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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."
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.
The CB App. What's your 20?
This is, of course, not evidence that Anthropogenic Climate Change is real, but that public critics of ACC feel they can profitably resort to dishonesty to prove their point, since newspapers "report the controversy" instead of doing their own independent work, and most climate change deniers are happy to adopt any useful argument.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
This is the same Yale University that prints a book about the Muhammad cartoons but removes the cartoons from the book!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32732243/
Maybe Lomborg should just threaten to behead a few Yalies......that sure seems to work if you're Muslim.
I'm sure everybody here will be interested in reading Lomborg's response before forming an opinion.
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.
Anyone who says global warming is false doesn't need to have a book written about them to know they're full of it. Also, I'll be willing to wait 20 years for nanobots to fix the environment. No point in worrying for another second about the environment.
He may be skeptical, but he still is an environmentalist suffering mental malady...
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.
Here we have yet another denialist conspiracy to mislead the public debunked by actual science. Previously we had the "smoking gun" theory debunked by a blogger.
How many times do these theories need to be debunked before denialist nutjobs give up their crusade against rational science? It's like dealing with a bunch of raving Creationist lunatics.
...the flame war here will ensure there is.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
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.....
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.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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?
Got Code?
It's well established that most people don't actually check footnotes[1]. Thus you can construct an original argument, footnote a few contained facts [2], and the presence of the footnotes lends an air of support to the entire argument [3].
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.
1
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3
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
This statement concerns me: "But its chairman, Josef Fendt, said later that the track was far faster than its designers ever intended it to be." How could designers NOT be aware of how fast a person would be flying down the track? Do they not have rudimentary knowledge of physics?
If ever a pair of nerds were in need of a knuckle sandwich, here is a pair.
Greenland was colonized during a period of global warmth. That it is why it was named that way. When the solar cycle became colder, Greenland lost population due to global cooling. The climate was not influenced then by Scandinavians driving gas guzzling, CO2 belching SUV's. 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. But, I still think we should find better sources of energy. Petrochemicals can be very dirty. I think we should only use them for a feedstock for plastics and use Thorium reactors to make our energy. Thorium reactors could even be used to get rid of the deadly nuclear waste from Uranium/Plutonium reactors. http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2009/12/01/how-a-liquid-fluoride-thorium-reactor-lftr-works/ 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. BTW, I also love this video from George Carlin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
So The Lomborg Deception isn't about some spy novelist's later works being heavily ghostwritten?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1880831147?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=1880831147&adid=0C788Y6PAJ4WTVVQ3K5T&
Edited by Friel.
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?
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
By that I mean there will be people that believe what they want no matter what the evidence. To be clear I mean there's zero solid evidence of Bigfoot yet some will always believe in it. I find it bizarre that people refuse to accept we are having an impact on the environment. The evidence is everywhere. I'm not talking global warming both sides of that argument are bordering on religion I'm talking how much the world has changed. Look at common resources. Ever watch any of the logging shows? What they are cutting now are so small no one would have bothered with them 20 or 30 years ago but in many areas it's all that's left and it's so bad that when they do find old growth trees the lumber mills aren't even set up for them. They are simply too rare to bother with. Look at swordfish. They said 200 years ago you could all but walk across the Grand Banks because of all the fish. Now the swordfish they take are virtually all immature fish that have yet to reproduce. Most fisheries have collapsed, a fact. When was the last time you saw a butterfly? How many and how often? When I was growing up you'd see them by the hundreds virtually any summer day. Now I see a few a year. Same with frogs. Most great apes are down to a few percent of their original populations. It'd take a good sneeze to wipe them out and they are our closest relatives. People say the snow storms proved global warming was a hoax. Well guess what I live in central Maine and we have already lost most of our snow and it's getting up into the 50s. This is supposed to be the worst time of year for snow and cold. Don't believe anyone or any study if you want. Trust your eyes. I see radical change everywhere I look. What people still can't get through their heads is the warming is overall and we are experiencing both extreme hot and cold days. It's the average that is towards warming. The real point is we are headed for more extreme weather and that is very bad. With species extinction people need to understand it took hundreds of millions of years to create this much diversity and it will take that long to restore it. Even if it came back in a few million years look at it this way we've been around for 200,000. That means no human will ever see it this diverse again. We will have evolved into something else by then. Don't care? Well guess what, no one knows how many species we can loose before we face a general collapse of the environment. We are in the middle of one of the worst extinction events in Earth's history and we are the cause and there's no debate about that one. Most species are dying from habitat loss, we call them cities. Most of the rest either from exploitation or things like pollution and invasive species we are importing. Most of us will live to see fish a luxury for the rich and the last wild tigers and gorillas dead. The population is projected to max out at 50% more than it is now so it's going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.
well, the person is only a skeptic because they're willfully ignoring the facts.
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.
If you read through the article you realize that both sides are whiney little children. As a scientist I'm offended by all of this.
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
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.
In the wise words of our wikipedia overlords: Citation Needed!!
No actually, I checked a bit more: Edited and published by Friel by his one-man publishing company.
Any intelligent person can debunk another with convincing arguments. Myself, I believe that when in doubt, assume the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Apparently the ocean rise report cited by the IPCC has been retracted to go along with the bogus North Africa food shortage, increased natural disaster frequency and intensity, Brazilian rain forest depletion, and Himalaya glacier claims. Then there's East Anglia and Mr. Jones conceding that there'd been no statistically significant global warming for the last 15 years. I have always respected the healthy skepticism seen on slashdot, but unfortunately when AGW comes up often it seems that the game changes for many contributors and the 'science' is all of a sudden 'settled'. What's going on?
