"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?"

Comments

The best way

[Mordant]

to determine this is to actually read Lomborg's book, and then read what his critics say, no?

Here's a link to some relevant stories:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/1051/indexwrap pe r.jsp?PID=1051-157

Rebuking the rebukers

[VersedM]

For a well written opposing view on the issue, check out this editorial over at the Economist.

Some links

[Otter]

Are they being valuable watchdogs, or are both sides driven by politics rather than science?

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".

The panel's ruling is incompetent and shameful.

[Evan Vetere]

So says the Economist.

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.

DCSD's ruling

[Col. Klink (retired)]

Their full ruling is here. As other articles have pointed out, the only evidence they used against him was from the Scientific American articles. Even then, the working group never bothered to consider his responses because, in their own words, "...his rebuttals are not accepted by the complainants."

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...

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[account_deleted]

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Re:No Big Surprise

[Arthur Dent]

I don't have time to give a lengthy rebuttal and offer this instead.

In brief:

Forests: The FAO data series is the only long run series available.

Fisheries

Lomborg's deceptive "doubling" is based on the fact that fishing operations now rely heavily on landing species that were considered "trash" in the 1970s, and on landing juveniles because the full-sized fish are now increasingly scarce.

So you admit that Lomborg is right and fishery catches have actually doubled? Does it matter that fish eating habbits have changed or been forced to change? As for landing juvenilles, that's just evolution in action.

Biodiversity: The largest tropical study of the correlation between rainforest and the extinction of species was carried out in Puerto Rico by Ariel Lugo of the United States Department of Agriculture. He found that the primary forest had been reduced by 99 percent over a period of 400 years. 'Only' seven out of 60 species of birds had become extinct although the island today is home to 97 species of birds.

Global Warming: Are you sure Lomborg's position is a straw man? He never says that the Kyoto accord is a 100 year treaty but merely quotes the IPCC numbers and says that if the Kyoto accord is implemented in full, the IPCC projections will only be delayed by 6 years.

Water: Quite right that the plant has not yet been built -- there's no pressing need for it! Throughout history, humans have demonstrated a lot of intelligence and ingenuity. I have absolutely no doubts that when a large scale desalination plant is required, my guess is that the prices will be close to what Lomborg predicts (higher than what Lomborg predicts, but much, much lower than current rates).

Two points before I end this:

1. Lomborg does not claim to be a scientist. He has merely placed an alternative interpretation on existing data.

2. This quote from one of his critics Stephen Schneider:

"On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but - which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand,
we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place, which in this
context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some
broadbased support, to capture the public's imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to
offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This
'double ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right
balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both." (Quoted in Discover, pp. 45-48, Oct. 1989,
see also American Physical Society, APS News August/September 1996, http://cyclotron.aps.org/apsnews/0896/11592.html).

Re:No Big Surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

A minor correction - you gave an example of "evolution" with your link, but that page only illustrates that if you keep catching and keeping the big fish, then you exert a selective pressure towards smaller fish.

That illustrates how selection alters the genetic variability, but it's not evolution. Unless you think selective breeding of dogs is also evolution. Neither one is, please use your terminology more carefully.

Re:No Big Surprise

[dschl]

Wow. Thanks for regurgitating the SciAm article about the Skeptical environmentalist.

Please reconfirm your "facts" on desalination. There is not a lot of info online, but I managed to scrape up a few costs.

• In the Sept 14, 1999 Trinidad Express, they refer to two bids at US$0.536 and US$0.736 per m3 of industrial water (water for drinking is a tiny proportion of what we actually use)
• In Cyprus in 2000, desalination unit costs were 0.997 USD (0.54 Cyprus pound, which is divided into cents, not pence)

Membrane technology is still improving significantly. While there is a thermodynamic limit to efficiency, there is still a lot of room to lower unit costs by producing reverse osmosis (RO) membranes with a longer life, lower cost, greater tolerance for contaminants (ie, less pre-treatment before hitting the RO membrane), less frequent backwash cycles, and so on. As for "well out of reach of most water users", well, whatever. A person drinks 1-4 litres of water a day, which is around $2 / year, even with your gloomy estimates.

