The Skeptical Environmentalist 688
| The Skeptical Environmentalist | |
| author | Bjorn Lomborg |
| pages | 540 |
| publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| rating | 8 |
| reviewer | -cman- |
| ISBN | 0521010683 |
| summary | This book takes a careful look at existing environmental data, with some surprising conclusions and resulting controversy. |
The book has caused quite a stir in the circles of environmental activism. Bjorn Lomborg, coming from a green background, has thoroughly reviewed much of the work in the field and raised some concerns about the quality of the consensus analysis and conclusions. Sample chapters and further defense of his work can be found at www.lomborg.com
Disclosure Statement: I am a small 'g' green. I am a member of the Viridian Design Movement if not of the Green Party USA. I hold as a matter of fact that dependence on hydrocarbons is unsustainable for both the developed world and as a path to long-term growth for the developing world. I strongly believe that it is a moral imperative for humanity to preserve as much of the planet's natural beauty and habitat as possible. My general impression with the state of climate studies is that human activity is probably having an effect on the global climate. To what extent is a matter still open for debate in my opinion. But hey, its OUR PLANET we're talking about, so why take chances? That said, I also consider myself to be just as rabid an empiricist. I detest being led about by phony data or false conclusions, and I will not support any cause that cannot bring itself to tell the truth to the public about its data and agenda. If the current data does not fit my model of how life should be, I know that I shouldn't blame the data or the messenger. So, I am trying to be as objective as possible here, but I am coming from the green end and analyzing this work in that light.
Lomborg is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Aarhaus in Denmark. His specialty, indeed his only other major academic paper, is in the field of game theory. Lomborg -- once upon a time a deep green himself -- set out in 1997 to debunk the claims of economist Julian Simon, a environmental degradation doubter. He found that much of the data had a tendency to support Simon. This lead him to a thorough review of much of the major scientific work in four major areas of "the environmental litany" (Lomborg's words).
- We are depleting a finite supply of natural resources.
- The human population continues to grow, threatening our ability to feed the teeming billions.
- Species are becoming extinct at an alarming rate, deforestation is accelerating and fish stocks are collapsing.
- The air and water are becoming ever more polluted.
The result was The Skeptical Environmentalist. In each of these areas, Lomborg looks at a broad swath of the scientific work done to date to support these claims and finds them wanting. He gets very specific and points out numerous errors of omission as well as slanting of the data and just plain making up results to fit the hypothesis. Lomborg accuses environmental scientists of behaving more like lobbyists trying to put the best possible spin on an issue by manipulating the facts. He also takes to task a credulous media for swallowing this tripe hook, line, and sinker, as it were. Sadly, in some key areas Lomborg has -- either through ignorance or purposefully -- committed errors of omission and selective data use to make some of the same mistakes in analysis, and this very much reduces his credibility.
The first thing that sets the book apart from almost all nonacademic works in the area is the completeness and openness of the research. The book is copiously footnoted. Because of this it is clear from some of the attacks on Lomborg that his critics have been unable to muster the stomach to give it a thorough read, as many make totally false claims about Lomborg's inclusion or reference to specific studies and specific cases. If for no other reason, this completeness makes The Skeptical Environmentalist a valuable resource for anyone interested in environmental science. It is a very complete bibliography of the current work in the field. There are over 2,900 end notes in this 500 page book.
The thing that makes the environment such a slippery public policy subject is its uncertainty. Although the state of our understanding of climate and ecological complexity grows each year, it is still unable to predict with any certainty future events. The only thing that will prove a particular set of data is the future. At which time, of course, it is impossible to take preventative action.
It is probably quite understandable that environmental scientists would take great umbrage at both Lomborg's cheek and his conclusions; seeing how they pose a threat to a consensus of opinion about the state of the global environment and the degree of risk human activity poses. These are people with years of interest vested in their research and in using that research to try and get through to public and politicians who show a lot of reluctance to take on the problems and potential threats of human impact on the environment.
