[saymaListserv] Does This Sound Familiar? (Relevant to the
Testimony on Truth and the Proposed Testimony on Care of the Ear
Janet Minshall
jhminshall at comcast.net
Tue May 3 23:01:43 EDT 2005
Dear Steve Livingston, You are right that we
share a mutual search for truth. I am somewhat
indisposed at the moment but have, nonetheless
found factual info on Lomborg. He is presently
serving as Executive Director of the Copenhagen
Consensus, a group which has formed a consortium
of concerned economists from around the world to
sort through and come to agreement on appropriate
and achievable responses to a whole range of
world problems which need to be addressed. His
new book is Global Crises, Global Solutions and
is available in bookstores now.
From a biography of Lomborg:
From February 2002 to July 2004 Lomborg was
director of Denmark's national Environmental
Assessment Institute and in that capacity did
additional research to support the data first
presented in his book, The Skeptical
Environmentalist, which was published in Europe
in 2001, several years before it was available in
the US.
Following below this message is part of the text
of an 11-page article which appeared in
Scientific American in 2002, before Lomborg's
book was available in the US. The full
article with Lomborg's response is on the
Greenspirit site: www.greenspirit.com/lomborg.
Please go look for yourself.
also see:
PDF] By rolling out four advocates of environmental pessimism to attack
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
... Bjorn Lomborg's brave book you have greatly
increased my respect for that book. Not only does
your reaction implicitly honour the book as a ...
www.lomborg.com/files/RidleySciAmerLomborg.pdf
Lomborg responds to critics in a detailed message
titled "Errors and Corrections" (to the Skeptical
Environmentalist) which can be found at:
www.lomborg.com/errors.htm.
Please read them yourself and see if you still wish to discredit his work.
In Peace, Janet Minshall
**Greenspirit Publishes Lomborg's Reply - Media Release Feb. 25**
**Scientific American Threatens Greenspirit - Media Release March 6**
**London Observer Reports on Bjorn Lomborg's Dispute with Scientific American**
**Silence from Scientific American on Threat to
Sue Greenspirit - Media Release April 7**
When Bjorn Lomborg published The Skeptical
Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press -
2001) he must not have been prepared for the
onslaught of comment, both personal and
professional, that has erupted in the popular and
scientific press (see www.lomborg.com ). Whereas
the popular media have generally reported
positively on the 500-plus page analysis of the
global environment, the scientific press in North
America has been negative to the point of
personal insult. It is very clear that extreme
environmentalists are deeply threatened by the
breath of fresh air Lomborg brings to the debate.
Among the most scathing of the attacks on Lomborg
was an 11-page editorial in the January 2002
edition of Scientific American. With the rather
high-handed title "Science Defends itself Against
the Skeptical Environmentalist" the editorial
declared the book a "failure" and invited four
prominent environmentalists to do their worst to
discredit Lomborg and his analysis.
Scientific American did not give Lomborg any
opportunity to respond to his critics, even
though they gave him a copy of the editorial
before it went to press. They said they would
give Lomborg one page in a future edition to
reply to 11 pages of full-on attack. Lomborg's
response was to publish the text of the
Scientific American article on his own website
and to intersperse it with a detailed response to
every point raised by his critics. Scientific
American then threatened to sue Lomborg over
copyright. In response to my complaint Scientific
American wrote "This is an infringement of our
copyright and interferes with our business of
selling the article." Does Scientific American
really think that they will lose readership
because Lomborg has posted a response to a
publication that is already off the newsstands? I
believe they acted out of political motivation
and are purposefully stifling Lomborg's efforts
to defend himself. And I don't blame Lomborg for
giving in to such a huge organization when
threatened with legal action. (If you go to
Lomborg's website www.lomborg.com and look under
Critiques you will find he has removed the
offending text, thus gutting the effectiveness of
his response.)
I think we should defy Scientific American's
blatant attempt to muzzle Lomborg. Anyone who
reads his response to the Scientific American
attack will have to agree that it is thoughtful
and thorough. Here is a link to the entire
response complete with Lomborg's comments.
LINK TO LOMBORG'S REPLY TO SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (.PDF Acrobat File)
I call on all scientists, organizations, and
citizens to publish this document on their
websites. I do not believe Scientific American
can prevent this legitimate right of free speech.