If you debunk a debunker, don't you just get back to the net-zero result?
Cherish. Live. Dream.
I suspect the oil execs are quite aware of that.
Deleted
can only be sold to you if you demand it. Great job everyone.
BL strikes me as being far more reasonable and less hysterical then his critics. His theseis is that there are far better things to spend our money on from a human point-of-view than a massive and potentially economy-wrecking war on on CO2. Is that such a terrible thing to assert? ... well, they never really figured it out. There is now slightly more forest than there was then and it looks pretty similar to me too.
I would guess that people, species and planet wil turn out to be far more adaptable than the Gore-alarmists would have us believe. And seeing how fast things are actually changing (not that fast) we will undoubtably find out who is right.
And all this reminds me a lot of the "Waldsterben" panic in the 80's when the Germans were convinced all their forests were dying and would all be gone by 2000 if we didn't
Sort of ironic that the submission is about an exhaustive check of sources when he completely copies the original story in his summary without even mentioning the source (beyond a very vague link that IMO is NOT sufficient when pulling whole sentences from the original article...)
Perhaps it were better if rather than trying to persuade the unconvinced to our way of thinking, we rounded them all up and killed them, or conscripted them into forced labor. That would solve that problem, wouldn't it? Would that make you happy?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
why the fuck should I be grateful for someone being a dairy farmer, my monetary votes for his produce are all the grace he needs
http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20reply%20to%20Howard%20Friel.pdf
Just fly over any developing country, look out the window and ask yourself why large tracts of virgin and natural environments have suddenly become clay
That's the strangest thing to say. Do you know they actually make money from it? I don't think they would do it otherwise.
The book was in fact an intelligence test. It seems a page explaining it's purpose was left out. An intelligent (enough) person such as myself reading this kind of book will spot the holes, misinterpretations, distortions and glaring factual inaccuracy (also known as outright lies). Your score is higher if you stop reading sooner once you note the particular writing style and go do something useful with your day.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
It seems that somehow in all of this that the burden of proof has switched from the people proposing the theory to the ones disputing it. I'm fairly sure this is bad science. The burden of proof always lies with the people in the affirmative, not the negative. If the affirmative cannot construct a logical argument disputing a retort by the negative, then the theory is disproven. It is insufficient to say "but we have many more other arguments in the affirmative". It may be cruel, but it only takes one win for the negative to disprove.
Furthermore, I'm fairly sure most of the people posting in this thread are not climate scientists, therefore do not understand the science being spoken about by either side, therefore should remain truly skeptical, taking neither side, until an argument is made you are capable of understanding, or you research and learn enough to understand the original argument. Until then, it's all smoke which only hints at answer, but does not prove one.
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.
about both sides of the climate change debate, courtesy of Dr. Feynman, 1974 http://www.gorgorat.com/#54
Nice fine article ... except they did not check their own sources ... "It found that bear populations are indeed declining where the Arctic is warming.", while their source attributes the decline to hunting, and even uses "Potential maximum annual removals" that are almost double than "Historical annual removals (5 yr mean)" to predict population declines ...
I stopped reading at that point ... Newsweek editors must think their subscribers are morons if they publish something like that ... good thing I am not a subscriber ....
To debunk a debunker, the debunker you debunked, first had to have something to debunk(in order to be a debunker),
and since you debunked his debunkings, whatever he debunked got rebunked and hence still stands, so the net result is 1.
1 - 1 -(-1) = 1
FRA: STFU GTFO
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)
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...
Jump of a cliff. No really.
If you hit the floor real hard you die. That much is true. If you are near heavy objects, it pulls you to it. This is also true. However we have no clue whatsoever what is causing this "pull".
So we should study ways to mitigate the impact of "Jumping of a cliff", not try to find ways to reverse the "pull".
Idiot. Science is NOT about "proof" or "show humans are the cause".
Its simply a matter of theories, and the best one sticks. Now if you try to counter with: "it could be vulcanos/solarflares/natural cycle". Then yes. it could.
Theoratically. In theory you can also jump of that cliff, and land intact.
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.
""AGW has been proven to be bogus!1!!1!!" Response: Fuck yeah, and the moon landing was a hoax; 9/11 was executed by Cheney; the holocaust is a fraud; and the sun is a motherfucka charriot of fire."
This illustrates the perils of arguing using allegories.
Of course the amount of money poured into climate research and carbon trading schemes - fields completely reliant on the steady production of ever scarier doomsday scenarios - receive far more cash than "Skeptics" will ever dream of seeing from Exxon.
Hell, the nemesis of the CRU boys is a Canadian retiree.
If ones argument is strong relative to public perception, one benefits from an open and honest argument.
If ones argument is weak relative to public perception, well... "Denialist conspiracy crusade lunatics" it is.
In short: The whole AGW hysteria is entirely reliant on the reputation cascade for operating. If they let up on the ostracism of dissenters, Gaia knows what will happen.
That someone perceives Lomborg as "Frothing" tells you quite a lot - they inhabit a dream world, parallel to ours. But such is the way of the Cult.
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.
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.
Having read Lomberg's response to the criticism, I'm more comfortable with his conclusions than I am with Friel's. However, the last word probably hasn't been written/spoken on the subject. Both sides of the argument fall short of absolute proof, but Lomberg seems to be a better mathematician.
