Critical thinking and hard data are cornerstones of all good science. Because environmental sciences are so keenly important to both our biological and economic survival--causes that are often seen to be in conflict--they deserve full scrutiny. With that in mind, the book The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press), by Bj¿rn Lomborg, a statistician and political scientist at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, should be a welcome audit. And yet it isn't.
As the book's subtitle--Measuring the Real State of the World--indicates, Lomborg's intention was to reanalyze environmental data so that the public might make policy decisions based on the truest understanding of what science has determined. His conclusion, which he writes surprised even him, was that contrary to the gloomy predictions of degradation he calls "the litany," everything is getting better. Not that all is rosy, but the future for the environment is less dire than is supposed. Instead Lomborg accuses a pessimistic and dishonest cabal of environmental groups, institutions and the media of distorting scientists' actual findings. (A copy of the book's first chapter can be found at www.lomborg.org)
Already a Digital subscriber? Sign-in Now
If your institution has site license access, enter here.
See what we're tweeting about
12 Comments
Add CommentI quote: " Even if his statistical analysis is valid..." It is. Live with it. "The problem with Lomborg's conclusions is that the scientists themselves disown it." Like it or not, those anonymous "scientists" cannot change Lomborg's conclusions. The predictions of their "science" are produced by computer simulations that are so corrupt that they can be made to come up with any desired output. And now we find that the "late twentieth century warming" of the eighties and nineties simply did not happen. Since it was used as input to computers their output is nothing more than GIGO. Nevertheless, personal attacks on Lomborg because of his science persist. They are unprecedented since the Middle Ages and remind me of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisArno Arrak writes:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The predictions of their "science" are produced by computer simulations that are so corrupt that they can be made to come up with any desired output."
Quite a sweeping statement. Can you prove this?
Critical thinking and hard data are the cornerstones of all good science. I think not. An open and inquiring mind devoid of bias with the ability to confront any controversial data set is the first requirement. Science has been held back by prejudice, fear and a closed mind than it has been advanced by critical thinking and hard data. Hard data is in abundance but closed minds are in super abundance. Even a cursory glance at the hard data for 911 will supply a curious mind with a wealth of material to analyse (let alone the soft data), hard scientific data does not lie. But who bothers to read or investigate, if even a sliver of the hard data was correct and contradicted the official story it should be front page news, but the hard data is never presented, discussed or analysed. Shame to call yourselves scientists. There is none so blind than those who will not see. "0".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbsolutely. Carl Sagan pulled the same trick with the nuclear winter scare. Minor changes in some of the parameters would have produced a nuclear summer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is all in what axe you want to grind and the ffact that the public at large is appalling in its ignorance in sciences.
Well go on then Mr. Annorak - show me something of the remaining natural world that has a rosy future. I'm paying total attention ! Or is reality not really your idea of "science" ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell Lilli, your making more sense than the others - but I bet it's all nasty plastic muck you sell, and I don't buy over the net anyway - even if I had some money.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI make a fabulous domestic wind energy system that returns about 40 times as much (i.e. C 5% p.a. of cost) as "modern windfarms" do - and what's more they don't alter the lanscape in the least. No-one is intersested. They apparently prefer relly big Things all over the place that are "scientific and technical and modern and that only specially trained people - ideally with plastic hats, - know (but keep quiet ?) about.
bertdotwindonatgmaildotcom
That's right Andy ! - nothing bad with all-out thermo? -nuclear set-to. It would be great to see whose prediction was nearest (- from space of course.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am not exactly sure what this guy is saying but since he says that he is paying attention I have a few words for him. This thread goes back to Scientific American's attack on Lomborg's book "Skeptical Environmentalist" which amazes me because he does not even deny global warming. Basically, his argument was that the measures proposed were out of proportion with what made sense in the real world and he still thinks so. If IPCC is the Vatican of the global warming religion and Pachauri is the Pope then Lomborg is the Martin Luther who wants to eliminate carbon indulgencies and purify the church. I say pox on both of your houses because you worship AGW which does not exist. Their claim is that anthropogenic global warming began in the late seventies which is patently untrue. I know this because satellites have been observing global temperature for more than thirty years and they cannot see any of this warming. The only warming they do see within the last thirty years started in 1998, lifted global temperature by a third of a degree in four years, and then stopped. A third of a degree is half of what has been allotted to the entire twentieth century. That is why the present decade is the warmest on record, not because of some imaginary greenhouse effect. The warming is an aftereffect of the super El Nino of 1998. There has not been any since 2002 and there is none in your future. You can look forward to an oscillating climate of El Ninos alternating with La Ninas that started in 2008 and will continue indefinitely into the future. And if you want to talk about Arctic warming let's do that. Did you know that the Arctic has been warming for more than a hundred years now? And did you know that it's cause is not carbon dioxide in the air but ocean currents that began to send warm water north at the turn of the twentieth century? And if you have been wondering about the big melt of 2007, it was an outlier and it did not start a trend. Its cause was just warm water that unusually strong winds pulled through the Bering Strait. It then proceeded to melt a large batch of ice on that side of the ocean while the Russian Arctic on the other side did not change. But you do not know this because those "climate experts" just reported the total amount of ice lost but did not tell you what part of the ocean lost it. Pull out NOAA maps of ice cover for the month of September and check me out. And get "What Warming?" from Amazon that will educate you about real climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh Anorak, you are such a comfort !. So now neither you - nor I - nor anyone will have to go put the snow back on Kilimangyro - nor stop birds migtating out of season. And no-one is to be rescued from their Pacific Atoll because of rising sea-level
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEtc. etc. And the Thames Barrier at London will become a "Thatcherian Folly ?" We can all just invest in lovely oil and party, party Party
Happy New Year !
Scaremongers seem to gather like bees to honey. We can fight scaremongers with math. We can also fight ignorance with science. For example, scaremongers imagine carbon dioxide is our enemy. But they are ignorant of the fact that oxygen is also a greenhouse gas. And they are ignorant of the fact that carbon dioxide already absorbs as many photons as it can. Scaremongers do not realize that oxygen scatters sunlight much more than carbon dioxide does. We should be worried about too much oxygen instead of too much carbon dioxide.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReally, I am quite disappointed. I thought that since the title mentioned "math" (or actually "misleading math") we might expect some exactness in the arguement. I guess that is too much to expect.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe really should talk about "Climate Change" because that is what is going on, or not. Personally I don't particularly care if the climate change that we are witnessing is caused by human activity or nature or mind control (well I do, a bit, but that's not what really concerns me). If one is killed by a bullet aimed or simply a misfire, dead is dead. In that vein, where as I know that there are many greenhouse gases, Methane is one that is much more potent than any yet mentioned, the issue is which is having the greatest effect. The geologic histories that I've encountered credit vast changes in CO2 content in the earth's atmosphere as the main culprit. If that isn't reasonable at this time then a strong analysis should be presented showing it.
Oxygen a GHG???? LOLOLOl Some people here are sooooooo funny!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this