The entire editorial was an attack on Bjorn
Lomborg. Surely he has a perfect right to defend
himself on his own website. I am willing to bring
this to the test. Please help with this effort.
If you do not have a website then send the
document to someone who does.
You can build a link to Lomborg's original
article by referring to www.greenspirit.com or
you can retrieve the Acrobat .pdf file from the
Link to Lomborg's Reply above and publish the
document directly on your site.
Please let me know by e-mail
patrickmoore at greenspirit.com that you have
published Lomborg's rebuttal and I will publish a
list of websites and organizations that have
joined in this effort to bring some critical
thinking and intellectual rigor back into the
debate about the environment.
I don't necessarily agree with every word of
Lomborg's impressive book, but that is not the
issue here. The environmental movement has become
riddled with extremism, misinformation, misguided
priorities and downright deception. It is
wonderful that this dogmatic conceit is now being
effectively challenged. Let's put some wind in
Lomborg's sails!
Here is the entire text of Lomborg's response to
the attack from Scientific American:
Bjørn Lomborg's comments to the 11-page critique
in January 2002 Scientific American (SA), (in
black)
Substantially finished December 31, 2001; latest
update February 16, 2002, 16:47:45
[Background:
Recently I have received - through informal
channels - the final proofs of an 11 page feature
in Scientific American, all of it devoted to a
trashing of my recent book The Skeptical
Environmentalist, Cambridge University Press 2001
(referred as SE in references).
By now, it appears that I will be able to present
my views in a 1- page article in the May issue of
Scientific American. This document is my chance
to put my arguments to the readers of Scientific
American with much greater detail and
documentation.
References to various works are, unless otherwise
noted, to the same sources as used in SE. The
full bibliography can be downloaded at
www.lomborg.org.]
Scientific American, p61-71, January 2002, (in red).
The text comes from the final draft and has been
transferred from pdf into Word, meaning that
occasionally italics or words may have been
dropped. Most of the layout has been retained in
headings, subheadings and usage of capital
lettering. The first page (p61) is an editorial
by editor-in-chief, John Rennie, the other ten
pages flow in three columns into each other, with
a sentence on each page in very large font for
interest. These sentences will be pointed out
below, but may come from an editorial decision.
On the web, Scientific American describes the
collection of essays thus:
(SA) Misleading Math about the Earth
ESSAYS BY STEPHEN SCHNEIDER, JOHN P. HOLDREN, JOHN BONGAARTS AND THOMAS LOVEJOY
The book The Skeptical Environmentalist uses
statistics to dismiss warnings about peril for
the planet. But the science suggests that it's
the author who is out of touch with the facts.
Science defends itself against The Skeptical Environmentalist
(BL) This statement is potentially the most
surprising of all - that the following critique
should be science defending itself against my
book. In a sense this encapsulates the bias of
the following critiques. My book clearly makes a
claim to science and to be factually based. I
openly state the facts and my sources, and thus
anybody is free to point out where these are
faulty or incorrect and of course, such errors
will then be posted on my web site. Thus, there
is no need to defend science from my book - any
possible defeat of science was never the issue.
The discussion is whether the statements in my
book are correct or not. The need to make it
sound like a battle of science against my book
seems entirely to misplace and bias the focus.
Rather, the standpoint that might need to defend
itself from my book would be the alarmist
environmentalism, and that is perhaps the
headline that would make more sense: Alarmist
environmentalism defends itself against the
Skeptical Environmentalist.
(SA) MISLEADING MATH about the EARTH
CRITICAL thinking and hard data are the
cornerstones of all good science. Because
environmental sciences are so keenly important to
both our biological and economic survival-causes
that are often seen to be in conflict-they
deserve full scrutiny. With that in mind, the
book The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge
University Press), by Bjørn Lomborg's reply to
Scientific American January 2002 critique,
16-Feb-02 16:47 2/32
Lomborg, a statistician and political scientist
at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, should be
a welcome audit. And yet it isn't. As its
subtitle-Measuring the Real State of the World-
indicates, Lomborg's intention was to reanalyze
environmental data so that the public might make
policy decisions based on the truest
understanding of what science has determined. His
conclusion, which he writes surprised even him,
was that contrary to the gloomy predictions of
degradation he calls "the litany," everything is
getting better. Not that all is rosy, but the
future for the environment is less dire than is
supposed. Instead Lomborg accuses a pessimistic
and dishonest cabal of environmental groups,
institutions and the media of distorting
scientists' actual findings. (A copy of the
book's first chapter can be found at
www.lomborg.org) The problem with Lomborg's
conclusion is that the scientists themselves
disavow it.
