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."

Comments

Re:Absence of Evidence

[iluvcapra]

Even if Lomborg was dishonest -- and you have no evidence of that -- the AGW side has been dishonest too, so by your own argument, anyone else could say, "grant-receiving scentists pushing AGW feel they can profitably resort to dishonesty to prove their point."

Here we speak of Lomborg, and you immediately begin talking about un-cited "other people" who somehow make Lomborg's mistakes disappear in a puff of equivalency.

Re:Yawn

[sonicmerlin]

So now we have a celebrity science pissing-match on our hands. This is simple, IPCC was married with politics, like much of the entire debate. Everyone back to the lab, the field, the research. Stop pandering to politicians and environmentalists, and come up with some science! Until then, no I'm not taking you seriously.

That's absurd. Your sweeping generalization ignores the decades of research poured into the topic by research groups from all over the world. There is ongoing research continually improving upon current models with updated and refined data. You can go take a look at the thousands upon thousands of journal articles written by these scientists, assuming you can even understand the jargon.

Re:Absence of Evidence

[NeutronCowboy]

You know Lomborg was dishonest? Based on what?

Based on the fact that the numbers he used for deforestation were not applicable to the problem, aggregated over different collection methods, and completely irrelevant to the problem caused by deforestation: loss of habitat for endemic species.

And yes, I read his crap. It was a massive disappointment, and the only conclusion I could come to was that he was either ignorant beyond belief, or dishonest.

So yes, we can ignore him. As for your statement "that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research", that's not true either. The closest thing that has been demonstrated is that some researchers are human and petty in their responses to other people's requests and research. That's a long way from demonstrating that EVERY researcher has faked his research.

Feel free to argue otherwise, but to be credible, you're going to have to demonstrate that every single paper arguing for AGW is dishonest. Go ahead.

Does it matter that it exists or not?

[codepunk]

Does it really matter if we are warming the planet or not?

Even if we are how are we going to fix it? Limit CO2 emissions by something like cap and trade? Great concept but India, China etc are not going to play in
a game that is detrimental to their growing manufacturing industries. Or perhaps we create green energy solutions, problem is none of those solutions are cost
effective to be self sustaining. If we are warming the planet who is to say it is not actually a positive thing?

Re:Does it matter that it exists or not?

[sonicmerlin]

Does it really matter if we are warming the planet or not?

Even if we are how are we going to fix it? Limit CO2 emissions by something like cap and trade? Great concept but India, China etc are not going to play in a game that is detrimental to their growing manufacturing industries. Or perhaps we create green energy solutions, problem is none of those solutions are cost effective to be self sustaining. If we are warming the planet who is to say it is not actually a positive thing?

I see this argument rather often, and I think it fails to see the point. The US has the largest GDP in the world BY FAR. It has the biggest and most robust economy by an order of magnitude, and nearly all gigantic leaps in technological innovation occur here because of the vast consumer market and potential profits (at least when Republicans aren't stymying innovation by giving away money to the rich). If the US creates a cap and trade system that rewards innovators and penalizes fossil fuel users, there is no doubt an explosion of innovation will arrive in the field. Companies like nanosolar would be only the tip of the iceberg.

Most European and Asian countries already have gas prices more than twice as high as ours. Just imagine the massive shift in capital to innovative startups that would have occurred over the last two decades had the US taxed gasoline appropriately. Imagine the massive private expenditures into developing consumer-grade alternative energy products. It's just mind-boggling to think what the US could do if it were as forward thinking as some other countries are.

Re:Does it matter that it exists or not?

[TheSync]

Depending on how fast the planet is warming, I would think the massive flooding would be detrimental to their growing manufacturing industries.

The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report predicts sea level rises of 7 inches to 23 inches over the next 90 years depending on scenario. The truth is that while it is possible that there could be increases in hurricane activity, "massive flooding" is unlikely to have a significant effect on industrial production. An industrialized country like China can build up a seawall one inch per year, or move factories away from coasts.

