt, a Danish High Court judge who is chairman of the
> DCSD, wrote in the panel's ruling, "On the basis of the material adduced by
> the complainants, and particularly the assessment in "Scientific American,"
> DCSD deems it to have been adequately substantiated that the defendant, who
> has himself insisted on presenting his publication in scientific form and
> not allowing the book to assume the appearance of a provocative
> debate-generating paper, based on customary scientific standards and in
> light of his systematic one-sidedness in the choice of data and line of
> argument, has clearly acted at variance with good scientific practice."
> Source, http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-09-04.asp .
>
> See the complete official ruling by the Danish Committee on Scientific
> Dishonesty at the website
> http://www.forsk.dk/uvvu/nyt/udtaldebat/bl_decision.htm . For more
> information you can email forsk at forsk.dk. Tel: + 45 3544 6200. See Bjorn
> Lomborg's picture and personal website espousing his views at
> http://www.lomborg.com/ . Also see Bjørn Lomborg's arguments at
> http://www.greenspirit.com/lomborg/ScientificAmericanBjørnLomborgAnswer.pdf<http://www.greenspirit.com/lomborg/ScientificAmericanBj%C3%B8rnLomborgAnswer.pdf>.
>
> *********************************************************************
>
> LOMBORG IGNORED KEY ISSUES AND SET UP STRAW MEN AND KNOCKED THEM DOWN
>
> It was ingenious. Bjørn Lomborg argued with environmental positions not put
> forward by most environmentalists. He established a short list of a "litany"
> of environmental issues and did battle with them, while ignoring other key
> environmental issues. He tossed out climate change as an issue because it
> was too big a problem and too expensive to fix, citing vague economic costs
> and benefits. He used gross economic numbers to mask serious species loss
> problems, for example, in proclaiming that world fisheries were not
> declining because the gross world annual catch was up. Professor Lomborg
> focussed his most excoriating criticisms on the publications of the
> Worldwatch Institute, and in particular on the views of its former
> President, Lester Brown. He identified Mr Brown, and Professor Paul Erhlich,
> a Stanford University ecologist, as the high priesthood of environmental
> doom. The following are some of the key issues where Bjorn Lomborg was just
> wrong: See http://www.gristmagazine.com/books/lomborg121201.asp
>
> The Danish Ecological Council felt a more thorough response to Lomborg's
> book was needed. They therefore gathered a group of twelve Danish scientists
> - from science as well as economics and social science - publishing a
> critique (in Danish) in 1999. As of end June 2002, there is an English
> version of their work available. See the Danish scientists critique of
> Lomborg at the website http://www.ecocouncil.dk/index_eng.html . Also see
> the Environment News Service (ENS) story about his problem at
> http://ens-news.com/ens/jan2003/2003-01-08-03.asp .
>
> *******************************************************************
>
> WORLD'S FORESTS NOT UNDER THREAT: WRONG
>
> In his book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist", Bjørn Lomborg wrote that,
> "basically, the world's forests are not under threat." A charitable reader
> could attribute this flawed conclusion to errors of omission and ignorance;
> perhaps the author simply doesn't know the sources well enough to interpret
> them properly. Less charitably, Emily Matthews suggests that, "one might
> reasonably conclude that Lomborg intentionally selects his data and
> citations to distort or even reverse the truth." Lomborg confusingly
> contrasts net loss of forest cover (that is, his figure of loss of natural
> forest offset by regrowth and new plantations) with loss of original forest
> (WWF's figure). Another claim by Lomborg – that global forest cover has
> remained remarkably stable over the past 50 years -- is based on two acts of
> statistical conjuring. First, he expresses changes in forest cover as a
> percentage of the total land area of the world, a technique that reduces
> changes of millions of hectares to fractions of one percent. Second, he
> cobbles together a variety of different data sources compiled using
> different definitions of forest and different methodologies. These different
> data sets cannot be strung together to form a consistent time series.