Many spoke to us at SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN about
their frustration at what they described as
Lomborg's misrepresentation of their fields. His
seemingly dispassionate outsider's view, they
told us, is often marred by an incomplete use of
the data or a misunderstanding of the underlying
science. Even where his statistical analyses are
valid, his interpretations are frequently off the
mark-literally not seeing the state of the
forests for the number of the trees, for example.
And it is hard not to be struck by Lomborg's
presumption that he has seen into the heart of
the science more faithfully than have
investigators who have devoted their lives to it;
it is equally curious that he finds the same
contrarian good news lurking in every diverse
area of environmental science.
(BL) Making it sound like all scientists disavow
it is simply untrue. Many scientists, both in
private and publicly (e.g. statements on the
book) have praised the book. Below, you will see
that none of the claims of "misrepresentation",
"incomplete use of data" and "misunderstanding of
the underlying science" are substantiated. The
only specific claim presented here by the editor
is that I am "literally not seeing the state of
the forests for the number of the trees." This
can only refer to the one paragraph on forests by
Lovejoy (the only treatment of the matter in the
following text) - and here the analysis is quite
clear. I try to show that environmental movements
will tell us we are at risk of loosing "the last
remaining forests on earth" and that our time is
"the eleventh hour for the world's forests" (WWF,
quoted in SE:110). Yet, the longest data series
actually tells us of very little change in the
world forested area in the post-war period
(SE:111). Moreover, the longest future scenarios
from the UN climate panel (IPCC) show that in all
likelihood the Earth will have even greater
forest cover in 2100 than it has had since 1950
(IPCC 2000b, SE:283). Here, exactly looking
coolly at the longest data series gives us much
better information than just going with the
environmental myths and hype. Thus, in the
editor's only concrete claim, he seems to be wide
off the mark.
Pointing out that it seems questionable that I
should know better than the people who've devoted
their lives to particular areas, though clearly
circumstantial, nevertheless looks like a
powerful point. Yet, any person who has devoted
his or her life to a single issue will naturally
come to consider this area one of the most
crucial issues, and any problem inside the area
will likely be seen as necessary to solve.
And this is exactly my point - we should take the
science of these people seriously, but we should
not uncritically adopt their evaluation of the
problems. There are a multitude of problems in
any area of society - there are always things we
would like to improve - but we only have a
limited amount of resources. Thus, as a society
we need to ask, whether the problems are getting
bigger or smaller (are we going in the right
direction), what can we do (much or marginal) and
would this be the best use of our resources
(other areas where we could do even more good).
Such an appraisal does not come automatically
from any single issue area. This is why we need
to look, not only at the science of each area,
but also to ask: 'so, all in all, how important a
problem is your issue in the big scheme of
things.' This is what I have attempted to do with
The Skeptical Environmentalist.
(SA) We asked four leading experts to critique
Lomborg's treatments of their areas-global
warming, energy, population and biodiversity-so
readers could understand why the book provokes so
much disagreement. Lomborg's assessment that
conditions on earth are generally improving for
human welfare may hold some truth. The errors
described here, however, show that in its purpose
of describing the real state of the world, the
book is a failure.
John Rennie, EDITOR IN CHIEF
(BL) Notice that these four experts have
certainly not been chosen randomly - two of the
four reviewers are actually directly criticized
in my book. Lovejoy predicted back in 1980, that
15-20 percent of all species on earth would have
died by the year 2000 (1980:331, SE:252), a
prediction which clearly did
not hold true and this is pointed out in the
book. Holdren back in 1980 also clearly thought
that many resources were running out. Along with
Ehrlich and Holdren, he bet on this belief with
Julian Simon:
"Frustrated with the incessant claims that the
Earth would run out of oil, food and raw
materials, the economist Julian Simon in 1980
challenged the established beliefs with a bet. He
offered to bet $10,000 that any given raw
material - to be picked by his opponents - would
have dropped in price at least one year later.
The environmentalists Ehrlich, Harte and Holdren,
all of
Stanford University, accepted the challenge,
stating that "the lure of easy money can be
irresistible." The environmentalists staked their
bets on chromium, copper, nickel, tin and
tungsten, and they picked a time frame of ten
years. The bet was to be determined ten years
later, assessing whether the real
(inflation-adjusted) prices had gone up or down.