Re:Does it matter that it exists or not?

[SirWinston]

>Most European and Asian countries already have gas
>prices more than twice as high as ours. Just
>imagine the massive shift in capital to innovative
>startups that would have occurred over the last
>two decades had the US taxed gasoline appropriately.

I see this argument frequently, but it ignores the simple reality that unlike in Europe and Asia, the American economy is based on a highly mobile workforce able to commute great distances by automobile. The middle class, in particular, is enabled by and enriched by the automobile and cheap gasoline--the wealthier can live in expensive neighborhoods close to work, and the poor live wherever they can while commuting as little as possible; but, the middle class often work in areas where they could either not afford nearby housing which caters to the more affluent, or where nearby housing caters to the poor.

That's not always the case, of course, but it often is and the middle class has thrived on the ability to live in cheaper yet comfortable neighborhoods further from job centers--i.e., living in the suburbs while commuting to the city, or living in the country and commuting to the burbs. There's also a greater mobility and variety of jobs available to the middle class thanks to cheap gas: where I live, many commute to Washington, D.C., many others to Richmond, and a few to Charlottesville--meaning the job markets of 2.5 major cities are effectively local. Tax gas at a high rate, and people will have less employment mobility, fewer competitive opportunities, and lower overall wages due to the lowered competition among employers in formerly-neighboring employment centers. Additionally, with permanently expensive gas making long commutes cost-prohibitive for the middle class, there would be a huge migration out of the burbs and into more urban areas--where are all the urban poor going to move when whole cities are gentrified almost overnight? Into deserted suburbs with few native local job opportunities?

Tax gas at a high rate, and the mobile workforce and all the competitive advantages it bestows evaporates; the middle class would be eviscerated, and the poor would be displaced. Like it or not, there is no viable public and/or mass transit in most of the U.S.--we haven't needed it thanks to cheap gas, nor has it been as practical as in Europe thanks to our sprawling landmass.

So, do we heavily invest in public/mass transit now in a crash program, to the tune of trillions of dollars almost all at once, so we can end our reliance on cheap gas? No, that's impractical, too expensive, and no one has either the political will or political capital. Do we just levy those high gas taxes, and see if the dire predictions are false? No, because even if it wouldn't destroy the middle class, it would destroy so many political careers that no one is dumb enough to try it--remember that when oil stayed above $100/barrel for a record number of weeks not long ago and U.S. gas prices stayed at record levels, populist anger boiled so hot that Congress was subpoenaing oil executives and threatening to tax their profits and repeal gas taxes and doing ANYTHING to keep a lid on popular sentiments that threatened to derail every incumbent in their wake.

So no, there will not be high gas taxes in this country, nor should there be. What there should be is a plan to phase out gasoline, not through punitive taxes aimed at the working classes but through taxes and legislative pressures on automakers to phase in certain percentages of electric or hybrid vehicles by target dates. We mandate automakers to include lots of once-expensive tech which has since come down in manufacturing cost; why not, in the name of national security as well as the environment, mandate targeted percentages of electric offerings? If prices of new cars do rise in the short term while early adopters bear the brunt, so be it--the more financially challenged can stick with their old cars for a few years more until costs come down. It may seem unrealistic to exp

Re:Yet Again

[mjwx]

In every thread about global warming I see the same nutjob denialist theories debunked over and over again, yet with no change in the opinions of the hardcore denialists.

But still we must debunk and continue to debunk. There are a fair few people who just dont know how accurate the science is, a common question I get is "How can we measure air (CO2) from thousands of years ago", I point them towards the Wikipedia page on Ice Cores and say "because it's been trapped there all this time".

A denialist wont listen, they are just looking to confirm their bias (and tabloids have made an industry out of doing this) but you'll occasionally find a rational person who will listen. We aren't trying to change denialists, it's the genuine sceptics we want to reach. The ignorant never hold any real power.