I am basing my opinion on incomplete information (as are all the posters on this topic) since, a. Friel's complete book is is not completely available to us and, b. it's a lot of dang work to analyze the books side-by-side in any case. Despite the lack of sufficient info, people will go out and vote (some of them anyway) and the minority of the voters and the general citizenry will be stuck with the results.
The information at hand doesn't support a conclusion of immediate emergency, so I'm holding out against any hasty drastic actions that mostly serve to make Al Gore richer. The urgency is for more research done a manner that we can all trust, untainted by political considerations, BEFORE it becomes a real emergency. Legitimate scientists will examine all sides of the problem before recommending any long-term solutions.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
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?
"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 criticizes"
You only need to be "doubly careful" provided one is doing science-related things. Now, in bolstering the doomsday cult of your choice, however...
... is not his actual arguments (important as they may be), but rather that the attacks on him - in their viscousness, dishonesty and general rage-inducing pompousness - highlight how venal large swathes of the "scientific establishment" have become.
Who cares if this guy is telling the truth or not. Neither side has any credibility.
Compared to Europe and the Far East, oil consumption is very high. It takes about twice as much oil to transport an American a mile as a European or a Japanese. It takes twice as much oil to heat or cool large American houses, per occupant. US health care is two or more times as expensive per head as it is in Europe. These are real competitive disadvantages which increasingly affect the attractiveness of the US life style. It is no good having large houses if you cannot afford to heat them in winter or cool them in summer, and cannot afford the long commute to them. Whereas outside the Eastern seaboard and San Francisco, most US cities are not very pleasant to live in. The Chinese have a similar problem with the vast spaces of their interior.
It's worth considering that Lomborg is a European economist, and in many ways his arguments are valid for Europe. They may appeal to many Americans, but adopting his approach could be very bad for the US in the long term. Perhaps that's his intention.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
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.
"Professor, we would like for you to calculate if a nuclear weapon would ignite the oxygen in the atmosphere and destroy the planet. Take your time, we want to be --"
"No, it's fine."
"... What? Have you already done the calculation?!"
"No. It's just that if I'm wrong, who'd know?"
Luckily, he guessed correctly. Gotta love that Konopinski.
So far, these are my own writeups:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1559622&cid=31242704
Thirty seconds and two Googlings confirm Lomborg is right (on an issue raised in TFA) and Friel is a liar.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1559622&cid=31242742
Friel biting his own glacial ass. Delicious.
For the whole shebang, do take the time to read:
http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20reply%20to%20Howard%20Friel.pdf
So, he paints himself that way without saying it, which is proven by... others saying it?
It should be noted the allegory was brought on by his conviction of "dishonesty" by the Danish DCSD in a fact-free decision that was later rescinded. If you can find the decision, do read it, for a look at what a true scientific embarrassment looks like.
(It also offers interesting insight into the mentality of The Cult)
I wrote about him back in 2002, and called his prescriptions "Microsoft Environmental Policy":
"Get users hooked on crappy technology, and then keep them locked into a system in which the only realistically "affordable" improvements are a series of costly upgrades and retrofits. We shouldn't be focused on providing the consumer with a better technology today; instead, we should get them using our existing technology as soon as possible, in as large a quantity as possible, and the let the inevitable economic improvements drive environmental policy later."
He's a nutter fo sho. Not suprised that he's still around, though.
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.
as a scientists, earned phd, poor speller, 10+ peer reviewed papers (including papers in high profile journals with 50+ citations) the reality of science is that it is a dirty, competitive game, and the sort of things going on here are typical.
Academics have this big thing about honesty and openess, and so forth, but underneath you see all sorts of nasty stuff.
specifically, many posters have commented on how pro warming scientists used control of peer review to keep papers from being published
to my personal knolwedge, this is common in molecular biology, and I am sure it occurs all th time in all branches of science because publication in science is money, power, status and jobs.
people are more then willing to fight dirty over having a job or not
quite literally, getting a paper published, espically in a high profile journal, can mean the difference between a comfortable middleclass existence and poverty.
the real story here is that to become succesful in science, you need a lot of drive and competitivenes - science is as competitive as big league sports, and there is just as much dirty stuff going on; we just have a fairy tale vision of th scientist as this ivory tower person
normally I would login, but I forgot, and /. has this bug where after login you don't get returned to where you were, so I'm to lazy to login
cinnamon colbert
and see their big buck research grants slipping away.... Time to get shrill.
citation please??? Have a look at the freaking thread topic. THERE is your citation.
Come on now, how about a little intellectual honesty? The falsification and other shenanigans by the pro-AGW crowd have been all over the news in recent months. That doesn't make any disingenousness or innacuracy by Lombard excusable and GP didn't say it was.
The whole GW issue has become more about money (grants and taxes) and power/prestige than real science, on BOTH sides.
AGW is not a proven fact, and the shenanigans of both skeptics and supporters of the theory are doing science an injustice.
I challenge anyone to find a quote from Lomborg suggesting that he questions climate change or its anthropogenic origin.
He does, however, make a pretty convincing case that focusing on it diverts resources and attention away from some other very serious issues. But I guess it's easier to vilify him than to actually LISTEN to him.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
None of it is falsifiable. It's not testable. Individual components are based on science, but as a whole, it's nothing more than weather forecasting.