In September 1990 not only had the total basket
of raw materials but also each individual raw
material dropped in price. Chromium had dropped 5
percent, tin a whopping 74 percent. The
doomsayers had lost.
Truth is they could not have won. Ehrlich and Co.
would have lost no matter whether they had staked
their money on petroleum, foodstuffs, sugar,
coffee, cotton, wool, minerals or phosphates.
They had all become cheaper." (SE:137). Since
1990 the price of raw materials has declined
another third (Economist industrial price index,
SE:138).
The editor claims that the experts are chosen to
show why the book is causing so much
"disagreement," but given the choice of four
experts who clearly feel the book is
fundamentally wrong, it is unclear how the reader
should be able to understand that there might be
any value to my argument, and thus to the
disagreement. The obvious lack of any concern for
presenting a balanced review of my work calls
into question the real purpose of this Scientific
American feature. However, one of its
contributors, Stephen Schneider, has on a former
occasion made a suggestion that might throw some
light on the curious imbalance of the Feature
under consideration.
Schneider considers the "ethical double bind"
that might occur to the scientist who is also
concerned to contribute to a better world. As a
scientist he focuses on truth. As a concerned
citizen he must take an interest in political
efficiency. Quite obviously, Schneider finds that
this presents a delicate dilemma and he expresses
the hope that one might be both honest and
effective. However, as Schneider agonizes over
this dilemma he does offer the following bit of
unambiguous advice "So we have to offer up scary
scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements,
and make little mention of any doubts we might
have."1 Could John Rennie have taken this as
editorial advice? I don't know, but I feel that
it would account for the tone and the lack of
balance of the Feature considered as a whole.
Unfortunately, this tone and lack of balance also
seem to represent a disappointing and painful
abandonment of the long proud tradition of
enlightenment and rationality for which
Scientific American has been respected in the
past.
Finally, John Rennie tells us that, yes -
Lomborg's fundamental assertion may hold "some
truth," and yet, in the very next statement that
the book is "a failure." This could seem like
somewhat of a glaring contradiction and at least
it relies heavily on the ability of the ensuing
reviews to establish fundamental and serious
errors in the argument - something they never
manage to do.
1 "On the one hand, as scientists we are
ethically bound to the scientific method, in
effect promising to tell the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but - which means that we must
include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs,
ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not
just scientists but human beings as well. And
like most people we'd like to see the world a
better place, which in this context translates
into our working to reduce the risk of
potentially disastrous climatic change. To do
that we need to get some broadbased support, to
capture the public's imagination. That, of
course, entails getting loads of media coverage.
So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make
simplified, dramatic statements, and make little
mention of any doubts we might have. This 'double
ethical bind' we frequently find ourselves in
cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has
to decide what the right balance is between being
effective and being honest. I hope that means
being both." (Quoted in Discover, pp. 45-48, Oct.
1989,
see also American Physical Society, APS News
August/September 1996,
http://cyclotron.aps.org/apsnews/0896/11592.html).
(SA) Stephen Schneider
GLOBAL WARMING: NEGLECTING THE COMPLEXITIES
For three decades, I have been debating
alternative solutions for sustainable development
with thousands of fellow scientists and policy
analysts-exchanges carried out in myriad articles
and formal meetings. Despite all that, I readily
confess a lingering frustration: uncertainties so
infuse the issue of climate change that it is
still impossible to rule out either mild or
catastrophic outcomes, let alone provide
confident probabilities for all the claims and
counterclaims made about environmental problems.
Even the most credible international assessment
body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), has refused to attempt subjective
probabilistic estimates of future temperatures.
This has forced politicians to make their own
guesses about the likelihood of various degrees
of global warming. Will temperatures in 2100
increase by 1.4 degrees Celsius or by 5.8? The
difference means relatively adaptable changes or
very damaging ones.
Against this background of frustration, I began
increasingly to hear that a young Danish
statistician in a political science department,
Bjørn Lomborg, had applied his skills in
statistics to better determine how serious
environmental problems are. Of course, I was
anxious to see this highly publicized
contribution- The Skeptical Environmentalist:
Measuring the Real State of the World. A
"skeptical environmentalist" is certainly the
best kind, I mused, because uncertainties are so
endemic in these complex problems that suffer
from missing data, incomplete theory and
nonlinear interactions. But the "real state of
the world"-that is a high bar to set, given the
large range of plausible outcomes.