Re:Absence of Evidence

[UnknowingFool]

You do realize, too, that we actual have HARD PROOF that global warming "scientists" were dishonest in their research, research that the IPCC relied on for its conclusions ... right?

Out of thousands of independent studies done by thousands of scientists that generally lead to the conclusion that climate change is happening and man is most likely the cause, you would ignore all of that because a few scientists might have been dishonest. Yet you would believe one man who has now been shown that there is some issues with his work. If you are truly skeptical you should throw his work too. That still leads to many, many more scientists who have hard data that climate change is happening.

Re:Absence of Evidence

[JordanL]

One of the things that REALLY bugs me about climate research is seeing LEGITIMATE scientists use the word "SKEPTIC" as a SMEAR.

Scientists are SUPPOSED to be skeptic, and I understand that this is not what the phrase is meant to convey, but the mere idea of labeling a scientists "skeptic" to smear him shows how political scientists in general have become. Remember when they were all about the pursuit of truth and knowledge?

I guess it sounds better than "denier", (which sounds like some McCarthy-era witch-hunt-ism), but why can't scientists keep their professionalism in situations which become politicized?

He's more pragmatic than skeptic

[brucmack]

I haven't read his books, but I live in Denmark so Lomborg gets quite a bit of press here, especially under the climate change conference in December. In interviews he's always come across as a pragmatist more than a skeptic.

He has two main arguments:

1) Think about the return on investment.

Let's say we can cool the earth one degree by spending a trillion dollars. Is it worth the investment? What do we really get out of it? How many other problems could have been fixed with that money?

2) The current approach to fighting climate change is wrong.

UN treaties and money aren't going to stop the developing world from using fossil fuels. The only surefire way to get off of coal is to develop something that is cheaper. Instead of giving money to developing countries to bribe them not to pollute, we should invest the money in new technology, so that in 10, 20, 30 years we can say "here, this is cheaper than coal and doesn't pollute".

I think both of his points are important to consider, though I don't agree with him completely. There are risks to his solution - what if our investments don't bear fruit, and coal is still the cheapest energy source in 30 years? What if climate change causes political destabilization so we don't have enough time to get finished?

I don't think anybody has a perfect solution, but I do think that Lomborg contributes positively to the debate.

Re:He's more pragmatic than skeptic

[10101001 10101001]

1) Think about the return on investment.

Let's say we can cool the earth one degree by spending a trillion dollars. Is it worth the investment? What do we really get out of it? How many other problems could have been fixed with that money?

If it were a mere one trillion dollars for the whole world, it'd really be a drop in the bucket and well worth the investment. Aside from the issue of ROI, one has to consider the externalities of not spending the trillion dollars. Look at the mostly current financial/economic crisis. How much do you think that cost countries? How much do you think will be the cost of long-term shifting weather patterns? I'd imagine it might trivially be a lot more than most people would care to stomach compared to doing something now.

2) The current approach to fighting climate change is wrong.

UN treaties and money aren't going to stop the developing world from using fossil fuels. The only surefire way to get off of coal is to develop something that is cheaper. Instead of giving money to developing countries to bribe them not to pollute, we should invest the money in new technology, so that in 10, 20, 30 years we can say "here, this is cheaper than coal and doesn't pollute".

Funny, but that's the main reason cap and trade is such a good idea. It causes developed countries to start polluting significantly less, raises the current costs of coal/oil/etc (inherently making long-term investments in other energy sources possibly viable), allows for the collected taxes to be pushed into new energy technology, and hopefully the result will be energy that effectively is cheaper than the coal/oil/etc's original price. Even if the whole energy technology step doesn't work to produce something cheaper than coal/oil/etc, the system will both have proven that you can still be a developed country using massively less amounts of coal/oil/etc per capita (meaning developed countries, mimicking developed countries, need not believe they'll tank for what might others seem a reckless course of action) and almost certainly have higher efficiency technology to export to other countries so they'll inherently use less coal/oil/etc (since the efficiency technology will have been created in a [mostly] market based system and should be generally economical sound anywhere).

