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You really are an intolerant bunch, when it comes to matters of faith - any deviation from extreme alarmism is unacceptable. Here I was thinking Lomborg was one of you. ... [Eric Worrall, 2013-01-26]

Contrarians often use Lomborg to support their misinformation, possibly because he's getting better at pretending to accept the science. When brucmack described Lomborg as more pragmatic than skeptic, I replied that "I've never heard of Lomborg before today, but your summary makes him sound like someone I could agree with."

But when I actually read his claims, it became clear that Lomborg is repeatedly misrepresenting science. Like many contrarians, Lomborg also misrepresents his own position by claiming to accept the science while simultaneously misrepresenting that science. Lomborg's books are often used to support accusations like these:

... Last time the Eugenics catastrophists, confident in their scientific consensus that genetic pollution would return us to the stone age, killed 7 million Jews to improve the race. Now poor people are dying because only rich people can afford the self inflicted expense of trying to appease the Carbon God. ... How many poor Africans and Asians will die because of the great global warming swindle, before their pseudo scientific bluff is finally called? ... [Eric Worrall, 2008-02-05]

... Mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would be the kiss of death. The U.S. is about to undergo this madness in the form of a deluge of Environmental Protection Agency carbon dioxide regulations that will strangle the economy and kill jobs. Unless the Congress can eliminate them via legislation, it will constitute a form of national suicide. ... If successful, the U.N. will lead the world back to a new Dark Ages. [Alan Caruba (Heartland Institute), 2012-12-10]

Consider a group of academics who claim the world faces an imminent catastrophe unless drastic steps are taken. Am I talking about Eugenics NAZIs or Climate alarmists? [Eric Worrall, 2012-12-18]

Its not my fault if you guys are pushing for the implementation of harmful policies on the basis of pseudoscientific predictions of imminent catastrophe - just like the NAZIs did. [Eric Worrall, 2012-12-29]

Given your gross advantage in economic and political muscle, its a wonder we've managed so far to hold off your new dark age. ... [Eric Wor

You really are an intolerant bunch, when it comes to matters of faith - any deviation from extreme alarmism is unacceptable. Here I was thinking Lomborg was one of you. ... [Eric Worrall, 2013-01-26]

Contrarians often use Lomborg to support their misinformation, possibly because he's getting better at pretending to accept the science. When brucmack described Lomborg as more pragmatic than skeptic, I replied that "I've never heard of Lomborg before today, but your summary makes him sound like someone I could agree with."

But when I actually read his claims, it became clear that Lomborg is repeatedly misrepresenting science. Like many contrarians, Lomborg also misrepresents his own position by claiming to accept the science while simultaneously misrepresenting that science. Lomborg's books are often used to support accusations like these:

... Last time the Eugenics catastrophists, confident in their scientific consensus that genetic pollution would return us to the stone age, killed 7 million Jews to improve the race. Now poor people are dying because only rich people can afford the self inflicted expense of trying to appease the Carbon God. ... How many poor Africans and Asians will die because of the great global warming swindle, before their pseudo scientific bluff is finally called? ... [Eric Worrall, 2008-02-05]

... Mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would be the kiss of death. The U.S. is about to undergo this madness in the form of a deluge of Environmental Protection Agency carbon dioxide regulations that will strangle the economy and kill jobs. Unless the Congress can eliminate them via legislation, it will constitute a form of national suicide. ... If successful, the U.N. will lead the world back to a new Dark Ages. [Alan Caruba (Heartland Institute), 2012-12-10]

Consider a group of academics who claim the world faces an imminent catastrophe unless drastic steps are taken. Am I talking about Eugenics NAZIs or Climate alarmists? [Eric Worrall, 2012-12-18]

Its not my fault if you guys are pushing for the implementation of harmful policies on the basis of pseudoscientific predictions of imminent catastrophe - just like the NAZIs did. [Eric Worrall, 2012-12-29]

Given your gross advantage in economic and political muscle, its a wonder we've managed so far to hold off your new dark age. ... [Eric Wor

Referring to the long list of errors in the statements of that book would be a good use of your time.

http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/

Lomberg's background isn't in environmentalism, let alone climate science. He's field is political science. He visited the USA where he discovered how much money there is in lobbying. That's where the "Skeptical Environmentalist" and the newspaper articles that predated it came from. It's how he chose to make himself a lot of money, by lobbying.