>
> Again Lomborg is acting as a pure statistician and fails to recognize the
> complexities of the ecosystem. There is a massive decline in old growth
> forests both in the tropic and temperate zones. These forests support some
> of the greatest biodiversity in plants and animals. They also contain some
> of the most valuable trees for human use and consumption, like teak and
> mahogany from the tropics and cedar and white and red pine from the
> temperate forests. If you fly over the massive clearcuts in Canada you will
> see large commercial stands of cedar, white and red pine virtually gone, or
> severely diminished. You will find them replaced by swaying stands of low
> quality non-commercial new-growth trees like alder and birch. Many saw mills
> have had to close. Many species of animals have had to leave the destroyed
> habitat. But that is hard to interpret from aerial photos showing new forest
> cover of junk trees. Lomborg could investigate the plight of the villagers
> in Africa and Asia that have had to resort to burning animal dung, because
> they have cut down all of the cuttable trees around them for miles. He
> should have talked to the Chipko Movement in India and the villagers in
> China, that have suffered severe landslides due to the loss of forests and
> forest-protected watersheds around their villages. He should have talked to
> Dr. Wangari Maathai and the National Council of Women of Kenya who for the
> last 20 years have been planting millions of trees in an effort to reverse
> the terrible loss of forests due to over-cutting.
>
> Emily Matthews states that, "Lomborg's interpretation of global forest
> cover and Indonesian forest fires are just two examples of the incomplete
> and superficial analyses that underpin too much of his book." Emily Matthews
> is a senior associate at the World Resources Institute. She is the lead
> author of the Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems: Forest Ecosystems (WRI,
> 2000) and Understanding the Forest Resources Assessment 2000 (WRI, 2001).
> See her comments at http://www.gristmagazine.com/books/matthews121201.asp.
>
> ********************************************************************
>
> MASSIVE INDONESIAN FOREST FIRES ARE COMMON AND NOT A PROBLEM: WRONG
>
> Lomborg, while acknowledging that the Indonesia forest fires of 1997-1998,
> were serious, claimed that they were not out of the ordinary. Wrong. If he
> had read "The Gallon Environment Letter" and the Jakarta Post in 1997 and
> 1998, he would have learned that the fires were extraordinary and caused
> major economic, forest, and ecological losses. He would have learned that
> airports and the commerce and tourism they support in Indonesia and Malaysia
> were shut down for weeks by the massive smoke clouds. He would have learned
> that the fires were amongst the largest human-made fires to ever blight
> Indonesia and southeast Asia, for that matter.
>
> But again, as a statistician with no formal ecological background, Lomborg,
> couldn't have known. And as a statistician with an apparent bias, Lomborg
> selectively chose to accept the low forest burn numbers offered by the
> Government of Indonesia: 520,000 hectares. The low number given by the
> government was questionable and not backed by solid research. Indonesia,
> already embarrassed by the fires, accepted the estimates of forests burned
> from the local Indonesian land owners and palm plantation managers who did
> not want to reveal the full extent to which the fires had burned. Without
> further research and using the questionable Indonesian numbers, Lomborg
> attacked the World Wildlife Fund satellite estimates of 2 million hectares
> burned. He noted that the WWF estimate included both forest and
> non-forestland, but did not point out that the official Indonesian estimate
> he quoted was for forest land only. He then claimed, citing a 1999 United
> Nations Environment Programme report, that subsequent "satellite-aided
> counting" indicated that upwards of 1.3 million hectares of forest and
> timberlands may have burned. The German-supported Integrated Forest Fires
> Management Project, which, using satellite data and ground checks, produced
> convincing evidence that the Indonesian fires had actually burned some 5.2
> million hectares in 1998 alone -- 10 times the Indonesian government's
> estimate.
>
> Regarding estimates of how much forest actually burned, Lomborg cites a
> UNEP report, which in turn refers to an analysis, "A Study of the 1997 Fires
> in Southeast Asia Using SPOT Quicklook Mosaics," that was based on 766
> satellite images. These images covered the islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra
> only, for just August to December 1997. The study did not examine burn areas
> for 1998, nor did it take into account fires on other islands. The UNEP
> report states that this estimate represents "only a lower limit estimate of
> the area burned," although Lomborg's readers are not so informed.
>
> An analysis by the Singapore Centre of Remote Imaging, Sensing, and
> Processing using the same satellite images yielded a total burn area
> estimate for 1997 and 1998 of nearly 8 million hectares. In 1999, a
> technical team funded by the Asian Development Bank and working through the
> Indonesian National Development Planning Agency aggregated and analyzed all
> available data sources and estimated that the area burned during 1997-1998
> totalled more than 9.7 million hectares, of which some 4.6 million hectares
> were forest. Source,
> http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/matthews121201.asp .