And who is Lomborg, I wondered, and why haven't I come across him at any of the
meetings where the usual suspects debate costs,
benefits, extinction rates, carrying capacity or
cloud feedback? I couldn't recall reading any
scientific or policy contributions from him
either. But there was this massive 515 page tome
with a whopping 2,930 endnotes to wade through.
On page xx of his preface, Lomborg admits, "I am
not myself an expert as regards environmental
problems"-truer words are not found in the rest
of the book, as I'll soon illustrate. I will
report primarily on the thick global warming
chapter and its 600plus endnotes. That kind of
deadweight of detail alone conjures at least the
trappings of comprehensive and careful
scholarship. So how does the reality of the text
hold up to the pretense? I'm sure you can already
guess, but let me give some examples to make
clear what I learned by reading.
(BL) These paragraphs do not really discuss my
book but establish several important rhetorical
points that need to be mentioned. First is the
John Rennie's incantation of "investigators who
have devoted their lives" to the science:
Schneider is the venerable scientist whereas I'm
a nobody.
Second, he quotes my introduction where I state
I'm not an expert as regards environmental
problems. True, but the quote in full actually
places this point in context:
"I have let experts review the chapters of this
book, but I am not myself an expert as regards
environmental problems. My aim has rather been to
give a description of the approaches to the
problems, as the experts themselves have
presented them in relevant books and journals,
and to examine the different subject-areas from
such a perspective as allows us to evaluate their
importance in the overall social prioritization.
The key idea is that we ought not to let the
environmental organizations, business lobbyists
or the media be alone in presenting truths and
priorities. Rather, we should strive for a
careful democratic check on the environmental
debate, by knowing the real state of the world -
having knowledge of the most important facts and
connections in the essential areas of our world.
It is my hope that this book will contribute to
such an understanding." (pxx)
Of course, saying that truer words are not found
in the rest of the book is clearly a rhetoric
point, as much of what I say is simply quotes of
the best available statistics from the official
entities like the UN, OECD, World Bank, EU, US
etc.
Third, Schneider lets us consider the argument
that my many endnotes conjure at least trappings
of academic argument. This seems an unreasonable
critique, since it really makes it a lot easier
for my critics to attempt to show exactly where I
might be wrong. The argument also easily
backfires, since Schneider does not supply any
endnotes or other trappings of academic argument
himself. Of course, Scientific American has
limited space, but one could easily have imagined
that SA would have put out an annotated version
of the papers on their website. (That Schneider
considers his SA article his best argument is
evident from his other, shorter and fiercer
article from http://www.gristmagazine.com/
grist/books/schneider121201.asp, where he
specifically refers to his SA piece and the Pimm
& Harvey Nature article for documentation.
Incidentally, the Nature article is also almost
devoid of documentation, see download on my
website, www.lomborg.org.)
(SA) The climate chapter makes four basic arguments:
Climate science is very uncertain, but
nonetheless the real state of the science is that
the sensitivity of the climate to carbon dioxide
will turn out to be at the low end of the IPCC
uncertainty range-which is for a warming of 1.5
to 4.5 degrees C if carbon dioxide were to double
and be held fixed over time.
Emissions scenarios, according to the IPCC, fall
into six "equally sound" alternative paths. These
paths span a doubling in carbon dioxide
concentrations in 2100 up to more than tripling
and well beyond tripling in the 22nd century.
Lomborg, however, dismisses all but the lowest of
the scenarios: "Temperatures will increase much
less than the maximum estimates from IPCC-it is
likely that the temperature will be at or below
the B1 estimate [the lowest emissions scenario]
(less than 2° C in 2100) and the temperature will
certainly not increase even further into the
twenty-second century."
Cost-benefit calculations show that although the
benefits of avoiding climate change
could be substantial ($5 trillion is the single
figure Lomborg cites), this is not worth the cost
to the economy of trying to constrain fossil fuel
emissions (a $3trillion to $33trillion range he
pulls from the economics literature).
Asymmetrically, no range is given for the climate
damages.