Lomborg quite correctly points out in his chapter on pollution that the worst pollution effects are the results of the early and middle stages of industrial development. Here he states that things are getting better in the developed world and as technology advances, the environmental impact of human activity will be reduced. He acknowledges that something must be done to help the developing world find a different path of development than that already taken by the developed nations. Lomborg takes the green movement to task here for trying to do everything at once; forcing developing nations to spend on "clean" technologies while spending on health and economic development for the poor nations. After wading through what must have been a mind-numbing torrent of cost-benefit analysis data, Lomborg says that choices must be made, political and financial resources are finite and some levels of protection cost more than they are worth. However, one must deeply fault Lomborg's cost-benefit analysis for not making a good attempt to elucidate the cost of environmental degradation per se but instead focusing on pure human property and health costs. What price does one put on the stability of the Gulf Stream currents? What is the actual opportunity cost of one barrel of oil considering it comes from finite supply for which the actual amount is unknown and the burning of which causes environmental costs we can only approximate? These questions have vexed economists for decades, but the answers are surely not zero.
Lomborg's big picture of the general shape of the global climate and of biodiversity is one that debunks most of the more extreme forecasts. In this he has produced valuable analysis. But by his own admission he has skipped over local trends and impacts that have profound social and economic implications. For example, while stating that the actual rate of species extinction over the next 50 years is more likely to be 0.7% rather than the 20-50% numbers bandied about by the World Wildlife Fund et. al., he misses the threat of local species crashes such as that of Atlantic Cod that nearly ruined the fishing industry Eastern North America and Northern Europe in the 1980s and the resulting threat to previously unfished stocks as industrial fishing operations switched to roughy and so on.
The big picture and long-term focus also misses the boat on another key issue. Recent analysis of deep-ice core samples at the poles and in Greenland have shown that in the past, the climate has changed very sharply and very rapidly; on the order of several degrees of average temperature in a decade or less. These changes are probably due to snap changes in the ocean currents caused by salinity levels and minute temperature deviations that, when they go over a certain level "trigger" such events as the mini-Ice Age of the 1500s to mid-1800s. Lomborg completely bypasses addressing the fact that even the minimal human environmental impact he says the data supports could be enough to tip the balance in these areas. And should such evens occur, even Lomborg would admit they would be economically and politically devastating. Perhaps it is his rigid attention to what is measurable that prevented him from addressing this issue. There is too much uncertainty involved to begin to assess whether or not we even can prevent such "trigger" events and thus begin to make cost-benefit analysis of preventative measures.
The most shocking thing about The Skeptical Environmentalist is not its heretical views (in the eyes of greens) however, but the reception it has received among the environmental movement. Instead of praising its depth and using its own errors to show the way forward the community has -- in the grand tradition of the left eating its young -- gone after Dr. Lomborg with a furious anger. Recently, when Dr. Lomborg showed up at Oxford university, the author of an environmental study with a competing view shoved a pie in his face. In its January 2002 issue, Scientific American devoted 11 pages (electronic copies are US$5.00) to attacking the book, its author and his conclusions.
Not surprisingly, the free-market loving Economist has taken up the defense of Dr. Lomborg with both a lead opinion piece and a feature in the February 6th issue. In addition, the magazine had Lomborg pen a "by invitation" piece in August, 2001, a rare honor. The New York Times has also come to his defense with a "Scientist At Work" puff piece in November, 2001.
But by attacking the book and the author so shrilly, the environmental community risks its own hard-won credibility. It acts just as Lomborg accuses it, like lobbyists with an axe to grind, not cold-eyed, empirically-minded scientists. Lomborg's study has its flaws, as does any environmental study. But those flaws should be attacked on their merits alone. At its worst, The Skeptical Environmentalist merely muddies the waters of scientific and public consensus on global human environmental impact. At its best it provides a crucial reality check for those who seek profound social and economic changes in the name of preserving environmental sustainability.
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Re:Lombord has been thoroughly rebuttaled (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:6
Also here are other rebuttals,
http://www.ucsusa.org/environment/lom
I've read rebuttals from four different sources, and rebuttals for the same section focus on different, but equally devastating flaws.