>
> *******************************************************************
>
> ENVIRONMENTALISTS CLAIM THERE IS AN "ENERGY CRISIS": WRONG
>
> One of the environmental litanies set up as a straw man by Lomborg is that
> he states that environmentalists feel that there is an "Energy Crisis".
> Wrong. Major environmental groups do not believe that there is a crisis of a
> shortage of energy. He spends pages in his book showing that there is no
> energy crisis. The environmental groups couldn't agree more. Rather the
> environmental groups are concerned about improper energy use and consumption
> inequities. They are concerned about the severe environmental impacts of
> coal-power, nuclear energy, and the burning of fuelwood (creating
> desertification) in developing countries. They are concerned about the
> serious impacts of oil spills around the world resulting from shady
> corporations and bad engineering practices. They are concerned about the
> United States declining conventional oil reserves and its increasing
> dependence (53%) on imported oil. To support his Litany assertion that the
> environmental movement believes there is an energy crisis, Bjorn Lomborg
> cites a CNN report and an article in the "E- Magazine" - no one else, not
> Friends of the Earth, not Greenpeace, and not WWF. He does not cite an
> environmental organisation or even a leading environmental personality as
> believing in an energy resource crisis. See the website
> http://www.wri.org/press/mk_lomborg_09_things.html .
>
> ******************************************************************
>
> ENVIRONMENTALISTS CLAIM NATURAL RESOURCES ARE RUNNING OUT: WRONG
>
> Lomborg laid out another Litany, setting up a straw man by alleging that
> the environmentalists say that the world is running out of natural
> resources. Wrong. Major environmental organizations do not believe the world
> is running out of natural resources. They believe there is resource wastage,
> regional shortages, and serious resource access imbalances. It is true that
> 30 years ago, in 1972, the Club of Rome, in its seminal book, "Limits to
> Growth", and Dr. Paul Erhlich in his 1968 book, "The Population Bomb"
> expressed concern about the coming age of resource scarcity. But by 1978, it
> was clear to the environmental groups that we were not going to run out of
> natural resources as such. Instead, they focussed on the mismanagement of
> natural resources and the selective reduction of available resources, such
> as the collapse of the cod fisheries off the Grand Banks of eastern Canada
> from over-fishing; the loss of topsoil and resulting desertification of
> foodlands: and, the declining ability of conventional oil in countries like
> the United States to meet their growing fuel requirements, forcing the U.S.
> to rely on terrorist-infested oil, 53 per cent from OPEC and other imported
> sources.
>
> **********************************************************************
>
> WASTE MANAGEMENT IS NOT A PROBLEM: WRONG
>
> Bjorn Lomborg paid scant attention to municipal, industrial, nuclear, and
> hazardous wastes. He wrote only four pages in his 300-page plus book about
> wastes. Tom Burke states that, "Lomborg fails to mention of toxic or
> hazardous wastes, nothing is said about industrial wastes or the problems of
> large volume wastes from the mining industry. Radioactive wastes do not get
> a mention, nor do agricultural wastes." Burke added that, "the rest of the
> world seems to have no waste management problems at all, for all the
> attention they get." The environmental critique of waste management policies
> has been primarily about the wastage of resources that go into producing
> such large volumes of municipal wastes, and the nature of many of our
> industrial wastes and their impact on the environment and, in the case of
> radioactive wastes, human health for millennia to come."
> Source,
> http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/Documents/Reports/ten%20pinches%20of%20salt.pdf
>
> ***********************************************************************
>
> ECONOMIC GROWTH AND PROSPERITY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES WILL ALLEVIATE AIR
> POLLUTION THERE: WRONG
>
> Bjorn Lomborg asserts that air pollution is not as big a problem as the
> environmentalists make it out to be, because OECD countries have already
> reduced their air pollution and it is no longer a serious problem. He adds
> that developing countries don't have to directly address the issues as the
> environmentalists hype them to do, because economic growth and prosperity
> there will automatically result in air pollution clean up. Wrong.
