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Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic
DJRumpy writes "The Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists — that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic — are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is 'a mirage,' writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. '[I]t is a house of cards. Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature' of Lomborg's work."
I'm sure everybody here will be interested in reading Lomborg's response before forming an opinion.
However, it has not been shown that humans are the primary cause of this warming.
Incorrect, it has: Empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming
You'd have done much better to link to Lomborg's response, than going off on your speculative aura.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
That's not what he says:
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Reading that very lengthy rebuttal, one thing becomes clear. Howard Friel does not deserve our time or thought. If you are going to criticize someone's work, you need to be doubly careful that the things you take issue with are valid. Here it appears that the criticism is far less solid than the material it critisizes. This does not make the original material correct as a result, but truely; there is nothing to see here, move along.
Medieval warm period wasnt necessarily a period of global warmth. It may have been a period of north-atlantic warmth. Other areas were cooler. This is one of the many areas where the situation is just flat out more complicated than any popular treatment would lead one to believe. Very often one area will be cooler and another hotter and it's bugger-all difficult to properly sort it out and demonstrate a *global* trend without going to a very long time-scale.
And it wasnt named that because it was actually green - it wasnt. It was named that because Ericsson had previously found it very difficult to attract settlers for his previous development, Iceland, because even though it was in fact quite green at the time, it just sounded cold and barren. So he chose a more attractive name for his second development in the interest of marketing.
Certainly true.
Whether or not this is true is far from a settled question. Mans actions influence the environment and vice versa and always have. How much is "significant?" There is some very interesting research that indicates even the tens of thousands of years of farming prior to the industrial revolution may have altered global climate significantly enough to be detected. However in the broader picture, of course, the natural forces that have driven climate change since long before humans evolved are still at work and dwarf anything we can do or likely will be able to do anytime soon.
I think there is a grain of truth in that, but you drastically oversimplify.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
There you go again. Conflating "climate change" with whether man is the most likely cause. Its really rather rich. The prime highlight of the IPCCs AR3 was to "forget" the existence of climate change prior to the 19th century. Natural variation over the past thousand years was reduced to quiet gradual downtrend with an abrupt surge upward in the 1800s. In so doing they discarded thousands of studies and work of thousands who previously carefully documented periods of great warming and cooling throughout the history of man.
This can be seen clearly by comparing the IPCC-1990 report, which concisely shows the consensus of an old guard (now largely dead). A very warm, much warmer period during the middle ages (shown in read). The IPCC AR3 and AR4 replaced this with the blue curve. Shown a flat-changeless temperature history with a slight downtrend, suddenly accelerating upward.
But their claim was bespectacled from the start by way of special pleading they had explained away each interruption in warming that occurred during the 20th century, but then after the report was published, yet another unexpected cooling period emerged.
Suddenly the meme switched from being about "Global Warming" to being "Climate Change". The focus shifted from temperatures to sea-levels and hurricanes. Yet this turned out to be an even more tenuous footing. Its already no longer considered reputable among intellectual circles to discuss such extravagances. Eventually the talking point was settled upon: weather is not climate. The recent cooling is just weather.
Indeed, weather is not climate. Climate is the expectation of weather--and so yes, it surely does matter when year after year goes by somewhat cooler than had been predicted by the IPCCs latest report.
Meanwhile, the very people who had steadfastly refused to deny climate-change are now labeled the climate change deniers. This stemmed from an Orwellian campaign to redefine terminology. Suddenly believing in climate-change meant believing in anthropogenic climate change. The language literally twisted to be an embodiment of the "one true belief"--no need for that pesky modifier anthropogenic, and all the better to co-opt what everyone knows: climate changes.
Several very cogent critiques of the AR3 temperature series have been published which eviscerated that graph as a product of flawed statistical methods and bad data. Yet a loud cadre continues to deny any problem exists, and banks on the lack of specialized knowledge among the public and other scientists to trade on their word alone.
And, no, we're saying that there is no contribution from Man. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but its effect on temperature depends on poorly understood feedback effects. These effects are in part also responsible for the long history of natural temperature variation that the IPCC otherwise ignores. Ultimately, what it comes down to is this: The IPCC claims a temperature rise of 2C/century. To arrive at this number they assume almost all strong feedbacks are amplifying rather moderating the C02 driven warming. Why does this matter? Much of the impetus for "ACTION NOW!" stems from the notion of a climate tipping point, but if the feedback effects are more moderating than the IPCC claims, this is highly unlikely.
http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20reply%20to%20Howard%20Friel.pdf
"Without reading both books, I can't take sides on the merits. But I will say some of the stuff in TFA sets off my alarms--like spending a footnote on a WHO report just to cite the population of Europe."
When doing math, statistical sources matter. But here we have something substantial to discuss. Is Lomborg dishonest in this case? Read along for the answer!
Friel: "But Lomborg's only source for these figures—a chart in the statistical annex of a 2004 World Health Organization report—contains
no data on human mortality due to excess heat or cold. In fact, the words "excess heat" and "excess cold" make no appearance in the WHO document; neither does the word "heat," and the word "cold" appears only once in a reference unrelated to death due to excess cold.
Lomborg's reference to the WHO document, which allegedly supports his claim that two hundred thousand people die each year in Europe from excess heat, reads in its entirety: "207,000, based on a simple average of the available cold and heat deaths per million, cautiously excluding London and using WHO’s estimate for Europe’s population of 878 million (WHO, 2004a:121).”
However, page 121 of the 2004 WHO report—The World Health Report 2004: Changing History— which is what this source references, lists no data on cold- and heatrelated deaths per million, or for cold- and heat-related deaths in any context.