LetterRip
Scientific American review & thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
The truth of the matter is, climatology, geology, etc. do not have the luxury that physics, molecular biology, and other "benchtop" sciences have in that, in the latter fields, it is mostly possible to construct the systems in question in the lab and probe them. However, testing most major hypotheses in climatology is simply not possible as they would require altering the climate in a deliberate manner which is neither possible nor desireable.
Personally, I am of the opinion that we need to enforce much stricter emission, land development, and recycling standards not because I believe that these activities are damaging the environment, but because they indisputably might be damaging the environment.
The beauty of green living (Score:2, Interesting)
Even beyond Global warming, there are a slew of inarguable truths that indicate a stance that is green-er (not Green, but greener) is necessary. Ever taken a trip to a solid waste facility? All those guys can talk about is how they are running out of space because of all the unnecessary trash we generate. In areas such as that, greener developements (less packaging, for example) saves everyone money! yes, money! believe it or not, green lifestyle can actually be economically feasible.
The only question on my mind is, when the oil starts getting low OR we no longer have a decent source (presumably because the oil producing nations have a "shortage"), is America going to retain its status against now-developing countries that are doing it right from the beginning? Are we larger enough to convert when necessary?
If not, we need to start planning, because we have an achilles heel, and its name is oil, no matter how you slice it.
There are good reasons to be skeptical (Score:2, Interesting)
In other words, it is pure folly to speculate on small measures of time, and say, "This is NORMAL climate." We don't know what normal is.
Re:Point, Counterpoint (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of the resources you point to are hatchet jobs much like the pie-in-the-face that proudly adorns one of them.
I have not yet Lomborg's book, but have followed the debate in science journals (as well as the Economist). While some scientists have engaged him on intellectual terms, the majority of the opinions have been nothing of the sort, stoopoing down to the questioning of his credentials (which nobody would question if he had just published a pro-global warming article).
Re:Better safe than sorry... (Score:2, Interesting)
We'd be very pleased. We'd know the world wasn't endangered and we could go and do other, equally challenging, equally well paid, research into short and medium range weather forecasting.
TANSTAAFL (was: Re:C'mon (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, one figure I've seen thrown about (which may or may not be true, but it illustrates my point) is that the cost of implementing the Kyoto Agreement (on controlling carbon emissions) would be about the same as the cost of providing a source of clean drinking water to every person on earth that doesn't have one (which is, shamefully, a lot of people).
That's not to say that if we scrap Kyoto we would spend the money saved usefully elsewhere, but the point is that environmentalism does cost.
So it's fair to do cost/benefit analysis of all proposals (but very hard to get agreement on those costs and benefits...)
Re:Why have I never seen anyone say... (Score:1, Interesting)
No atmospheric scientist worth their weight would say anything of the kind, and in my experience they do not. Instead they say things such as "If you inject x amount of CO2 into an atmosphere then the global average temperature will probably rise between y and z degrees." Good science makes predicitons very carefully, and only upon soundly understood principles. It is impossible to make specific predictions like yours, but it is possible to predict broad trends. In other words, you can show that it'll get hotter, but you can't say what the temperature will be on 11/12/2032 in Tempe, Arizona.
Heathy criticism of the environmental movement (Score:2, Interesting)
We really don't have enough critical thinking going on in the environmental sector. It's a whole lot of bandwagon, dogma, and emotional fervor.
I think of myself as environmentally responsible, but I really don't buy in to most of the propaganda that is out there. I mean, I agree that we should clean up, stop polluting the air, water, ground, and space, and help developing nations get to where we are in a cleaner way than we did.
But many environmental activists, especially the global warming nuts, just refuse to recognize some basics of science. The global environment is a chaos system. You cannot predict its behavior, and therefore you cannot predict how it will respond to particular stimuli. It changes all the time, always has, even before mankind infested all corners of the planet.
These measurements of half degree changes in the average global temperature quoted by panic-inducing lobbyists as proof that we are destroying the world are an example of the logical fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc, or "after this therefore because of this".