Deleted
that he didn't deny climate change was happening. He was of the opinion that there was nowhere near the evidence for the standard Gore-esque position of "Oh my god we're all gonna die. We need to stop doing everything right now and drastically cut back on everything right now." Admittedly that comes from an episode of BullShit!
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
From the article, "Some makes its way back to the earth's surface. Hence we expect to find more infrared radiation heading downwards. Surface measurements from 1973 to 2008 find an increasing trend of infrared radiation returning to earth (Wang 2009)."
This only goes to 2008. Isn't that when things started to cool down and cause trouble for human-caused global warming? Isn't that one of the reasons why it's now called "climate change"?
A: Correct. It is about manipulating the IPCC, not the peer review literature itself. I dont really know if that strengthens your case, however. For more extensive discussion, head over to the CRU nemesis himself: http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/17/climategatekeeping-2/
B: But here you go for some cut n paste - how to deep six a "dangerous" paper or journal editor in some easy steps (as far as I know it has not been published so far):
From: Phil Jones
To: rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, "Michael E. Mann" ,tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: Soon & Baliunas
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 08:49:22 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,jto@u.arizona.edu,drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, keith.alverson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more
to do with it until they
rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A CRU person is on the
editorial board, but papers
get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch.
Cheers
Phil
Dear all,
Tim Osborn has just come across this. Best to ignore probably, so
don't let it spoil your
day. I've not looked at it yet. It results from this journal having a
number of editors. The
responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few
papers through by
Michaels and Gray in the past. I've had words with Hans von Storch about
this, but got nowhere.
Another thing to discuss in Nice !
Cheers
Phil
"From: Keith Briffa
To: Edward Cook
Subject: Re: Review- confidential REALLY URGENT
Date: Wed Jun 4 13:42:54 2003
I am really sorry but I have to nag about that review – Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting - to support Dave Stahle’s and really as soon as you can. Please
Keith"
Hi Keith,
Okay, today. Promise! Now something to ask from you. Actually somewhat important too. I
got a paper to review (submitted to the Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and
Environmental Sciences), written by a Korean guy and someone from Berkeley, that claims
that the method of reconstruction that we use in dendroclimatology (reverse regression)
is wrong, biased, lousy, horrible, etc. They use your Tornetrask recon as the main
whipping boy. I have a file that you gave me in 1993 that comes from your 1992 paper.
Below is part of that file. Is this the right one? Also, is it possible to resurrect the
column headings? I would like to play with it in an effort to refute their claims.
If published as is, this paper could really do some damage. It is also an ugly paper to
review because it is rather mathematical, with a lot of Box-Jenkins stuff in it. It
won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically,
but it suffers from the classic problem of pointing out theoretical deficiencies,
without showing that their improved inverse regression method is actually better in a
practical sense. So they do lots of monte carlo stuff that shows the superiority of
their method and the deficiencies of our way of doing things, but NEVER actually show
how their method would change the Tornetrask reconstruction from what you produced.
Your assistance here is greatly appreciated. Otherwise, I will let Tornetrask sink into
the melting permafrost of northern Sweden (just kidding of course).
Cheers,
Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it
wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either
appears
I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.
Cheers
Phil
And another one:
Thanks a bunch Phil,
Along lines as my other email, would it be (?) for me to forward this to the chair of our commitee confidentially, and for his internal purposes only, to help bolster the case against MM?? let me know
t
You may want to read the emails out of East Anglia, you know the primary site for the study of AGW? You know the people who admit there has been no warming for 15 years! If we listen to the AGW extremists we should have all burned up by now. Science and politics have ugly babies!
Global Warming makes a larger portion of my Country livable! (excluding the bit underwater around the coast)
It also would open up vast natural resources in our North to be shared between Russia, Canada, USA, and Denmark respectively.
The only downside is perhaps a flood of refugees, our current method of getting to the north using "ice roads" might have to be made a bit more permanent, and variable weather conditions effecting farming in the Prairies (though this may be countered by more arable land being made available).
So while on the world as a whole, it is a very bad thing, tell me why this is such a bad thing for me specifically? Before you mention unrest in certain parts of the world, I would say that there currently is that already, has been for decades, and I don't see any change in the foreseeable future.
I am saying all of this half in jest mind you, but there is a small kernel of truth there.
This does not exclude CO2 as a warming cause. At most, it shows that something else (unidentified) can cause warming as well.
It's interesting to note that none of what you said is true. In fact, the "No Warming" believers have more in common with creationists:
Be totally honest here - slight (5-10 celcius) changes won't result in the end of humanity - civilisation maybe - but humans are more adaptive than that.
The reason I don't speak out on it more as that the idiots are doing at least partially the right things, albeit for the wrong reasons.
... and today's pet project has
... Bjørn again christian?
(Thanks, I'll be here all week - don't forget to tip your waitress:-)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
The problem is that over the past 20 years the understanding has evolved that there is a "correct" result
Like evolution?
By contrast, there are respected scientists in every other field attempting to disprove established theories
Like evolution?
Some people will believe whatever they want to believe. There is no serious scientific movement attempting to discredit evolution. Likewise, there is no serious scientific movement attempting to discredit global warming. However, there are plenty of unscientific movements seeking to discredit both evolution and global warming.
Perhaps I'm wrong but I've read Lomborg's articles and the never said AGW wasn't true, they said the fearmongering was overblown and money could better be used elsewhere. He is actually an economist first and foremost and admits as much. He became known and hated by the folk that believe in AGW because his arguments gained traction and were hard to refute because they didn't actually attack or even seriously attempt to attack the science but instead look at things from another angle.