As I said, you're gullible. You eat this stuff up because it's what you want to hear.

Friel's book may or may not be a valid critique of Bjørn Lomborg's work, but that doesn't change the fact that when it came out, Lomborg's book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" was investigated by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty and found to be scientifically dishonest, but that Lomborg was not guilty of gross negligence because of his lack of expertise in the field.

In other words, he was deemed incompetent, not dishonest.

However, in his subsequent work over the years, I think it's safe to say he's not only dishonest, but forcefully dishonest with his repeated, controversial stances against climate science and his willfull misinterpretations.
Lomborg has a Ph.D. in political science. He has no training in climatology, meteorology, biology, physical sciences, or anything that would allow him to actually understand the science of the issues he's publically talking about.

What Lomborg is doing is "meta-science" where he's selectively collecting other people's research without understanding any of it, and massaging it to fit his agenda. This sort of research aggregation is the most error-prone of all and quickly deteriorates into pure statistics based on numbers of which you have no understanding. The results are absolutely meaningless because you're no longer finding the statistic significance of facts, you're finding the statistic significance of research papers.

The investigative committee cited of "the skeptical environmentalist":
      1. Fabrication of data;
      2. Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
      3. Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
      4. Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
      5. Plagiarism;
      6. Deliberate misinterpretation of others' results.

The original biologist who submitted a complaint to the committee still maintains a website listing all the errors of Lomborg's work.

Bjørn Lomborg is no better than all the other nutcases on anti-climate blogs claiming they've found discrepancies in the scientific literature, when in fact the issue is that reading a lot of these scientific climatology papers requires at least a graduate-level understanding of statistics, biology, oceanography, etc, etc.

You wouldn't expect a meaningful result if you had a bunch of old ladies from the local knitting club review the specifications for the latest CERN particle accelerators. I don't know why people think climate science is any different.

But when I was a child, questioning evolution and asking for more support for it (I was a kid in high school; I had no clear definition of it) was not met with the knowledge I asked for but derision for so stupidly questioning the God-given truth handed down by our priestly scientists.

Evolution is simple, it builds on two observations:

1. Every generation of all observed species reproduce so that their growth would be exponential if left to itself;
2. They do not grow exponentially (in a stable ecosystem), because some animals die, and the population stays constant (by definition of steady state).

At this point, it is just a question of keeping in mind that, by definition, those that will survive will be the fittest to, duh, survive. The reasoning is elegant and sound, and the hypotheses are fairly obvious to verify (there is no animal whose female stops reproducing after exactly two kids, and animals in nature get killed on a pretty routine basis).

Evolution is supported by a mountain of evidence so big you could make it round and call it a a planet. Thousands and thousands of paleontological excavations have yielded an obvious evolutionary sequence, with animals and plants gradually changing into each other. Evolution is a theory that is very easy to falsify: you only need to find a bunny in the Cretacean layer. Guess what, no one ever found neither the bunny nor any other equivalent inconsistency.

[...] science should be all about questioning the status quo.

Nope. Science is not about questioning the status quo for the sake of questioning, but open-mindedness in questioning it when facts are found contradicting it. You can't just start saying that entropy in the universe decreases instead of increasing just because you can question the status quo. Well, you can, but you will likely treated like Granpa Simpson. You can say that if you find evidence contradicting the theory, or if you have an alternative (preferably simpler and/or more elegant) theory explaining the data.

some of these anti-science people are in fact more faithful to the underpinnings of science than those people who arrogantly call themselves scientists.

Yeah right. Some religious nuts are contesting science because it contradicts their scripture, which they by stupid blind faith believe to be infallible, and they would be skeptics and true to the spirit of science? Or are you thinking of those lawyers in the White House rewriting the scientific reports of climatologists? Or pseudo-scientists like Bjørn Lomborg, who make a job of faking statistics in fields they know nothing about, and then raking in the money from big business?

it should ALWAYS be okay to question what we're told.

