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"Skeptical Environmentalist" Rebuked
mpsmps writes "The "Skeptical Environmentalist", reviewed in slashdot here has been rebuked by the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty for shoddy, politically motivated science. Are they being valuable watchdogs, or are both sides driven by politics rather than science?"
This kind of conversation never goes anywhere it seems. Anyone challenging the status quo is part of the anti-establisment conspiracy, pushing their agenda. Anyone upholding the status quo is part of the nebulous "they" who don't want anyone to know the truth.
My bet is they are both politically motivated groups using science to furthertheir cause. Who is right? I leave that to the philosophers.
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
to determine this is to actually read Lomborg's book, and then read what his critics say, no?
p pe r.jsp?PID=1051-157
Here's a link to some relevant stories:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/indexwra
The Skeptical Environmentalist has been debated in Skeptic magazines and the author of the book was allowed to respond to the critiques. Simply put, the detractors of this book point out very few flaws and don't debate the majority of the content. We have to fight pseudo-science and outright lies in the name of science where they occur. The Skeptical Environmentalist does this. The author however, is not a scientist per se but a statistician and it seems that has ruffled some feathers. If you are wondering what all the hubbub is about, read the book and make up your mind for yourself.
Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
For a well written opposing view on the issue, check out this editorial over at the Economist.
It really shouldn't surprise anyone that The Skeptical Environmentalist was rebuked and most of what the guy had to say was bogus.
Even the right neo-liberal economy worshippers who view anything that could cut into profits as inherently evil have stopped arguing that human activity is causing wide-spread climate change. (I love how the ignorant media loves to call these people 'conservative'. Look the word up in a damn dictionary, a conservative - someone who hopes to conserve the status quo and is suspicious of the mechanisms and out comes of change - would be AGAINST climate change.... Sorry.)
The official Wallstreet / Whitehouse message is now, "There's nothing we can do about it and it would be too expensive to try. It'll hurt the economy so we'll just have to adapt. So go about your business and, oh, hey look, a Cadillac Escalade!" When these guys admit that the argument against climate change can be dismissed as a canard...
The issue is not, is there accelerated climate change as a result of man's activities? This issue is how bad are things going to get, how much will we loose and what can and should we be doing to stop or slow it down. Oh course, the people who are most directly responsible are the same people who will be the least affected.
Sigh.
I'm not sure how those are the two alternatives. My impression is that the indictment of Lomborg contains no substantive scientific criticism, just an accusation of partisanship. Both sides are trying to argue a point of view; one is doing it with facts and one by issuing a fatwa and what one may or may not think. (I'm talking here about this specific ruling. I'm sure there are factually-based objections to Lomborg, although I haven't seen one that impressed me, and I'm a Sierra Club member.)
Instapundit has a bunch of links, the most prominent being the Economist calling the ruling "incompetent and shameful".
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Lomberg has responded, in initial brief, to the fraud charges. And, according to Glenn Reynolds, most of the panel's complaints seem to be directed at Lomberg's response to the initial SciAm critique (PDF).
The sheer complexity of this issue makes soapboxing inappropriate. I'm an early poster, but it's already begun. Please try to refrain from making fools of yourselves.
Figure the odds.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Apparently, if you make file a complaint with the DCSD, they don't have to listen to rebuttals unless the rebuttals have already convinced those filing the complaint...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Lomborg's opponents come across as a bunch of fundamentalist ranters (you could probably run the response in Skeptic through a sed script and make it into a pretty good approximation of an anti-abortion screed), but that does not excuse Lomborg's faults. The Skeptical Environmentalist should stand on its own merits; from all unbiased accounts including my own, it fails miserably.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
If you want to know why Lomborg's book is such a crock, you have to go through it. I admit that I have not read the entire thing, but unless the book is a great deal more comprehensive and balanced than the extremely shallow and biased excerpts I've had the time to read, I think that the Danes are spot-on with their rebuke.
Not that every knee-jerk response to Lomborg is necessarily any better, but you can't give either side a free pass in these matters.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It really shouldn't surprise anyone that The Skeptical Environmentalist was rebuked and most of what the guy had to say was bogus.
No, it wasn't "rebuked". I've seen very little in the way of substantive criticism, and what little there is has been responded to in a responsible way. I'd be happy to see actual debate about this.