>
> First, air pollution remains a serious problem in high population density
> pockets of OECD countries. Secondly, because the rich newly industrialized
> countries like Mexico, India, China, Indonesia and Egypt, are ignoring the
> solutions and letting corruption eat into any economic gains that might be
> diverted to air pollution control. Tom Burke states that, "air pollution in
> the rest of the world, where two thirds of humanity live, need not be
> considered, in Professor Lomborg's view, because this will cease
> automatically as they get richer. This confuses cause and correlation, not a
> mistake you would expect from a statistician. Although national wealth and
> the state of a nation's environment are observably associated to some
> extent, the relationships are complex and not at all well understood." To
> set Lomborg's simple assumption in context, it is worth considering the
> following comment about the Asia-Pacific region by the somewhat conservative
> Asia Development Bank which stated that, "Environmental degradation in the
> region is pervasive, accelerating, and unabated. At risk are people's health
> and livelihoods, the survival of species and ecosystem services that are the
> basis for long-term economic development. Economic development and poverty
> reduction are increasingly constrained by environmental concerns, including
> degradation of forestry and fisheries, scarcity of freshwater, and poor
> human health as a result of air and water pollution." Tom Burke CBE is a
> member of the Executive Committee of Green Alliance. Currently an
> environmental adviser to Rio Tinto and BP and a member of the Council of
> English Nature, he was previously special adviser to successive Secretaries
> of State for the Environment. He is a former director of Green Alliance, and
> of Friends of the Earth. Burke's critique of Bjorn Lomborg's position can be
> found at
> http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/Documents/Reports/ten%20pinches%20of%20salt.pdf.
>
> Jamie Page with the U.K. Cancer Prevention Society wrote that, "Bjorn
> Lomborg argues that the state of the environment is getting better. What
> about the cost of cancer? Cancer was a rare disease in pre-industrial
> societies and age-corrected incidence figures have been rising steadily for
> many decades. Currently one person in three will get cancer and this figure
> will rise. The idea that cancer is due to poor lifestyle, bad genes or
> viruses is being increasingly discredited. The massive increase in cancer in
> industrialised nations is partially due to the release of 100,000 synthetic
> chemicals into the environment, their concentration in the food chain, and
> their bioaccumulation in humans. Each of us carries between 300 and 500
> man-made chemicals in our body. It is impossible to quantify the costs of
> this, but one can assume they run into billions of pounds."
>
> ***********************************************************************
>
> ACID GAS EMISSION IMPACTS ARE MINIMAL: WRONG
>
> Bjorn Lomborg indicated that impacts from acid gas emissions, had little
> impact on the environment. Wrong. Thomas Lovejoy states that Lomborg's
> "research is so shallow that almost no citation from the peer-reviewed
> literature appears. Lomborg asserts that big-city pollution has nothing to
> do with acid rain, when it is fact that nitrogen compounds (NOx) from
> traffic are a major source. His reference to a study showing that acid rain
> had no effect on the seedlings of three tree species neglects to mention
> that the study did not include conifer species such as red spruce, which are
> very sensitive." Lovejoy added that, "there is no acknowledgment of the
> delayed effects from acid rain leaching soil nutrients, particularly key
> cations. He confounds tree damage from air pollution 30 to 60 years ago with
> subsequent acid rain damage and makes an Alice-in- Wonderland statement that
> the only reason we worry about foliage loss is "because we have started
> monitoring this loss." It is simply untrue that "there is no case of forest
> decline in which acidic deposition is known to be a predominant cause." Two
> clear-cut examples are red spruce in the Adirondacks and sugar maple in
> Pennsylvania." Thomas Lovejoy is chief biodiversity adviser to the president
> of the World Bank and senior adviser to the president of the United Nations
> Foundation. See his full comments in the Scientific American at
> http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000F3D47-C6D2-1CEB-93F6809EC5880000
>
> **********************************************************************
>
> THE WORLD'S FISHERIES REMAIN HEALTHY AND GROWING: WRONG
>
> Lomborg tells the environmentalists to stop their belly-aching about the
> world's fisheries decline. It just isn't happening, he says. Wrong. Lomborg
> claims that "marine productivity has almost doubled since 1970." In the
> strictest sense as a statistician, Lomborg is numerically correct. But from
> a regional and a fish varietal perspective, he is wrong. Between
> unsustainable growth in fishing technology and large-net fishing, and
> commercial fish farms, we humans have been able to scour the oceans for more
> and more fish. However, because of his lack of ecological and fish resource
> knowledge, he failed to report on the series of collapses of fisheries for