It is alright. But before questioning, you have to RTFM.

Don't think anything's going to be fixed by improving science education. [...] The solution is to fix the scientists and their massive egos.

Right, the solution is not to study and understand science, the solution is to get scientists back in line. Sounds an awful lot like Lysenkoism.

Cheers,
an arrogant, full-of-shit scientist.

"Censorship" means literally "evaluation"; Roman Censors used to watch over the Republic's morals and had a few other duties (including the census). Of course we usually we refer to the case when speech, art or other forms of expression are evaluated and denied publication. This is bad as everybody has a right to speak, and evaluating cases in which this should not apply leads rapidly to those in charge abusing their power and silencing those who contest them.

However, in science there are serious evaluation guidelines. If claims are cooked up or not backed by data, they are just that. Can't take the heat, don't play the game.

As a side note, Lomborg is a cook.

Actually he's a statistician.

Here's a comprehensive list of his errors and omissions.

Talk about attacks on science. Lomborg was smart enough to keep ecologists, climatologists, experts on population growth and health, technologists and left-winged economists out of his 'consensus'. Like he did not tolerate statisticians talking about his 'statistics'.

If a 3C increase in global temperature reduces GDP by only 20%, i will start to believe in god again.

Lomborg has no qualification as a statistician. I assume Kåre Fog's website is credible as I have personally looked up some of the examples there presented and have personally checked that Fog's claims to Lomborg's dishonesty hold. I suggest you check it for yourself before spouting more corporate propaganda.

The text from the Wikipedia entry you quote is from the Heidelberg Appeal Nederland, an highly biased source (of course you "forgot" to mention the Wikipedia page was quoting that). Lomborg's "exhoneration" came from a political body, not a scientific one. Furthermore, the main case for Lomborg was that his objective dishonesty was not sufficiently proven in the papers—i.e., it had not been excluded he was simply an ignorant fool. The incorrectness of his conclusions was never a topic in discussion.

Lomborg taught a course in statistics, but that does not amount being a statistician. Bunches of professors in school teach history, and are not historians for that. Quoting Lomborg's own website is plain useless, as the guy is just short of a compulsive liar.

Lomborg's field is rather "political science", and he has only one publication in a peer-reviewed journal (which, in the same link as above, is also reported being unlikely, other than unrelated to climatology).

Lomborg has no qualification as a statistician. I assume Kåre Fog's website is credible as I have personally looked up some of the examples there presented and have personally checked that Fog's claims to Lomborg's dishonesty hold. I suggest you check it for yourself before spouting more corporate propaganda.

The text from the Wikipedia entry you quote is from the Heidelberg Appeal Nederland, an highly biased source (of course you "forgot" to mention the Wikipedia page was quoting that). Lomborg's "exhoneration" came from a political body, not a scientific one. Furthermore, the main case for Lomborg was that his objective dishonesty was not sufficiently proven in the papers—i.e., it had not been excluded he was simply an ignorant fool. The incorrectness of his conclusions was never a topic in discussion.

Lomborg taught a course in statistics, but that does not amount being a statistician. Bunches of professors in school teach history, and are not historians for that. Quoting Lomborg's own website is plain useless, as the guy is just short of a compulsive liar.

Lomborg's field is rather "political science", and he has only one publication in a peer-reviewed journal (which, in the same link as above, is also reported being unlikely, other than unrelated to climatology).

Lomborg has no qualification as a statistician. I assume Kåre Fog's website is credible as I have personally looked up some of the examples there presented and have personally checked that Fog's claims to Lomborg's dishonesty hold. I suggest you check it for yourself before spouting more corporate propaganda.

The text from the Wikipedia entry you quote is from the Heidelberg Appeal Nederland, an highly biased source (of course you "forgot" to mention the Wikipedia page was quoting that). Lomborg's "exhoneration" came from a political body, not a scientific one. Furthermore, the main case for Lomborg was that his objective dishonesty was not sufficiently proven in the papers—i.e., it had not been excluded he was simply an ignorant fool. The incorrectness of his conclusions was never a topic in discussion.

