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

Cue the teabaggers.

[bennomatic]

Or maybe someone should call them "yeasties". In another thread, some slashdotter pointed out that yeast bacteria are perfectly content to ferment and ferment and ferment until alcohol kills off their whole colony. I wonder if, in their short life, some of the more "successful" bacteria scorn the ones who suggest that a different approach would be wiser.

Re:Cue the teabaggers.

[DiamondGeezer]

Unfortunately the 5.35 part is an order of magnitude too high. That's what happens when you have no knowledge of quantum physics.

Re:Cue the teabaggers.

[arpad1]

Were the yeast scientists studying alcohol caught producing fraudulent data, suppressing the work of other yeast scientists whose results didn't agree with the lurid predictions of alcohol increase and colluding on how to cover up their fraud?

This ship has sailed. The CRU, and now the IPCC, are revealed as scientific frauds unworthy of the credence extended to them. As that credence has crumbled so have the claims made and supported by those organizations and carefully ignoring those facts isn't going to help the agenda of global warming believers.

You know what the real pisser is? There's some possibility that the warmies are right although determining whether human activity actually has an effect on the global climate will now have to wait until the debris from the collapse of the CRU and the IPCC is cleared away by real science.

Re:Cue the teabaggers.

[Xabraxas]

Oh how naive you are of the American mind. None of that matters. It snowed heavily in DC this winter so of course global warming is a hoax. One day is all we need to erase years of data.

Re:Cue the teabaggers.

[hrimhari]

You forgot the "oh wait". I mean, who said it isn't? People keep doing that kind of stuff all the time, then crying out their misfortune when mother nature strikes... Except for those that intentionally seek to be struck by lightning so they can become The Flash. But that's Natural Selection on its best : )

tldr

[mevets]

but, he does seem to admit in the first page that they are both engaging in "selective or incomplete quotation, misrepresentation of
source material, and even outright fabrication". That is nice. Pages 0.5 through 27 may contain more interesting information, but the foam dripping from the authors mouth makes it a bit hard to read. Maybe he should have considered peer review BEFORE publishing, rather than frothing after critique.....

I usually just point out

[mjwx]

That their argument centres around a tabloid. 90% of the "sceptics" I have dealt with get their information from places like the Daily Mail (centre of the climategate non-troversy). For extra sarcastic effect I post a screenshot of the Mail's home page with giant red circles around the trashy celebrity stories (takes a few minutes, the Mail's homepage should be full of them). Also these tabloids have a long history of libel suits. If they refuse to be sceptical of their own information sources and blindly trust a tabloid, they fail basic scepticism and are just looking for confirmation bias.

How to talk to a climate sceptic is a good site which has plenty of information, I've used this a few times with good effect but it helps to have an understanding of the subject matter (high school level of science education (Australian High School)). Above all else remain rational, point out their straw-mans and thought-terminating clichés rather then engaging in them yourself, however tempting it may be.

Many sceptics are not ignorant, many just don't know or understand the science. I've met a few people that did not understand we literally test air from 1000's of years ago that's been frozen in ice cores, nor that this is backed up with geological or palaeobotanical evidence.

Re:Yawn

[iluvcapra]

Stop pandering to politicians and environmentalists, and come up with some science!

1950 called, it wants its appropriate response to AGW back.

Re:Absence of Evidence

[sonicmerlin]

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?

All scientists are skeptics at heart. Global warming denalists are not true skeptics, as they do not debate their ideas in the scientific forum where peer reviewers can tear through their research to find errors. They simply lie to the public and make boisterous claims about completely unfounded nontruths. They don't actually bring anything to the table.

The whole argument is tedious...

[ibsteve2u]

It only makes sense to take precautions so as to avoid any chance of eliminating your own species. If you're wrong, you spent some money unnecessarily. Just like when you pay for homeowner's insurance, and your house fails to do you the courtesy of burning itself down before you die.

The question is really whether the human race is willing to its potentially infinite future to satiate the greed of a few during their comparatively insignificant lifespans.

Who are you, when compared to humanity?

Re:Absence of Evidence

[h4rm0ny]

They weren't "a few scientists". They were some of the most eminent and leading scientists in the hypothesis of AGW. And they weren't "might have been dishonest". They were grossly dishonest, discarding data that contradicted their desired conclusions, concealing that they had done so, pressuring scientific journals not to publish research that went against their own. And their work was also cited and used as a basis for a lot of others' work as well as informing a lot of government policy on the environment in both the UK and the USA. How does that tally with your "a few scientists might have been dishonest." One of the things that annoys me is how some try to misrepresent criticism of these people as being motivated by political bias and keep repeating strawmen saying what skeptics "believe" so that it can be torn down (i.e. saying that skeptics dismiss their work because they made positive remarks about a skeptical scientist's death - one of the CRC scientists may have madde such remarks, but that's not why skeptics have problems with this research). Equally I get annoyed when people lump multiple issues in together for the sake of dismissing one. For example, this Lomberg person seems to have talked a lot of crap about deforestation and extinctions not happening when they plainly are. That doesn't mean you can dismiss all skepticism about AGW because he also happened to be critical of that.