The biggest problem I see is that when the latest news comes out about global warming or climate change, people rarely actually read the full details of any report.
They get what I would call the "Google News" version, just that main headline without clicking into the full article (who does?), and then go about their day feeling like they know what's going on with the world.
When the international panel for climate change came out with their research claims that global warming was real, how many people actually went out and read the report?
Most people just said "See! I knew it was real!" or "That's all BS, they totally faked that"
When the hackers released those emails about global warming information being falsely reported, who actually read the full article about what was falsely reported and what was not?
Most people just said "See! I knew it was all fake!" or "That's all BS, the information is still accurate just a few people screwed up!"
And now that this guy is coming out to debunk Lomborg, very few people will read Lomborg's initial research or even the debunking.
They'll just see the Google News headline and say "See! I knew it was real!" or "That's all BS, that guy is lying about Lomborg!"
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.
Unfortunately, the science has been done, by climatologists. However, they said a bunch of stuff that some of us didn't want to hear, which by definition makes it controversial, so we pretend that the science is still murky. Throwing out Gore's movie or the entire IPCC doesn't change the bare fact that about 97 out of a hundred climatologists will tell you that humans are exacerbating global warming.
I love how some with mod points label something 'Troll' when they disagree with it. So lame :)
Say what you want about Lomborg's books (and there is lot to say, no doubt), but there is at least one point he makes that is worth thinking about more carefully:
Wether we know or not how global warming really works, to me the bigger issue is that we are rapidly depleting resources and polluting/screwing up our planet - on so many levels that it is not funny. We have been doing so much crap at such a rapid pace that Lomborg is probably right when he says that we simply won't be able to pay our way out of this mess. And that includes all nations, not just the rich and/or polluting ones.
As a result, you have to do two things: reduce doing crap (again, on many levels), and pay for those solutions to reduce/reverse bad developments that make the most impact. And solutions making the most impact may not necessarily be the "feel good" solutions.
Even though this may seem wrong to many, adding some economic common sense to the whole debate (as Lomborg proposes) makes sense to me, if done right.
Frankly, I don't really care whether humankind is capable of changing the climate and generally screwing things up, because on a fundamental level I believe we simply should not. If we think/know that we are, we should get our act together and try the most effective ways of counteracting those developments. It will be hard. But we certainly know how not pollute etc., if we really wanted to.
Beyond that, the religious wars of who is right when and where really just bore me. All it does is giving people a reason not to do something sensible and productive. Such is humankind, I suppose ...
Do your own thing. And overdo it!
The fact that there was deception on both sides causes us to have to look at motive. The fact that the AAC crowd used deception for financial gain and to try and dig into the pockets of everyone on the planet is far of a concern for me than someone using deception to say the AAC crowd is wrong.
The climate change theory is "unscientific" for the same reasons why claiming that HIV causes AIDS, or the theories of dinosaur extinction are "unscientific": science requires reproducibility of the experiment and none of the above can be reproduced by different teams.
That being said, let's keep in mind that Earth underwent major upheavels in the past, including several ice ages, when there was no human-generated polution. The presumed current climate changes are slow, therefore humans and animals should have enough time to slowly adapt to them; Sahara was a fertile land a few thousand years ago.
Perhaps rather that sweat climate change scientists and politicians should focus on how to deal with the risk of a large meteorite impact, which happened in the past, is very likely to happen again, and could wipe out the human species in a blink.
Beautifully put.
Extra points if you can extend this to the Rapture.
Be sure to show your work, I know that will be difficult since so much was 'lost' by the AGW'ers.
No brain, no pain.
As I recall after The Skeptical Environmentalist was published 'Scientific American' offered $$ for articles debunking Lomborg.
NOTE: Not asking for analysis. Money and publishing only for anti Lomborg articles.
Sort of an abuse to call that process scientific.
No brain, no pain.
Without starting a giant flame war (too late?), could someone please explain the following data from two ice-core samples:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-icecore-2475.html
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-icecore-2453.html
This data is referenced in the following article, which claims global warming cannot be man-made:
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3553
I would love for someone to explain either; why the data is wrong, or how it could be misconstrued.
Please please please, no name calling. I'm uninterested in shouting matches, and am only after logical argument.
Apples, a healthy alternative to stabbing yourself in the eye.
The main modus of debate of AGW proponents from day one has been moralistic, not empirical.
I agree that's true for some AGW proponents, including some people here on Slashdot. I'd say that a good example argument from this point of view is something like "who cares if AGW is real, we shouldn't be polluting the Earth anyway." Not exactly a scientific argument.
But the scientists actually performing research are empirical, and let's face it, the online flamewars often gravitate to discussions of the science rather than the tactics (ironically I'd put this story in the tactics column since it's writer vs. writer).
When it comes around to the science, I agree with the GP--it is exhausting to see the same arguments over and over and over again, like these old tropes: "Maybe these scientists forgot about the sun." "How do we know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas?" "The greenhouse effect of CO2 doesn't matter compared to water vapor." "The earth was warmer in the past." "Volcanoes put out way more CO2 than mankind." "Other planets are warming just like Earth." "Mankind's activities are not big enough to change the climate." "It's just a natural cycle." Etc., etc. There are answers to each of these that are very easy to find with open mind and search bar.