What if climate change causes political destabilization so we don't have enough time to get finished?

We're going to see that anyways. China has already taken some pretty bold steps about securing oil supplies for its developing economy. That's a major reason for the great increase in the price of oil; that is, if China hadn't been securing and using those oil wells, other western powers would have for their still increasing oil consumption. You can only pump so much oil out of the ground at one time, and so at some point Americans and Chinese will no longer be able to simply expand through more oil extraction. At that point, increasing the efficiency of technology will be necessary. In the interim, both China and America's economy will suffer rather badly (the US needs ~2.5% economic growth yearly just to maintain itself and China needs something close to ~10%) as oil prices will skyrocket.

We need to be developing alternative energies and efficiency technology now and not wait until "the market" takes care of things. "The market" doesn't take into consideration that while it might work hypothetically in a perfect world given enough time, in the real world a drastic short-term change in supply or demand can result in the sort of political instability that results in a lot of "force" upon a lot of people. And that can be very unpleasant for everyone involved.

Re:Absence of Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is not, nor has it ever been that lunatics with their hand out the window yelling, "it feels fine!" are shouted down or ignored. The problem is that over the past 20 years the understanding has evolved that there is a "correct" result, and anyone working to disprove that result is an enemy to be scrutinized, tied to suspicious parties and ostracized.

By contrast, there are respected scientists in every other field attempting to disprove established theories, and should their work pan out, they would publish without fear of immediate rejection by their peers.

It is the nature of scientific theory that it is tested and attacked. That is why we value a theory limke evolution, which has survived these constat attempts to disprove or reduce its scope for a very long time.

Of what value is a body of theory that can only be confirmed, but which brooks no attempt to disprove?

Re:Cue the teabaggers.

[Darinbob]

But if the cause isn't man made, then we can say "don't blame me!" when disaster strikes.

Imagine if this thinking was applied to other areas. Hurricanes aren't man made, so we don't need to get out of the way. Floods aren't man made so I can build my house on the river bank. Lightning is a natural phenomena so I can keep golfing in the rain.

Re:Its All About Power and Money

[Gadget_Guy]

Greenland was colonized during a period of global warmth. That it is why it was named that way.

According to the Reverend J. Sephton in his book Eirik the Red's Saga, Greenland was named as a marketing ploy by Eirik: "Because," said he, "men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name."

Yes, it would have been warmer and greener than it was now, but if there was subterfuge in the naming of the country then I don't imagine that it was a tropical paradise. It also doesn't mean that it was as consistantly warmer across the globe as it is now.

But it is also a distraction. Do you deny that being shot by a gun could kill you, merely because other people have died without being shot. Just because it got warmer then doesn't mean that we are not causing it to get warmer now. It is getting hotter, faster and more globally than it did back then.

Man is not powerful enough to change the earth's climate to any "significant" degree. But that big thermonuclear ball in the sky is. A billion petrochemical fueled cars will not influence the sun.

Nobody has every claimed that we are making the sun hotter. This demonstrates that you really don't understand the problem. The problem is that the heat from the sun is being trapped here. As an analogy, my house stays pretty cool even on hot days without the need for air conditioning. As long as it gets cooler at night, it stays pleasant during the day. But if it stays hot at night, it doesn't get a chance to lose the build-up of heat from the previous day and it gets more unpleasant as after day. The days are not necessarily hotter, but the accumulated heat energy means that each successive day has a larger affect.

Scientists are men that can be influenced by propaganda just like any man can be. I think the climate change scare is just another way for politicians to steal our hard earned money.

The climate change "scare" as you call it was instigated by the scientists, not the politicions. They don't just watch the news and think "yeah, I had better parrot that line too". They just follow their data, and all get to the same place. It is either a giant conspiracy or the truth. Which seems the most likely.