This issue is how bad are things going to get, how much will we loose and what can and should we be doing to stop or slow it down
This is exactly what Lomborg is talking about. He simply gives an overview of accepted work, and puts forth the idea that "it's not as bad as some people have said". That's really about it. Have you read the book? Do you know of any of his facts that are wrong? Of course you didn't, and I'm guessing you don't. You're as bad as the idiots who made the ruling - basically on the basis of "He's going against the dogma, must be wrong".
The question "How bad are things?" is a valid one to ask. The person who does the research and comes back with "Not as bad as some people say" doesn't need to get shot. Engaged and debated with? Of course. But in a reasonable way.
But the "scientists" who are most mad at him are the ones that are embarrassed - the one's who he quotes making wacky predictions in the 80's that didn't come true.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Is science ever NOT driven by politics? Lets face it, politics is about power and money, and power and money are given to scientists so they can produce more power and money. If the research won't produce power or money, it's unlikely to get a lot of funding or attention.
The best example I have is nuclear energy. There are only TWO good applications for nuclear energy, one is powering vehicles in extreme environments (submarines and spacecraft), and the other is BLOWING YOU THE FUCK UP (I was told that by a retired nuclear engineer, BTW.) But in the 1950's everyone thought they'd be getting nuclear cars and nuclear home heating and hell they even tried to build a nuclear airplane which was a complete debocle (Uranium, lead, concrete, all pretty heavy materials.) Why did so much money get dumped into a stupid technology? It produced a lot of POWER, and I don't just mean electricity.
Bottom line, science is a power struggle. It sucks, but it's true.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
Lomborg also throws around a lot of estimates without providing any empirical support for them. For instance, in footnote 816 he mentions that the figure of 15% edge effect is drawn from a 1 km range of influence, while a smaller range (such as 100 meters) leads to lower figures (6%). He cites no research to justify his preference for the lower figure. This is true everywhere I've looked; Lomborg always argues that effects are likely to be better than the estimate, never worse.
No, the problem is that the book alleges to be a scholarly and unbiased treatment, while in actuality it is a hatchet-job. It dismisses difficult and contentious issues with a wave of the hand. Take the offending section (page 121): Never once does Lomborg entertain the possibility that politics is inevitably tied up with energy in that part of the world more than any other, and that the very phenomenon of taking so much of the world's energy supply from that region (and giving huge amounts of money and power to fundamentalist theocrats and despots) could make it impossible to carry out the imperative for peace - unless it is a peace of the Western conqueror, a possibility I find abhorrent.There are many such implications, but not of them are examined. This would be a serious flaw in any such work, but Lomborg happens to be the topic of discussion today.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
I thought that S.E. was a funny mix of two things. For many of the chapters (Measuring human welfare, Life expectancy and health, Food and hunger, Prosperity... basically all of Part II, and parts of Part III and IV) he makes good arguments. But they're not new, and he's setting up straw men to knock them down--no scientists, for example, are out there arguing that we're running out of space to store our garbage. So he picks on groups like WorldWatch Institute. Fair enough, in my opinion--there's no question that many environmental groups, like any dependent on direct mail and memberships contribubtions, tend to benefit from a sense of crisis. But this argument has been made before, and much more eloquently, by Greg Easterbrook in his book "The Skeptical Environmentalist." If you haven't read it, do; it's much more readable than Mr. Lomborg's tome and its 3000 footnotes.
However, in a number of the chapters, S.E. is totally different. It has to be: while issues like biodiversity and global warming are tricky and complex, there *is* a scientific consensus here that is at odds with Mr. Lomborg's thesis (the Julian Simon most-people-are-getting-better-most-of-the-time one, extended to these topics). So he changes tactics, and the book becomes much more deceptive, in my opinion. Given that there is a broad scientific consensus (e.g., IPCC 2001 for global climate change), Lomborg has to become much more highly selective in his sources and assumptions; it's this selectivity that was noted most frequently by those critics in Scientific American.
One final note: the Economist is an excellent magazine, but it's not unbiased. I was surprised to read their claim that no evidence has been adduced against the book. Well, no, no one that I've read has found that S.E. said 1 when in reallity it's 2; but again, selectivity of sources and presentation is everything.
"Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible" -Jacob Bronowski
It is well that such people exist to question established beliefs or to see the extent of a notion's validity. Whether you agree with Lomborg's book or not, the discourse is nothing but healthy.
Frankly, given the way that money is raised for scientific research, I'm not surprised that a lot of present day research is slanted toward a sensational outcome. Research that confirms the mundane simply isn't attractive enough to attract the kind of funding and publicity that many in the environmentalist movement seek.
On the other hand, it's not wise to dismiss these discoveries simply because we suspect the motives of those who found them. We need verification. And books like this give public officials adequate cause to fund more research to verify these claims.
Yes, it's political. So are the sensational claims made by so many who think that global warming will become a major disaster. The truth is that there simply isn't enough information to determine who is right yet. By forcing a debate, maybe we will finally be able to put the parameters of this debate in to focus.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
There's much much more money to be made ignoring environmental problems than in preaching about them.
There is no contradiction, no matter how much you might want to find one. "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit" appears to be Lomborg's credo.
Again with the comprehension problem. First link above: "unless the book is a great deal more comprehensive and balanced than the extremely shallow and biased excerpts I've had the time to read..."The full record of this exchange is on-line and can be read by anyone. Don't you feel ridiculous now?
What part of "and blows off phenomena with extensive deleterous effects such as the recurrent forest/peat bog fires in Indonesia" didn't you understand?I'd rip Lomborg apart more comprehensively if I'd had time to finish the chapter on energy (I haven't yet seen if he's projected the production peak of the Persian Gulf) and go through the section on global warming. My research in those areas is much broader than forestry. Unfortunately for you, I'm not going to bother to do this on a rush-rush basis for a lousy Slashdot thread; I have other things to do with my life.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
(and I reply, 5 days later, I wonder if this will ever get read)
"there simply isn't enough information to determine who is right yet."
This is the argument the conservative crowd (esp. the Bush administration) has been using to put off any new environmental regulation. But this is easily refuted by a simple cost/benefit analysis: Cost of doing nothing if the greens are right: environmental disaster. Cost if they are wrong: zero. Benefit if they are right or wrong: slightly stronger economy
Cost of new international regulation to reduce green house emissions if they are right: a smallish amount of economic productivity. (provided all nations don't sign on, thus giving the cheaters and advantage). Benefit: no disaster, or smaller disaster. Cost if they are wrong: same. Benefit: cleaner air.
Its a value call. A trade off. I would gladly sacrifice a little bit of economic mobility for some cleaner air...
Sig removed because it was obnoxious
It's a value call, true. It's a trade off. But what you call a zero cost is not. There is a strong financial inertia toward investment in areas that don't contribute to the bottom line mission of a company. Why else would an administration which caters to big business work against it?
Not only is this cost substantial; it could, and historically it has, bankrupt domestic industries. Look at steel production for an example. Asian countries have fewer environmental controls on such industry and they are able to sustain profits where North American industries could not. Refineries are moving to other countries. Logging is moving to other countries.
In the end, what happened? These industries were pushed offshore to places where they can continue raping the land even more than they would have had they stayed in North America.
That's not ecologically sound, it's just another cry of NIMBY in disguise. It also costs jobs for the econonomies who try stunts like this.
One fact should be abundantly clear: Those who attempt to model the weather for long term forecasting are reluctant to make prognostications because they know how fraught with error their models can be.
We know the earth's Carbon Dioxide level has been climbing for years. We also know that there have been ice ages and tropical periods all throughout geological history. What we can't say for certain is just how much of the Carbon Dioxide we measure is the result of world wide industry and how much is natural. Further, we aren't sure what the effect of the increased Carbon Dioxide will be. The question is not that simple (for example, what will the carbon dioxide distribution be across the earth) and the answers are even more difficult.
The issue is whether we know enough to make a decision or not. Personally, I don't think we do. To me, this is not so much an issue of profit or loss. It's a question of "do we know enough to act effectively?"
Another perspective: The Kyoto accord is widely seen as a joke. It's too little to have any effect one way or the other on the environment. Yet, that very accord could easily run the US economy in to the ground.
There must be a better way to solve this problem. We haven't found it yet. The reason is because there are so many chicken little characters seeking the limelight that honest researchers with honest questions are often left on the sidelines.
A healthy argument is a step in the right direction toward pushing the doom sayers aside and searching for real, workable answers.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!