"Skeptic" is a term that is self-applied by people who raise questions like these. When the rest of us use that term to group them, we are simply using the label they chose for themselves. Real skepticism though, I would point out, is not endless. Real skepticism is open to proof and adjusts its understanding accordingly. That sort of approach is the hallmark the scientific process, but let's face it, few people look beyond the flamewars anymore, including you apparently. I would encourage you not to confuse the enviros shouting slogans on the corner with Ph.D. scientists publishing in professional journals.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Is still science IMO..
Just saying.
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
I wasn't going to say anything before, but since I've noticed that such an obvious Troll was upgraded to +4 Insightful, I must relieve myself by saying that the Moderation system is broken. It's better than nothing, but it's sad to see such uninspired bias and mediocrity be up-moderated so high. Please note that I don't mind OPINION, so I'm not bashing the post so much as the Moderation.
Keep on stirring the bucket Pudge! -:)
You don't need to "side with who you trust." If that's how you decide "where to stand," your stance on the issue is no better founded than the deniers'.
I'm assuming you already have a basic understanding of climate science and global warming / climate change / whatever you like to call it. Now take it to the next level.
Look at the AGW denier's claims (denier sites and message boards are a good source), and try to look for an answer for each and every one of them (most deniers have never done this, BTW). You'll find that there are many "denier FAQ" pages out there that thoroughly disprove their more common arguments.
You'll soon realize that the deniers' arguments don't go very deep at all, and once you break through this thin crust of willful ignorance you find the real motivations of the AGW denier - someone who just doesn't want to believe it, because they "don't agree with those dirty hippies" or "know those elitist scientists have something up their sleeve" or "think the whole thing is just an attempt to convert the world to socialism."
So now you have a mountain of scientific evidence on the "global warming is real and human activity played a significant role" side, and a handful of disproven arguments, fallen strawmen and conspiracy theories on the "it's a scam I tells ya! Look at $invalid_claim, this exposes the whole thing!" side.
Climate science is complicated, but AGW deniers aren't.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I cant believe /. will publish any article that seems critical of a Climate change skeptic yet wont publish similar articles that are critical of Climate Change Alarmists.
Talk about selective publication and being unbiased.
Thanks /. for being on the side of cooking the science, subverting the law and fraud!
THERE IS NO MAN MADE GLOBAL WARMING!!!
There is no man made global warming, There is no man made global warming, There is no man made global warming, There is no man made global warming, There is no man made global warming, There is no man made global warming, There is no man made global warming, There is no man made global warming, There is no man made global warming,
Lomborg paints himself a persecuted DaVinci, a lone voice of scientific genius against the harsh dogma of the establishment. Basically Friel has published a detailed book review debunking that picture, the journal of nature also reviews books and like Friel they do not claim them to be anything more than researched opinion.
Lomborg was persecuted, by Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty.
From FAQ - Bjørn Lomborg (emphasis mine):
[The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation] found the DCSD verdict "dissatisfactory", "deserving [of] criticism" and "emotional." Most importantly, the Ministry found "that the DCSD has not documented where [Lomborg] has allegedly been biased in his choice of data and in his argumentation, and that the [DCSD] ruling is completely void of argumentation."
To buy off the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty, he'd need to be de Medici (which makes more sense for an economist to begin with), not DaVinci. Where did you come up with that? Instead of opening up an artery of purple prose, you might with more creativity have cited him for posing as Robert Hooke, a man who looked at the same phenomena as every other scientist, but actually saw what he was seeing. It would still exaggerate Lomborg's conceit, but at least it would edify and amuse.
If Lomborg's fraud was so blatant and egregious, how could DCSD have managed to so badly bungle their cause? Is DCSD a lighthouse of incompetence among an otherwise irreproachable system of peer review? Personally, I neither find Lomborg singular, nor the incompetence of his detractors singular. Where there's mass funding at stake, I find the peer review system no less vulnerable to bubbles of human ambition than the banking system.
As for being the "lone voice", you might wish to confer with The Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty concerning his isolation as a pariah. A man willing to go as much against the grain as he has is going to have either a thicker skin or more ego blubber than your average man. Newton chose to alienate Leibniz rather than embracing and engaging in dialog with perhaps the only man alive who could fully appreciate Newton's achievements. What evidence do you have that Lomborg would rather be the sole beacon of his cause rather than embrace his natural allies? Is his solitude selective, or generously bequeathed?
Lomborg does not claim to do science. He's an economist exposing leaps of faith from scientific mechanism to speculation about the probable future effects, to even wilder speculation about costs and outcomes in mitigating those effects. Most scientists are excellent at step one, identifying the scientific mechanism. Few scientists have any training at all in steps two or three. I agree with Lomborg that the discipline of economics has a stronger and better substantiated tradition in assessing cost-benefit of radical intervention. Scientists wade into the dismal science with no apparent concern for all the corpses buried there. To my eye, they look like fools.
What gives scientists the amazing hubris to cross this boundary of fact to speculation unmarked? The peer review process keeps them honest about the mechanism. Most of their contact with step three (cost benefit of mitigation) is a paragraph tacked on to their funding applications about the amazing benefits to humanity that will accrue if their research project is approved. These vapid claims are not subject to peer review. They are instead subject to fiscal reward, an extremely poor substitute for claiming moral high ground in the debate.
I find the obeisance to peer review in popular culture fascinating. Like hazing in the military, it's such an obnoxious process, you have to grow to love it, or lose your sanity. Like military culture, it seems to achieve its stated purpose, and has for hundreds of years.