I really believe that many of them think the ends justifies the means, and they will say anything and scare anyone just to accomplish their goals. And mostly I agree with those goals. But that kind of tactic is arrogant, non-democratic and dangerous. Responsible people go about creating change by educating and convincing. Those who think they know what's best for everyone and are willing to force their solution without convincing everyone of its validity should be feared, watched, and held to the standards of our open society.
Interesting disparity (Score:4, Interesting)
But ... but ... why doesn't Lomborg risk his credibility for attacking the environmentalists so shrilly? Could it be that there's one rule of debate if you're saying things that appeal to the people who own the media which decide who has "credibility" and one rule if you're saying things they don't like?
You certainly can't tell me that Lomborg is unfailingly polite in his attacks on environmentalists because he's not.
That's why he got a pie in the face by the way; not for authoring a "rival study", but because he had basically accused this guy of saying things he knew to be untrue in order to get government grants. If you accuse people of what amounts to fraud in public, you have to expect some comebacks, and you shouldn't pretend that people are only attacking you back because they can't handle your message.
In any case, this article is mis-sectioned. What kind of a "book review" spends about two thirds of its length ranting on unrelated political issues related to other peoples' views about the book and half that much tlaking about the book itself?
Well meaning but deadly (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh yes, it can. C'mon yourself. Don't you remember at least some of the recent debacles?
Greenies are certainly well-meaning, if sometimes undiscerning. Unfortunately, their irrational attitude and lack of scientific training often make them easy to manipulate. As a result, large corporations have been using the legitimate concerns of misinformed green activists to push their own agendas. Said agendas are generally meant for profitability, not environment preservation. The two only meet accidentally.
In short: Emotional action without fact checking or a reality feedback loop almost invariably produces either a random disaster, or the exact opposite of the intended action. Environmentalism is no exception.
What if we are doing something, and it's good! (Score:2, Interesting)
#1. It's keeping us out of an ice age. I believe the historical record indicates that we're past due for the next ice age.
#2. Back in mideval times, it was much warmer. In fact, there was actually green plants on greenland! That's where it originally got the name. Has anyone know how hot it is in the Jungle? If it's so hot, why is there so much biodiversity? See next point.
#3. Increased heat leads to increased percipitation and more rain. That's why jungles have so much life - it's the rain. Increased circulation of rain could help increase vegitation (think crops too)
#4. Reglaciation. You know how warming is suppose to melt the ice caps? Well, if there's more rain, it's postulated that there will be more percipitation over the ice caps. Hence, more glaciation, to combat the minimal loss due to heat increase (which makes a small difference when it is already so cold)
#5. Most warming is at night. This is great for crops, as it protects against early frosts.
There are lots of other reasons why it's goo, these are just some of them.
F-bacher
Re:Scientific American review shredded it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Kassman includes the following quote by professor Stephan Schneider, a bioligist from Standford.
"[We] are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place. . . . To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media cov-erage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dra-matic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. . . . Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
When I read the Scientific American review I remember thinking that the tone of the artical was much more rhetorical and less substantive then I would have hoped/expected from the magazine. While I never doubted that there were individuals and groups who used 'science' to further political agendas it is very dissipointing that an institute whose focus is not even environmental science would publish such a questionable article.
Well meaning but deadly (missing part c) (Score:3, Interesting)
In the previous comment, I meant to add: (c) MTBE was profitable to sell, and now it's profitable to remove [purdue.edu]
Sorry for the incomplete post.
Re:One libertarian's perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
About time (Score:2, Interesting)
Environmentalists have been spewing whatever "facts" they want for years and, as mentioned in the intro, the media has bought it hook, line, and sinker.
There are two guilty parties here:
1. The environmental "scientists." They claim to be scientists--and many even are, by title. But I also feel a scientist has a responsibility to the truth of what he reports. When scientists start using their title as "scientist" to pass off unsubstantiated theories and hypothesis as verified results, they've lost all credibility as scientists and really ought not to be able to call themselves "scientists" anymore. They are liberal environmentalists with an adgenda and already know the results they want before they perform the "experiments."