The Kyoto Protocol, which caps industrialized
countries' output of greenhouse gases, is too
expensive. It would reduce warming in 2100 by
only a few tenths of a degree-"putting off the
temperature increase just six years." This
number, though, is based on a straw-man policy
that nobody has seriously proposed: Lomborg
extrapolates the Kyoto Protocol, which is
applicable only up to 2012, as the world's sole
climate policy for another nine decades.
(BL) Schneider deserves credit for making clear
the main thrust of his criticism in these four
points, though he clearly cannot bear just to
state them without pejorative statements like
"asymmetrically, no rangeŠ" and "straw-man
policy", both of which are incorrect and will be
dealt with below.
(SA) Before providing specifics of why I believe
each of assertions is fatally flawed, I should
say something about Lomborg's methods. First,
most of his nearly 3,000 citations are to
secondary literature and media articles.
Moreover, even when cited, the peer-reviewed
articles come elliptically from those studies
that support his rosy view that only the low end
of the uncertainty ranges will be plausible. IPCC
authors, in contrast, were subjected to three
rounds of review by hundreds of outside experts.
They didn't have the luxury of reporting
primarily from the part of the community that
agrees with their individual views.
(BL) There is an important distinction between
secondary sources and media articles. When
discussing the entire state of the world, it
would be incredibly inefficient not to use the
vast collection of data and theory offered by
secondary sources - this is exactly the reason
for secondary literature and in general why it is
possible to have specialization in science.
However, almost all of these secondary sources
are exactly the ones used by almost all
discussants of the state of the world - the
reports of the UN, (FAO, UNDP, UNEP, WHO etc.),
IMF, the World Bank, OECD, WRI, Worldwatch
Institute, EU, US government agencies etc. In the
climate chapter, which Schneider discusses,
references to the IPCC reports constitute about
one-third of all 646 endnotes. Yet, the IPCC
reports are clearly secondary sources. Surely,
most people - including myself - would consider
these reports the best available summary of our
understanding of the climate science, which
exactly was my argument for primarily using them
as references:
"In the following I shall - unless otherwise
stated - use the figures and computer models from
the official reports of the UN climate panel, the
IPCC. The IPCC's reports are the Lomborg's reply
to Scientific American January 2002 critique,
16-Feb-02 16:47 6/32 foundation for most public
policy on climate change and the basis for most
of the arguments put forth by the environmental
organizations." (SE:259).
When I use media articles this is almost always
when analyzing media discussion and illustrating
what I believe to be a bias towards bad news or
even incorrect information that permeates
environmental news reporting. When discussing the
IPCC temperature interval for 2100 of 1.4-5.8°C,
I point out that:
"In the reporting from the major media, such as
CNN, CBS, The Times, and Time, it was found that
all used the high estimate of 5.8°C warming, and
yet none mentioned the low estimate of 1.4°C."
Naturally, this statement uses media articles as
reference but is the use problematic? Should such
a bias not be pointed out?
Likewise, I debunk U.S. News & World Report for
telling its readers in February 2001 of how
global warming would have lots of serious
consequences. One of the most outrageous would be
the US prediction: "By midcentury, the chic Art
Deco hotels that now line Miami's South Beach
could stand waterlogged and abandoned," despite
IPCC estimates of a water rise of just 16cm (6in)
by 2050 (SE:289-91). Is this use of media sources
unreasonable?
Then, the critique of my use of sources continues
with the charge that when I use peer-reviewed
articles I do so primarily to support my rosy
view of a low range but no further evidence of
this is offered.
(SA) Second, it is ironic that in a popular book
by a statistician one can't find a clear
discussion of the distinction among different
types of probabilities, such as frequentist and
Bayesian (that is, "objective" and "subjective").
He uses the word "plausible" often, but,
curiously for a statistician, he never attaches
any probability to what is "plausible." The Third
Assessment Report of the IPCC, on the other hand,
explicitly confronted the need to quantify all
confidence terms. Working Group I, for example,
gave the term "likely" a 66 to 90 percent chance
of occurring. Although the IPCC gives a wide
range for most of its projections, Lomborg
generally dismisses these ranges, focusing on the
least serious outcomes. Not so much as one
probability is offered for the chance of a
dangerous outcome, yet he makes a firm assertion
that climate "will certainly" not go beyond 2
degrees C warming in the 22nd century-a
conclusion at variance with the IPCC, other
national climate assessments and most recent
studies in the field of climate science.