Lomborg taught a course in statistics, but that does not amount being a statistician. Bunches of professors in school teach history, and are not historians for that. Quoting Lomborg's own website is plain useless, as the guy is just short of a compulsive liar.

Lomborg's field is rather "political science", and he has only one publication in a peer-reviewed journal (which, in the same link as above, is also reported being unlikely, other than unrelated to climatology).

The link you provide, among other things, says that forest area is not decreasing, which is a blatant lie popularised by master jester Bjørn Lomborg (who by the way has no knowledge of climatology nor statistics) in his "skeptical environmentalist". The lie is originated by the plotting of forest area as published by FAO since the end of WW2, without correcting for the fact that countries were continuously joining the FAO and that first estimates were not precise, and had no conventional definiton of "forest area". The myth is well debunked here.

The author is a CS professor, not a climatologist. His credibility is quite low on this issue. The fact that he disagrees with pretty much any climatologist on the planet is also a pointer.

The Economist is the same magazine that supported Bjørn Lomborg, thereby proving their utter incompetence in environmental science. They defended him in spite of clear and very detailed indications from the scientific environment that he was nuts.

I suppose they will know economics when they talk about it, but they demonstrated an inappropriate habit of pontificating on things they don't have a clue about. I for one think they burned a lot of karma.

As the Economist noted,
...The arresting thing about Scientific American's coverage, however, was not this barrage of ineffective rejoinders but the editor's notion of what was going on: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist," he announced....

Quite impressive that some people still believe that buffoon Lomborg. Here is the usual website by Kåre Fog, with all the errors (pretty word for "lies") of Lomborg exposed.

This example is quite nice: in order to demonstrate that forest area is not only stable, but even increasing, in spite of all deforestation environmentalist litany along about, Lomborg has used statistics taken from a time when countries were still joining the FAO - as a result, looking at his data, all the Borneo forest appears from nothing in 1961. Never mind that FAO (Lomborg's source) published a corrected data set, that clearly shows the decline, before Lomborg's book in English edition.

As a side note: I have not seen that many articles by Lomborg in the scientific literature. In fact, according to his own website, he's published one peer-reviewed article only once, and not about environment (and I did not personally check whether it exists really, it would not be the first time the guy lies). A scientist who tries to dodge peer review by printing books instead of submitting articles is most likely just a charlatan and a snake-oil salesman. The Skeptical Environmentalist can quietly join cold fusion in the drawer of junk science.

As the Economist noted,
...The arresting thing about Scientific American's coverage, however, was not this barrage of ineffective rejoinders but the editor's notion of what was going on: "Science defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist," he announced....

Quite impressive that some people still believe that buffoon Lomborg. Here is the usual website by Kåre Fog, with all the errors (pretty word for "lies") of Lomborg exposed.

This example is quite nice: in order to demonstrate that forest area is not only stable, but even increasing, in spite of all deforestation environmentalist litany along about, Lomborg has used statistics taken from a time when countries were still joining the FAO - as a result, looking at his data, all the Borneo forest appears from nothing in 1961. Never mind that FAO (Lomborg's source) published a corrected data set, that clearly shows the decline, before Lomborg's book in English edition.

As a side note: I have not seen that many articles by Lomborg in the scientific literature. In fact, according to his own website, he's published one peer-reviewed article only once, and not about environment (and I did not personally check whether it exists really, it would not be the first time the guy lies). A scientist who tries to dodge peer review by printing books instead of submitting articles is most likely just a charlatan and a snake-oil salesman. The Skeptical Environmentalist can quietly join cold fusion in the drawer of junk science.

If you think Exxon would give him money directly, then you have no clue about how things work in the Corporate PR world.

Note that I did not specifically say that HE got money from the Energy Lobby. I learned that trick from Dick Cheney. I do know that some people think there are lots of errors in his theories.