2. The Media. We all know the media is biased. Nothing new. But when it comes to the environmentalist movement it's incredible how much latitude they are given by the media. An environmentalist can release a press report "Study shows that farting may contribute to the ozone hole." The news reports it as fact. You read the story and the report a little more closely and you find out that a study has shown that farting has increased 20% in the last decade and the ozone hole has increased 19%... so it MIGHT be possible the farting caused the ozone hold expansion. There's no distinction made by the media between cause and effect and just random correlations of data.
In all, the whole environmentalist movement is tainted by bad scientists who report what they want to beleive, not what the data proves, and by the media that blindly reports whatever these people spew without due diligence in reporting the validity of the claims.
Is it a good idea to reduce pollution? Sure, the days look nicer when there's a nice blue sky above us. Is it a good idea to conserve energy? Sure, saves on the construction of new plants and saves us money. Should our cars be more efficient? Sure, it'll let us stop at the gas station less frequently, save us money at the pump, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Do I think that the ice caps will melt and flood New York City and Los Angeles if I drive my car too much? No.
Do I think it's the end of the world if some unknown bug species in Brazil goes extinct? No, many species have come and gone over time, this is nothing new.
Do I think huge and powerful hurricanes are going to become common because of global warming? No.
Do I believe environmental models that, every time more and more factors are taken into account show less and less environmental change? No.
Do I believe environmental models that don't even take into account the affect of CLOUDS??? Come on.
Get the facts straight and then let's talk about what can or should be done. In the meantime, the environmentalists can do their part by trashing their old polluting VW Buses and getting a more efficient, cleaner car that's been produced in, say, the last 10 or 15 years!
Re:C'mon (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, it can. Even if it was only $$ it would still have an impact on human suffering. Perhaps to an American or European a few percentage points of lost GDP is no big deal but to the developing world it can literally be the difference between life and death. Sometimes the cost in human suffering is even more direct. Malaria was essentially wiped out in southern Europe and America and there was initial progress in the third world due to the use of the pesticide DDT. The third world programs were curtailed (though some third world countries still use DDT) because of the environmental fears of people who had already benefited from it's use. The direct result is millions of deaths in Africa. Also many programs had already started but were stopped before wiping out infected mosquito populations, as with any "non-lethal" dose the result is a strain of mosquitos that have a higher resistance to DDT. Because of this the third world may now NEVER achieve the success combating malaria that America and Europe already enjoy. The environmental threat was quite real (though exagerated) but the human cost was also very real, indeed catastrophic.
Re:Let me save you the suspense (Score:1, Interesting)
Also, I think you're giving too much credit to the idea that homo sapiens continues to evolve. Our species hasn't changed in any substantial biological way for ~100,000 years (I think that's the right number.. I just looked it up the other day). Any development from here will almost certainly have to be by our own hands, and our understanding of genetics is still not nearly up to the task. It's a possibility, though.
Don't let that stop you from hoping for a human future. Just know what's really happening.
Does anyone else think it's interesting how environmentalism frequently becomes a debate about the relative importance and duties of humanity? To convince people that they need to have less impact on the earth, you need to convince them that we're capable of destroying it (or some significant aspect of it). However, it's often opposed by the belief that we're allowed to do whatever we want, to our own benefit, which means that not only do environmentalists have to get us to accept that we're causing damage, but also that the state of the rest of the planet matters. So, we hear about how we're really hurting ourselves, which brings it back to doing things for our own benefit. Views that say that our actions aren't all that important in the grand scheme of things don't tend to be very popular...
--Xia
Re:Lombord has been thoroughly rebuttaled (Score:2, Interesting)
That's a repugnant attitude to take.
Most maintainers of dogma do that kind of stuff. There's a lot at stake for them.
Re:In other news (Score:2, Interesting)
First - most of the direct quotes were from "Natural Resources Defense Council". I don't even have to touch Google to know which side of the argument they support.
Secondly - the article completely ignores that we have only a TINY fraction of the historical data necessary to make any justifiable conclusions. Its silence persuades the reader to make unsupported jumps in logic. This is the worst sort of psuedo scientific journalism that has been so widely panned in this ./ discussion.