Likewise, Lomborg's very next reference-to support his claim that 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold - reads in its entirety: "1.48 million, estimated in the same way as total heat deaths."
Thus, Lomborg's references indicate that page 121 of the 2004 WHO report is the source of his estimates of annual heat- and cold-related deaths in Europe; however, this page in the WHO report lists no statistics for either cold- or heat-related deaths. Consequently, there is no apparent basis here or elsewhere in Cool It for Lomborg's claim that 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold. [LD, p. 86, emphasis added]
Lomborg: "In fact, the text and first endnote in this section make it very clear where the figures are sourced from: “Based on the summary of the biggest European heat and cold study (Keatinge, et al., 2000, p. 672).” (p. 170).
In the UK edition of the book, there is even a figure with the numbers, with the further explanation: “estimated in the text, using Keatinge et al., 2000:672.” (p. 233, CIUK) Friel’s claim that I relied on a WHO document that does not support my case is astonishing and profoundly disingenuous.
I clearly used the WHO report solely to provide an estimate of Europe’s population (because WHO uses the standard geographical definition of Europe to the Ural Mountains).This is evident in the text that Friel himself quoted: “and using WHO’s estimate for Europe’s population of 878 million (WHO, 2004a:121).”
Finding this study on Google Scholar took me all of two seconds using the reference provided by Lomborg (in his book).
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/321/7262/670
The quote is confirmed by Google Books:
http://books.google.se/books?q=estimated+in+the+text,+using+Keatinge+et+al.,+2000:672&btnG=S%C3%B6k+i+b%C3%B6cker
In short, from this example, picked by you - not me, it plainly evident that is Friels honesty or literacy that should be in question, not Lomborgs. This is likely to be representative of the "debunking" in its entirety, going from what I have read of the rebuttal so far.
Friel, denouncing Lomborg on glaciers:
"Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world (see Table 10.9) and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is Page 18 of 27 very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035 (WWF, 2005). [IPCC, 2007c, p. 493]"
How is that "settled science" working out for you Frielyboy?
The best part is that even on that very page, if you match up the time-lines you can see that the temperature and CO2 graphs don't line up, and that the temperature starts to spike before CO2 amount does.
Unfortunately, there's no -1 misinformative mod.
That is to be expected. Normally, temperature starts to rise due to e.g. distance to the sun decreasing slightly, which leads to increased CO2 which enhances the effect of the warming, causing further CO2 to be released until a new balance is achieved (essentially that the energy absorbed from the sun equals the earths black-body radiation). CO2 increase with temperature because CO2 is less soluble in warm (sea)-water, and a number of other effects (Tundra melting is often mentioned as a big one, though I don't personally know.). Now, into this system we (the humans) release enough CO2 to increase the concentration by what, 30%? What do *you* think will happen?
That CO2 must warm the earth can also be concluded directly by looking at the absorbtion bands of CO2. You could even calculate the approximate effect (though not the feedback loops) from this, the atmospheric and distribution of CO2 and from the distribution of the electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere.
But of course, you knew all this. What pisses me off about all this that while the above is well-known science and has been for a long time, the economic aspects are far from clear to me. Is it worth it to curtail the warming? How much will it cost to adapt vs. prevention? Those are the interesting questions, but few discusses this :/
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
You deserve upmods. It seemingly cannot be stated enough, because the "skeptics" don't get it: of COURSE temperature leads CO2 levels. What would a sudden, pre-temperature rise of CO2 levels come from? There wasn't much coal burned in the ice ages.
When no CO2 is added to the system, it merely works as a feedback for temperature changes, magnifying them. Oceans get warmer, reducing their capacity to dissolve gases, releasing more CO2. Rotting vegetation trapped in ice melts, releases methane and CO2. Fortunately, the additional CO2 released from warming is not enough to cause more warming than what released it, so it doesn't run away, it stabilizes at a new, higher temperature.
But when CO2 is added to the system from outside (fossil fuels trapped in the earth for ages), it's not just a feedback. It's a forcing, something that drives temperature change.
So, that CO2 followed temperature rises during the end of the ice ages is not evidence against global warming. It's what you would expect to happen when there are no humans around to burn gigatons of coal, if current theories of carbon feedback are correct.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
1. Oops! You used the wrong word there -- you said there are *rates* of increase / decrease that overwhelm anything we've seen in modern times. I'm aware that the *total change* was much larger, but not that the *change per unit of time* was much larger. Rate is important, as faster rates reduce the time for species to adapt.
2. What is this rubbish about little old us? There are more than 6 billion of us on the planet. Why wouldn't a very large number of resource-using large mammals be able to affect the planet? We can and do change physical geography on an ongoing basis -- there's virtually no square inch of England that isn't different from its "natural" state due to active management by humans. We can and do deplete resources or poison environments so that they are uninhabitable.
3. What is this rubbish about "trace gas" and "parts per million"? What is inherently implausible about changes in the quantum of trace gases (it's not just CO2, y'know) having real effects on physical systems?
4. Overall, you've missed the point: there's a ton of physical evidence that climate change is happening (and quite a bit for it having an impact on ecosystems too), plus well-worked through theory with good evidence for how ("the greenhouse effect"). *That's* what will need reconciliation with an assertion that there is no climate change.
In the end, there are two arguments to be discussed:
1) Is it happening?
2) What do we do? -- ranging from nothing to something.
I assure you that I'm quite as attached to home comforts as you -- I just happen to believe that the answers are pretty clear:
1) Yes, it is
2) Doing something is more likely to preserve more of my comforts (and fellow human beings) than doing nothing. You clearly take the opposite view.