However, if you can come up with ANY evidence to back up the claim that it is the politicians that are leading our scientists around then please present it. Oh, have a look at all those CRU emails that were released. They should be able to tell you the names of the politicians who are giving the orders (if there are any). Come back and let us know.

Rabies

[Dobeln]

The above poster illustrates something very important:

Part of the reason one should be very skeptical of AGW alarmists is their rabies-like demeanor and aggression against all that they perceive as even the slightest heresy against their little modern day apocalypse cult.

Wider implication: Never trust the results in any discipline that is subject to a reputation cascade. (I.e, disciplines where even mild dissenters are ostracized)

The tip of the iceberg

[Dobeln]

You do not "debunk", you ostracize. The main modus of debate of AGW proponents from day one has been moralistic, not empirical.

Hence the conversion of "skeptic" from badge of honor to a mark of shame, and the introduction of the "denier" label to further amp up the hysteric persecution of those who dont go with the program.

This also explains the skepticism of the general public. Joe Blow doesnt know his tree rings from his ice cores, but he sure knows what fanaticism looks like.

After all, how can one trust a science where "skepticism" is career death? The answer is simple: One cant. And as the tip of the iceberg is now visible for all to see - the remaining question is how much is hidden by the sea...

The Friel Emergency Literacy Fund

[Dobeln]

After reading about half of Lomborgs rebuttal, I think the more pertinent issue is "can Friel read"? Perhaps we can set up a literacy fund to help the good man get some remedial ed?

As for your assertion that "Lomborg paints himself a persecuted DaVinci":

1. As far as I know, he has never compared himself to DaVinci. I.e, you are making shit up.

and

2. He has had the pleasure of being convicted (and then aquitted) of the novel thought-crime of "unintentional dishonesty". Gotta love those cultists - they are at least an inventive bunch.

That's why he's so hated

[Sycraft-fu]

He's not just saying "Nope, this isn't a problem, ignore it, don't worry, etc, etc." A person like that is much easier to dismiss. What he's saying is "Yes, this is a problem, but not a big one, and certainly not one worth all the money and effort being proposed to fix it. Instead, we should spend that on other things that would have a much bigger impact on quality of life." More or less he's not disagreeing with the fundamental premise or conclusion, he's disagreeing with the policies being proposed because of that.

This drives the global warming proponents totally mad. Most of them seem to be of the opinion that what they have to do is convince people that global warming is real, and caused by humans. Once that is done, people should be willing to accept whatever policies they say are necessary. No questioning of the costs or the utility, they've proven the problem and now whatever they say needs to happen should happen without further question.

So Lomborg has become one of their top enemies because he doesn't fundamentally disagree on the idea that the world is warming, just that it is worth while to try and solve when there are so many other problems to human life. For that, they hate him.

That is one of the things that makes me question motives in this whole thing. I can understand exasperation with people who believe your research is incorrect/false/made up if your truly believe it is right. You think you've got it correct, done a lot of work in that regard, you get mad when people say "Nuh uh!". However, when someone is disagreeing not with that, but with the policies you demand and you get even more angry at them, well that makes me wonder: Is the research really what's important to you, or are you using it just to try and drive policies that you want, regardless of their use? It would seem to me that how to deal with the problem would be open for discussion, yet discussion of that generates the most backlash. Makes you wonder.

Re:Absence of Evidence

[shilly]

Who knows why this got modded interesting, it's fuckin' dumb.