I personally live the idea that global warming is real, but have reached no conclusions about its place in the larger geophysical timeline. Given that, I take what actions are within my reach to reduce the impact of myself and my family.
Re:This isn't the right book (Score:5, Interesting)
However...
The problem with the IPCC data as fuel to your approach is that the weighted average itself is biased. For one thing, the field has been largely led by climate modelers, even though the validity of the models is highly questionable. Climate models, like weather models, have a lot of "tweak factors" which are used to adjust for factors that the model cannot incorporate. This means that models are tweaked to produce a match to history, and then their forecast is used.
But the historic timeline is too short for statistical valid matching, and as some paleoclimatologist friends of mine have shown, full of very dubious data. On top of that, this approach is based on the same fallacy as that of a successful mutual fund manager: chance predicts that some models will have good historical track records (as it does for mutual fund managers). Selection (publication selection) leads those models to be included as the best forecasters (fund managers are given more money if they have good track records). And yet the underlying physical model (trading theories for the fund managers) are unlikely to be very accurate, and the outcome may be strictly a result of the operations of chance (See Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb for an odd but insightful look at this).
This is one reason that the IPCC consensus estimate changes significantly (and not in a convergent direction) from one report to the next.
When we add to this the politicization of the field, and the resulting funding and publication bias, the situation gets even worse.
Thus, the weighting factors are very hard to get right.
In addition, a cost/benefit analysis requires a good analysis of the cost of remediation. In the environmental area, most analysis goes towards the "benefit" (degrees of avoided warming per century, or in your case, avoided economic losses from pessimistic outcomes). But little focus is given to the cost (economic impact with trickle-down costs). Since the economic system seems to be as hard to predict as the climate, this means that we need to take the most pessimistic views of the economic cost of remediation into our cost benefit analysis also!
BTW... most of the better arguments I have seen against CO2 reductions are not by free market extremists, and I think you mischaracterize those of us who end up siding with the corporations. All but a very few free market advocates understand that there are externalities - costs which are passed outside the market system with no corresponding cost inside the system, and that the market does not deal well with externalities (unless they can be internalized). Thus we know that invoking the wisdom of the market to solve some economic goals is just as silly as invoking the wisdom of environmental absolutism.
BTW... it might surprise you to know that there is a lot of big corporate support for CO2 remediation. For example, Enron tried to get the bush administration to *support* the Kyoto Protocol (fortunately they got nothing for their money). Other companies have done the same. The reason is simple self interest - they see an advantage for themselves in the post-Kyoto environment. In the case of Enron, they wanted to trade in emissions credits, which Kyoto would greatly increase. They also had lower carbon fuels in their inventory than many competitors, which gave them a competitive advantage.
An acquaintance of mine, who stopped researcher and started business as a Global Warming consultant to business, recently was lamenting that nobody wanted to hear his anti-Kyoto message any more becaus they had figured out how to profit from Kyoto. So those who imagine that big business is killing Kyoto in the US are not well informed.
There are ways in which the market can help, however. For example, privately owned forest land is definitely treated better than public forest land, because the owner has a long term investment in it. This is a market "solution" to some environmental issues (not including biodiversity on that land). Likewise, both sides have recognized that tradeable emission rights are a good way to reduce emissions if reducing emissions is really worth the cost of the program.
On a side note, most environmentalists do not get up in arms against farming unless it is "corporate farming" or uses "nasty chemicals." And yet, farming has transformed the landscape of the northern hemisphere more than any other act of man, and smaller farms requires more land per amount of crop produced than the more-efficient larger (often corporate) farms! Framing has destroyed (transformed?) huge swaths of environment. This bias shows the marxist viewpoint of much of the environmental movement.
This translation is wrong (Score:2, Interesting)
And remember to mention that the guy accusing him, was one of the 18 guys that wrote a book back in 1999 responding to lomborgs book.
Oddly enough they didn't feel the need to report him, before he applied for a position, at an institute, that has influence on funding in this area