> high end fish like flounder, cod, and crab. The Beluga Sturgeon (caviar) is
> all but fished out. One of the richest and most productive fish regions in
> the world, the Grand Banks off of eastern Canada has been fished out, except
> for junk fish that nobody wanted before. Twelve thousand jobs were lost and
> eastern Canada suffered a severe economic setback when the cod fishery had
> to be closed in the 1990's. Many of the rich crab fisheries around Alaska
> have been closed in a desperate effort to revive the crab stocks. The
> European Union is considering limiting or closing the cod fisheries around
> its coasts to avoid the same fate that hit Canada. The wild and diversified
> salmon fisheries on North America's West Coast, from Alaska to BC to
> Washington State, is suffering tremendous over-fishing pressures. According
> to the World Resources Institute (WRI), "what Lomborg actually means appears
> later in the book as a figure depicting an increase in total fish catch,
> plus production from fish farms. Capture of wild fish from the sea has
> increased by 20 percent, not 100 percent since 1970. And what humans are
> taking from the oceans and what the oceans are producing are of course
> fundamentally different matters." WRI goes on to state that, "Lomborg's
> equating of the two exemplifies how his book is fundamentally misleading. By
> focussing on total production, Lomborg's graph conceals that stocks of cod,
> haddock, hake, flounder, swordfish, sardines, halibut, Atlantic Ocean perch,
> and many others have crashed." See the WRI website on Lomborg at
> http://www.wri.org/press/mk_lomborg_10_things.html . Read about the
> Canadian cod fisheries collapse at
> http://www.unesco.org/courier/1998_08/uk/dossier/txt24.htm . Read WRI's
> world fisheries under pressure http://www.wri.org/trends/fishloss.html .
> Read the Gallon Letter about fisheries conflict in the US State of Georgia
> at http://csf.colorado.edu/bioregional/2002/msg00137.html .
>
> **********************************************************************
>
> POPULATION GROW NO LONGER A PROBLEM: WRONG
>
> Lomborg's view that "the number of people is not the problem" is simply
> wrong. His selective use of statistics gives the reader the impression that
> the population problem is largely behind us. The global population growth
> rate has indeed declined slowly, but absolute growth in human beings on
> earth is enormous and remains close to the very high levels observed in
> recent decades, because the population base keeps expanding. World
> population today stands at six billion, three billion more than in 1960.
> According to U.N. projections, another three billion will likely be added by
> 2050, and population size will eventually reach about 10 billion. This is
> according to demographer, Dr. John Bongaarts, Vice President of the U.S.
> Population Council's Policy Research Division, and a member of the U.S.
> National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of
> Sciences, as well. Bongaarts adds that, "Lomborg dismisses concerns about
> this issue based on a simplistic and misleading calculation of density as
> the ratio of people to all land. Clearly, a more useful and accurate
> indicator of density would be based on the land that remains after excluding
> areas unsuited for human habitation or agriculture, such as deserts and
> inaccessible mountains. For example, according to his simple calculation,
> the population density of Egypt equals a manageable 68 persons per square
> kilometer, but if the unirrigated Egyptian deserts are excluded, density is
> an extraordinary 2,000 people per square livable kilometer," not the 68
> posited by Lomborg that he thinks have all the inhospitable deserts to live
> in. Lomborg correctly notes that poverty is the main cause of hunger and
> malnutrition, but he neglects the contribution of population growth to
> poverty. For a full discussion visit the Scientific American website at
>
> http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000F3D47-C6D2-1CEB-93F6809EC5880000
>
> *********************************************************************
>
> CLIMATE CHANGE NOT A PROBLEM WORTH FULLY SOLVING: WRONG
>
> Lomborg asserts that climate change is an issue to large and too expensive
> to fix. He says "let's spend our money elsewhere. Wrong. Charles Secrett,
> Executive Director of Friends of the Earth England, wrote in U.K.'s The
> Guardian newspaper that, "Lomborg chooses a bad economic model, which
> overestimates the cost of action and underestimates the costs of inaction,
> makes unjustified assumptions about the IPCC's forecasts on GHG impacts, and
> then misrepresents evidence which does not fit his case. How ironic that he
> should be contemptuous of the intellectual rigour of environmentalists. His
> slippery way with facts and arguments has already been well exposed by his
> academic colleagues in Denmark (see the Aarhus University website
> www.au.dk/cesam), but contrarians tend to lack a sense of shame." Lomborg
> asserts that the higher estimates of the IPCC are "plainly unlikely", which
> will come as news to most climatologists. In fact, the IPCC, which
> represents the consensus view of climate scientists from around the world,
> recently concluded that climate change will probably happen at a faster
> rate than was previously believed. Source,
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4241934,00.html .