Let's try a little thought experiment, shall we? Two scenarios:
1) Let's imagine that you are working on the bleeding edge of science and you're investigating a question that no-one knows the answer to, like "why does Nt-acetylation of bulk proteins happen?". You do some clever research, and whaddya know, you come up with an interesting answer: "it's because acetylation can function as a degradation signal". That forces a need to revisit thinking on protein turnover, a larger topic, and may even mean that we need to think again about exactly how homeostasis works. So you write it all up and if you can get the paper past your clever colleagues who do peer review, you might get published in Science and you can be very proud of yourself. Look, it's happened here!
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/short/327/5968/966
2) Now, let's imagine that you investigate something a bit more fundamental to modern biological science. Say, the idea that DNA encodes genetic information about the shape of proteins. Let's say you invent a clever experiment and the findings are very striking -- they appear to show that DNA doesn't encode that information after all! Now for the thought experiment bit: do you think that the standards and scrutiny that will be applied to your claim will be higher or lower than in scenario 1, given that your results will require the setting aside / reinterpretation of an enormous mass of prior experimental results and accepted scientific theory. Why, that's right! Your results will be subjected to more careful scrutiny. They will have to be replicated, validated, tested etc etc every which way from Sunday, because the inherent balance of probabilities is that your results are wrong or artefactual or explicable within the current framework, and that the prior thinking was right. It's not *impossible* that the opposite holds true, but it *is* extremely unlikely.

People who seek to demonstrate that anthropogenic climate change is not happening are much closer to scenario 2 than scenario 1. Scientists will quite reasonably say, "just before we chuck out all the accumulated evidence and thinking about how the world works and accept your argument that you've shown it that is, in fact, possible for humans to add net tens of billions of tons of gases such as CO2 and CH4 to the atmosphere in the space of decades without it having an impact on climate, do you mind terribly if we take a very long hard look at your evidence and reasoning?"

I see both sides digging in

[wurp]

I think the whole thing has become so politicized that an honest viewpoint from either side is rare. The global warming believers think it's such a big impact if it's true that they feel they can't honestly present counter-evidence, and the unbelievers think the cost is so high that it can't be paid without incontrovertible evidence.

Unfortunately, climate science doesn't have a great record (the planetary ecosystem and climate are pretty goddam complicated). At the same time, we will never have evidence that the average idiot will understand and accept for anything as complex as a checking account.

Most people, myself included, have no real basis on which to make a decision, so we pick the side with the people we trust.

Personally, I trust scientists much more than businessmen. Good scientists are trained to be brutally honest with themselves, and to use methods that expose rather than hide flaws in their own reasoning.

Businessmen are trained to be confident in their abilities and conclusions regardless of reality.

This means that when businessmen look at the objective opinions of good scientists, with their "given this" and "see chart X for exceptions", they blow them off. Then they spend millions pointing out how the scientists can't even make up their mind.

For me, it's an easy choice. That doesn't mean that I am immune to arguments either way, just that I tend to listen with my own slant, and I recognize it.

I personally wish we would just give respected climate scientists some money and some peace for a couple of years to fight it out among themselves without worrying about the viewpoint of uninformed idiots, but I know it's not going to happen.

Re:Absence of Evidence

[AmiMoJo]

As someone who believes in man-made climate change I can assure both you and the GP that you are completely wrong about my beliefs.

I don't think we need to give up our modern lives and return to some kind of hippy-farming-commune existence. We just need to develop technology that doesn't pump CO2 into the atmosphere. Sure, that does cost money to develop, but so did drilling for oil or burning coal to generate electricity.

Even if you don't believe in climate change the benefits of not burning coal and oil should be pretty obvious. You can see pollution all around us in the form of the dust and dirt that accumulates on buildings and in my house (which is next to a main road).

Don't think I'm attacking you personally either. We need to change things at government and industrial levels. In the end though there comes a point where we are going to have to force the Chelsea Tractor / Hummer drivers into less polluting cars. I don't see a problem with that - we don't allow people to piss in swimming pools because the majority of people don't want to swim in that. You can't expect to go around spewing crap into the air when there are just as good alternatives that don't do that.

We are not there yet by a long way, but one day we will be and that's all I'm saying:

- We need to develop less polluting technology, if not because of climate change then because of pollution and the finite nature of the oil and coal supplies.

- Eventually technology will get there, but in the mean time I'm still flying long haul and you can still drive your tractor around town. I own a Colt with super-efficient engine, mainly because it's cheaper for me to run. If electric was cheaper I would buy one of these too. Totally selfish and nothing to do with the green lobby.