FYI, Peter Gleick is the President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, which "strives to improve policy through science-based research and dialogue with action-oriented groups from the international to local level"They claim to be non-partisan, but he appears to have a radical green bias. Let's look at what else Gleick says about desalination:

But desalination cannot yet be considered a reasonable solution to domestic water shortages in most regions, even wealthy ones. Whether it will eventually become sufficiently cheap for large-scale use remains uncertain.( Gleick, 2000)

Hmmm, not quite as gloomy - just uncertain. Given that most domestic water gets flushed, high quality desalination is not even required for your toilet or shower - leaving some residual salt makes desalinated water cheaper to produce. But for drinking water, it is still inexpensive enough - you'll spend more money on distribution than on production.

kuro5hin had a better article on Lomborg a while ago. The Economist just had another one as well. And of course, you should read Lomborgs response to SciAm , which is posted in it's entirety on Patrick Moore's website. SciAm threatened legal action if Lomborg included their article in his line-by-line response, although they felt free to include Lomborg's response on their website with more SciAm comments - hypocrisy worthy of RIAA or MPAA. So, Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace posted Lomborgs response to SciAm, with the following comment:

"Scientific American did not give Lomborg any opportunity to respond to his critics, even though they gave him a copy of the editorial before it went to press. They said they would give Lomborg one page in a future edition to reply to 11 pages of full-on attack. Lomborg's response was to publish the text of the Scientific American article on his own website and to intersperse it with a detailed response to every point raised by his critics. Scientific American then threatened to sue Lomborg over copyright. In response to my complaint Scientific American wrote "This is an infringement of our copyright and interferes with our business of selling the article." Does Scientific American really think that they will lose readership because Lomborg has posted a response to a publication that is already off the newsstands? I believe they acted out of political motivation and are purposefully stifling Lomborg's efforts to defend himself. And I don't blame Lomborg for giving in to such a huge organization when threatened with legal action. (If you go to Lomborg's website www.lomborg.com and look under Critiques you will find he has removed the offending text, thus gutting the effectiveness of his response.)

" I think we should defy Scientific American's blatant attempt to muzzle Lomborg. Anyone who reads his response to the Scientific American attack will have to agree that it is thoughtful and thorough. Here is a link to the entire response complete with Lomborg's comments."

People like you will eventually make me buy Lomborg's book, just so I can bitchslap you properly.

dschl

If you think hunting is barbaric, you should visit a chicken farm someday

Consider that I might mean what I say

[Spamalamadingdong]

You're trolling right?

On the contrary. I'm as serious as a heart attack.

Far from being `content-free', the chapter you choose to cite (on Forestation) has eighty-six footnotes citing a very wide range of sources.

Eighty-seven. But most of those are repeats, and rather than starting with full cites for the first footnote in each chapter Lomborg uses very abbreviated back-references. In such a huge volume of footnotes it is very difficult to find the exact reference - which appears to be Lomborg's intent; not to inform but to obfuscate. He doesn't want the sources checked.

Quite seriously, are we really supposed to take your complaint seriously, when the only thing you find to say is that one particular eight-page chapter in the midst of a five-hundred page large-format trade paperback does not have more graphs? Really?

It should contain the data from which the conclusions are drawn, no? This it does not do.

if you'll actually read those footnotes (on pages 375-378 of the paperback edition) you'll find that in addition to citing a range of sources, they add considerable discussion of the subject at hand.

Some of them do. The place where I started when I began looking through them (p. 376) has next to no discussion or additional information.

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.

And your next complaint is what? That he doesn't interrupt a chapter on oil supplies for a disquisition on mideast politics? I thought you were alleging that his book was political...

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):

Oil can be found all around the world, but the largest resources by far are to be found in the Middle East - it is estimated that somewhere between 50 and 65 percent of the global reserves are found there.[fn 867] Consequently, it is also imperative for our future energy supply that this region remains reasonably peaceful. [fn 868]

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.