>
> Lomborg asserts that if implemented the Kyoto Protocol GHG emission cuts
> will have almost no quick positive effect on the man-made global warming
> gases now circling the earth (mainly put there by the United States, Europe,
> Canada, Japan, and the other OECD nations). Environmental groups knew that
> already, which is why they have criticised Kyoto as being too little, too
> late. So far, Lomborg and the environmentalists are on side. But his
> analysis is to do little and spend the money elsewhere. Whereas, the
> environmentalists are saying, "if there is a growing problem and it is going
> to harm the economies of nations - fix it." Since the Kyoto Protocol is all
> the governments would agree to, it is seen by environmental organizations as
> a start, and is accepted by them as such. They feel that even greater GHG
> emission cuts will be agreed to in Kyoto II, especially as the negative
> impacts continue to pile up. "Since greater cuts, involving more countries,
> are likely to be agreed to take effect during the second compliance period
> after 2012, Lomborg's exercise of calculating Kyoto's effect on the
> climate by 2100 is at best irrelevant and at worst intentionally
> misleading," said Mark Lynas. Source, Mark Lynas, bottom of the website
> http://www.anti-lomborg.com .
>
> Lomborg asserts that cost-benefit calculations show that although the
> benefits of avoiding climate change could be substantial ($5 trillion is
> the single figure Lomborg cites), this is not worth the cost to the economy
> of trying to constrain fossil-fuel emissions (a $3-trillion to $33-trillion
> range he pulls from the economics literature). However, Lomborg fails to use
> simple science, asymmetrically, to provide a range potential economic
> damages caused by climate change. Even more puzzling is his failure to
> discuss ecological impacts in general, focusing instead on the human health
> impacts and the agriculture sector, sectors he thinks won't be much harmed
> by climate change of the minuscule amount he predicts. See the full
> argument at the website
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4241934,00.html .
> Also see
> http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000F3D47-C6D2-1CEB-93F6809EC5880000
>
> *************************************************************************
>
> ENVIRONMENTALISTS DON'T FIX PROBLEMS, THEY HYPE ISSUES: WRONG
>
> Bjorn Lomborg criticizes environmental groups for hyping issues and blowing
> them out of proportion - kind of like "chicken little's the sky is falling".
> He asserts that environmental problems have been fixed through growth and
> economic activity. Wrong. The environmental movement was begun in 1968. The
> citizens that support the movement forced their governments and industries
> to clean up and to put in place systems to improve the environment. The very
> hype Lomborg criticizes is the hype that pressured decision-makers into
> action. Dr. Thomas Lovejoy put it this way: "Far worse, Lomborg seems quite
> ignorant of how environmental science proceeds: researchers identify a
> potential problem, scientific examination tests the various hypotheses,
> understanding of the problem often becomes more complex, researchers suggest
> remedial policies--and then the situation improves. By choosing to highlight
> the initial step and skip to the outcome, he implies incorrectly that all
> environmentalists do is exaggerate. The point is that things improve because
> of the efforts of environmentalists to flag a particular problem,
> investigate it and suggest policies to remedy it. Sadly, the author seems
> not to reciprocate the respect biologists have for statisticians." See
> http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000F3D47-C6D2-1CEB-93F6809EC5880000
> --
> Kristina Pappas
> MBA, Sustainable Management - 2008
> 415.812.3128
> http://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinapappas
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Social at lists.deeptrouble.com
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>
>
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