I love this comment from Lesli
As much as I hate posting twice on the same thread, I couldn't resist adding this to a thread concerning the persecution of lone voices. This old gal tops the charts in biddy charisma.
Elaine Morgan says we evolved from aquatic apes
If nothing else, it opens the window for some clear thinking about the surprisingly thin line between peer review and culthood.
Makes me wonder if the prevailing savannah hypothesis was stitched together in much the same way as the original anomalocaris.
Yeah, fun stuff, but what does this have to do with the subject? I did a search of warm, cool, & global and found nothing pertinent.
Is the point simply that if Feynman was alive, he'd tell a few stories to put thing into perspective and everyone would then go about their business?
sr
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
There is one inescapable conclusion regarding this debate:
The continued increase in atmospheric CO2 generates more heat than light in politics.
The figures clearly show that even a linear increase in debatogenic gas will exponentially increase the number of assholes shouting at each other!
The quesion is correlation vs. causation, are these assholes heating up the debate with hot air + factual methane or vice versa?
Seems to be nothing more than a bickering citation debate over AGW.
The real tragedy is painful and distorted abuse the scientific process has taken with all this AGW 'science' floating around from self proclaimed and cohort sponsoring experts. I'm almost sick calling it a science, even calling it semi-science, quasi-science or even postulate sickens my stomach. The process generically is as follows:
"A linearized, pragmatic scheme of the four points above is sometimes offered as a guideline for proceeding:[35]
1. Define the question
2. Gather information and resources (observe)
3. Form hypothesis
4. Perform experiment and collect data
5. Analyze data
6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
7. Publish results
8. Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
The iterative cycle inherent in this step-by-step methodology goes from point 3 to 6 back to 3 again." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_process
The key it is an iterative process and will weed out incorrect hypothesis. Now granted the scale of the "experiment" renders a significant challenge to objectively interpret results, this debate we are having for pro-AGW and anti-AGW is a portion of that interpreting of data, what results we come to, is to be determined.
Personal Opinions and Examples:
I am an engineer and a fervent believer in a strict, regimented analysis to arrive at conclusive solutions. I also have yet to mention, that I'm a HVAC&R (Heating, Ventilation, Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration) engineer, I see the business side of the climate debate and what policies are 'actually' doing to our business, economy, and as a citizen, our society. I having attempted first-hand to apply some of the government sponsored mathematics to validate credits for green building certification, and can say that on a macro scale their units don't match. I and anyone who has a LEED v3.0 code book has proof in their hands (check the units for EAc4 aka Enhanced Refrigerant Credit 4). Short of the creators of this book throwing in couple unspecified coefficients ("global warming potential" or "ozone depletion potential"), they cannot make their units match up. It is near laughable for anyone who has taken calculus II or above, even to look at how the equations are written; as if by a two year old who doesn't know what subscripts are. In short, I have yet to see proof that AGW exists and see only a global scandal fueled by misinterpretation of data and the scientific process.
The AGW process:
1) Create an mandated industry
2) Regulate and control the industry
3) Own the industry
4) Gain further control of associated industries (construction, manufacturing, transportation...etc.)
IngSoc here we come.
This is now my second self-response, having since slogged through a fairly close reading of Lomborg's 27 page rebuttal to The Deception and 30 page rebuttal to Scientific American from late 2001, as well as snippets of rebuttal rebuttal.
From Holden's Response to Lomborg's Response to My Critique of His Energy Chapter:
It must be added that the space allotted for reviews is always limited, as it was in this instance in Scientific American, making it impossible to mention, never mind to explain, every mistake that has been noticed. It should also be understood that, even if space were not limited, few reviewers would consider it their responsibility to explain every error that a deeply flawed work contains, once they have explained enough of them to establish beyond doubt that the author is not competent in the subjects he is addressing.
Did he did state "my objective is to brush aside an irritating gnat" in eminencese, or do my ears deceive me?
And this (emphasis mine):
This means resources of tar sands and oil shale that would be economically exploitable only at prices around $30 per barrel are in fact more expensive than oil has been for nearly all of the last century. They could be considered "reserves" material that is exploitable with current technology at current prices only in circumstances under which the price of conventional oil had risen to well above what has been usual for the past century, which was exactly my point.
Talk about missing the forest for seeing the trees. Holdren seems to completely miss the point that Lomborg is attacking the litany of the apocalypse, the unfounded extrapolations of doom that surround whatever ecological facts gain sway in the moment. Lomborg must lie awake at night sweating over his misguided use of $30/barrel to represent a viable future price of oil. The first chart I pulled up suggests that light sweet crude hasn't seen the underside of $30 since 2004 and might never see it again.
Minus one point to Lomborg for poor scholarship, plus one hundred points to Lomborg for having chosen a credible lower bound on the near-term future price despite the century of contrary pricing which so infatuates Holdren to no useful purpose.
Of the four SA critics, it was Holdren whose initial statement I found most persuasive:
What environmentalists mainly say on this topic is not that we are running out of energy but that we are running out of environment--that is, running out of the capacity of air, water, soil and biota to absorb, without intolerable consequences for human well-being, the effects of energy extraction, transport, transformation and use.
Lomborg understands this, but makes light of the risk by putting too much faith in price trends. There's a lot of political incentive to keep the price of oil within relatively narrow bounds. One of the degrees of freedom to accomplish this is shifting the burden onto the environment, for example, the Bush administration lifting the drilling ban in Alaska. At some point the domino game of shifting the burden is doomed to fail, and then the price might suddenly spike upwards, like an uncontrolled housing bubble.