If people wonder why there is increasing irritation with many that insist AGW must be true, you have only to look at the way debate on the subject is being stifled. I'll give you a direct example: The Independent, a major national newspaper in the UK printed a sprawling opinion piece condemning skeptics of AGW for all sorts of reasons (but none of them to do with science). The article was guilty of many of the things that it accused skeptics of doing and pretty much could be boiled down to "this is right because I say it is right and questioning is wrong". The Independent has a comments section and when many readers, not even all skeptics, started levelling criticism at this article, the entire comments section was deleted because it was going against the papers position on AGW. I rarely buy the paper since that incident.

Also, you talk about hard data that "Climate Change is happening". This is also a straw man. Few (any?) skeptics say that the climate changes - it obviously does all the time. They question (a) whether and how much it will warm and (b) how much of the effect is down to man's activity and (c) how much of the change due to man's activity is due to CO2. The last is frequently glossed over by those that wish to dismiss critics of AGW. So please do not misrepresent skeptics' arguments.

Re:Lomborg has a response

[h4rm0ny]

Not conspiracy, proven fact. From this email by Phil Jones, head of the Climate Research Unit (very influential leader of AGW hypothesis):

I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
Cheers
Phil

There you go - one of the most influential and powerful AGW proponents using his influence to keep journals from printing papers that contradicted some of the basis for his work. Even if he has to "redefine what peer-reviewed literature is!"

There is even more supression in the mainstream media.

Who cares either way?

[strangemachinex]

I don't really believe in global warming, only because I see so many companies using it as a scare tactic to make money. I can't take it seriously. Every commercial break is a barrage of "go green" propaganda. But I'll be the first to admit I've read nothing scientific about climate change. I honestly don't care either way. I'm not interested at all in "saving the earth maaaaan." I'd rather just go about my life. As far as I'm concerned, the world can go up in flames the second I die. Sorry if I sound like a troll, I really don't intend to. Just wondering if there are others out there who feel the same as me.

Re:Absence of Evidence

[Eunuchswear]

A CD that was produced in response to a FOIA request which was ultimately denied after a court battle was nonetheless leaked

Could you please be more specific. "A CD", "a FOIA request", "a court battle". What the fuck are you talking about?

If, perchance, you're talking about the CRU emails/files leak then you know very well that the source code shows exactly nothing.

(P.S. What court battle?)

Teabag is soooo yesterday...

[Dobeln]

This new trend of political affiliations and sexual practices being merrily intertwined in public discourse is interesting. Now, the Teabaggers (TM) have blazed the trail, so public acceptance (at least amongst MSNBC Countdown viewers) should be high.

So, I am trying to come up with something good for you little commies out there:

-Buttfucking Bolshevists?
-Assreaming Al Qaeda fans?
-Creampie Commies?
-Radical Rimjobs?

Tell me if you see something that you like.

Re:Absence of Evidence

[Dobeln]

"Where do you find evidence that they "fudged their data"?"

Fudged is the nice thing to say "deleted" or "lost" seems to be the most widely applicable phenomenon. I.e: (AR4 is the IPCC report)

"From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t
have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil
"

The hottest shit right now I guess is their making up of non-existent non-moved Chinese weather stations to "disprove" UHI.

Otherwise, "Hide the decline" offers an interesting case study. Consensus Cultists love to say the quote is "taken out of context", etc. - but this merely confirms that they are indeed... cultists. The more context you get, the more you see that the point was indeed to... fudge the presentation of the proxy record (to prevent any embarrassing... declines).

Re:Absence of Evidence

[Eunuchswear]

Fail.

1. That looks like Fortran to me! [1]
2. You've left out the part of the code where valadj is used.
3. And this code was used for what exactly? Oh, for drawing a pretty picture for a magazine cover. Not used in any published paper.
4. Oh, and back to point 2, the fudge factor wasn't in the version that was used (hint: it's commented out, second hint, it prints the text "Northern Hemisphere MXD corrected for decline" [2]).

So, what was your point, exactly?

[1] It's a joke, I started life as a Fortran programmer, I know the difference between Fortran and IDL. I also know what an IDL comment looks like.

[2] You know, the decline they hid by publishing papers about it?

Re:Absence of Evidence

[operagost]

Well, we know that the earth was much warmer in the Middle Ages, and maybe even warmer in the 1940s than today, but supposedly knowledgeable people keep telling us that we're going to have oceanfront property in Utah in 100 years.