There was much reference to the IPCC in Lomborg's rebuttal. His critics were engaging in much finger wagging, while putting forth little additional data. How could they? They are eminent and political. The precise wording of IPCC reports is wrangled for years. They don't want to stick their necks out why gnat swatting. Makes me wonder if the end result of IPCC politics is on par with the report on the Challenger explosion that might have resulted without Feynman involved.
I would dearly love to see an incisive mind, such as Feynman's, write a review of Lomborg's tracts. Do you think Feynman would have carped over $30/barrel as an estimated futu
Difference between a denier and a skeptic, exhibit A: Here you see a denier who hasn't done even a few seconds of Googling to try to answer his own question. A skeptic would have done this, since skeptics are generally interested in finding the truth and not looking like total idiots, while deniers are generally interested in burying their heads in the sand (or up their ass, if you prefer).
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Interestingly, Lomborg recently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times where he spouts many views about what we need to do to fix the CO2 problem, seemingly forgetting entirely that he used to claim that it wasn't a problem that needed to be solved. Seems even Lomborg is skeptical of his own former skeptical self these days.
As far as I know, Scientific American is not a peer-reviewed publication. It is a non-fiction entertainment magazine aimed at a well-educated, scientifically literate audience. What their editors want to do is up to them. But I suspect some of the editors felt that Lomborg's research was fishy, and so they were interested in finding some well researched and documented rebuttals to Lomborg's claims.
I found it here.
I do not find Friel convincing.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Because, of course every “debunking” can be bullshit itself. In an endless succession of calling each other wrong, and relying on “facts”.
In the end you have two choices:
1. Find all the arguments, connect them by all their connections, and thereby find the base paradigms made. Then find if the base paradigms are correct by working back until you get to quantum physics and the big bang (or the closest point in time where nothing could have influenced it anymore). And if they hold, you can find any flaws in the logic of the arguments/connections.
2. Somewhere on that way, give up. Since you would have to devote your whole life to it.
Unfortunately, most people go a third, invalid (but useful) way:
3. They just listen until they give up, and then just look if it fits their very own inner model of the world. Regardless if it has anything to do with physical reality. (Most of the time, it doesn’t, even for very important points. Since we’re not perfect.) And then they call it bullshit if it doesn’t fit, or accept it into their model and from then on defend it as a “fact”, if it fits. (Note how this has nothing to do with actual physical facts.)
Luckily, in this case, it’s quite easy. Since it’s not that hard, to check if those gases we pump into the atmosphere reflect heat when coming from earth (but not when coming from the sun). And if they do that, the heat is trapped. Hence we have a greenhouse effect. Which obviously results in global warming. (Relative to a state without those gases.)
So what we need, is a simple experiment that everyone can do at home, to prove that those gases reflect sunlight when coming from earth (but not when coming from the sun).
Does anyone have something like this? That would be really cool!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
The climate change fanatics are jumping with glee over revelations that Lomborg may have either been deceptive or over-stated his case, however, this takes nothing away from the revelations of fraud and deceit revealed by the Climategate email disclosures, the false claims of Himalyan glacier meltdowns and other non-scientific and purely political chicaneries of the fanatics, revealing their house of cards and the lack of scientific reliability of their claims. It is time for a sober and non-partisan examination of the warming and climate questions and the taking of appropriate action not based on hysteria and chicanery and not leading to economic bankruptcy and major economic disruptions and dislocations that would flow from the false cures offered by the hysterics and fanatics. Wake up, all.
Friel's book may or may not be a valid critique of Bjørn Lomborg's work, but that doesn't change the fact that when it came out, Lomborg's book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" was investigated by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty and found to be scientifically dishonest, but that Lomborg was not guilty of gross negligence because of his lack of expertise in the field.
In other words, he was deemed incompetent, not dishonest.
However, in his subsequent work over the years, I think it's safe to say he's not only dishonest, but forcefully dishonest with his repeated, controversial stances against climate science and his willfull misinterpretations.
Lomborg has a Ph.D. in political science. He has no training in climatology, meteorology, biology, physical sciences, or anything that would allow him to actually understand the science of the issues he's publically talking about.
What Lomborg is doing is "meta-science" where he's selectively collecting other people's research without understanding any of it, and massaging it to fit his agenda. This sort of research aggregation is the most error-prone of all and quickly deteriorates into pure statistics based on numbers of which you have no understanding. The results are absolutely meaningless because you're no longer finding the statistic significance of facts, you're finding the statistic significance of research papers.
The investigative committee cited of "the skeptical environmentalist":
1. Fabrication of data;
2. Selective discarding of unwanted results (selective citation);
3. Deliberately misleading use of statistical methods;
4. Distorted interpretation of conclusions;
5. Plagiarism;
6. Deliberate misinterpretation of others' results.
The original biologist who submitted a complaint to the committee still maintains a website listing all the errors of Lomborg's work.
Bjørn Lomborg is no better than all the other nutcases on anti-climate blogs claiming they've found discrepancies in the scientific literature, when in fact the issue is that reading a lot of these scientific climatology papers requires at least a graduate-level understanding of statistics, biology, oceanography, etc, etc.
You wouldn't expect a meaningful result if you had a bunch of old ladies from the local knitting club review the specifications for the latest CERN particle accelerators. I don't know why people think climate science is any different.
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity. -Isaac Asimov