(BL) It is correct that IPCC has quantified its
'plausible', but IPCC themselves quite rightly
made it clear what the limits were on the
accuracy of their different types of probability:
"the following words have been used where
appropriate to indicate judgmental estimates of
confidence: virtually certain (greater than 99%
chance that a result is true); very likely
(90-99% chance); likely (66-90% chance); medium
likelihood (33-66% chance); unlikely (10-33%
chance); very unlikely (1-10% chance);
exceptionally unlikely (less than 1% chance),"
(IPCC 2001d:2, italics added). Unless we are
talking about events with very well-established
probability distributions (which is the case for
almost none of the important global warming
issues) it really is just a judgment call whether
something has a 89% or 91% chance of occurring -
thus, had I made a similar endnote, defining the
words of confidence, it might have appeared
slightly more objective but not really made any
addition to the facts at hand.
The second claim is much more serious: that I
generally dismiss the IPCC ranges and focus on
the least serious outcomes. Neglecting such
ranges generally or without reason would, of
course, be seriously misleading, which is why I
don't do it in the book and which may explain why
my critic offers no examples. Take two of the
most important characteristics of global warming,
sea level increases and temperature impacts on
agriculture. For sea level increase I clearly
write out the ranges from the main scenarios
(SE:264) and for agriculture impact I clearly
state the IPCC ranges (SE:288).
Next, it is claimed that I do not offer any
probability of a dangerous outcome. This is
plainly incorrect. In a whole section entitled
"Fear of catastrophe" (SE: 315-7) I discuss the
two major worries of dangerous outcomes, the
sliding of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS)
and the shut-down of the thermohaline circulation
(THC) that drives the Gulf Stream. Here I quote
the 2001 IPCC report that a WAIS breakup is
considered "very unlikely during the 21st
century" (SE:315). Likewise, with respect to the
THC, I write out that the 2001 "IPCC conclude
that 'the current projections using climate
models do not exhibit a complete shut down of the
thermohaline circulation by 2100' but point out
that it could completely, and possibly
irreversibly, shut down 'if the change in
radiative forcing is large enough and applied
long enough'" (SE:316). In the endnote it is
discussed how likely it is that the radiative
forcing will be large enough and applied long
enough for this shut-down to happen. Thus, for
both the major dangerous outcomes I discuss the
probability in detail, contrary to Schneider's
claim. The final quote of "will certainly" only
works because it has been taken out of context:
"This more realistic model holds several key
points. First, it shows that global warming is
not an ever worsening problem. In fact, under any
reasonable scenario of technological change and
without policy intervention, carbon emissions
will not reach the levels of A1FI and they will
decline towards the end of the century, as we
move towards ever cheaper renewable energy
sources. Second, temperatures will increase much
less than the maximum estimates from IPCC - it is
likely that the temperature will be at or below
the B1 estimate (less than 2°C in 2100) and the
temperature will certainly not increase even
further into the twenty-second century. Third, Š"
(SE:286, italics added). The quote "will
certainly" comes from a model which is deemed
"more realistic," but it is naturally only within
this model that I can say that the temperature
will be below 2°C and not keep increasing into
the 22nd century. To make me say otherwise (that
I should make "a firm assertion") is simply
called misquoting.
(SA) Now let us look in more detail at the four
major arguments he makes in this chapter.
Climate science. A typical example of Lomborg's method is his paraphrase of a
secondary source in reporting a 1989 Hadley
Center paper in the journal Nature in which the
researchers make modifications to their climate
model: "The programmers then improved the cloud
parameterizations in two places, and the model
reacted by reducing its temperature estimate from
5.2° C to 1.9° C." Had this been first-rate
scholarship, Lomborg would have consulted the
original article, in which the concluding
sentence of the first paragraph presents the
authors' caveat: "Note that although the revised
cloud scheme is more detailed it is not
necessarily more accurate than the less
sophisticated scheme." In a similar vein, he
cites Richard S. Lindzen's controversial
stabilizing feedback, or "iris effect," as
evidence that the IPCC climate sensitivity range
should be reduced by a factor of almost three. He
fails either to understand this mechanism or to
tell us that it is based on only a few years of
data in a small part of one ocean. Extrapolating
this small sample of data to the entire globe is
like extrapolating the strong destabilizing
feedback over midcontinental landmasses as snow
melts during the spring-such an inappropriate
projection would likely increase estimates of
climate sensitivity by a factor of several.
(BL) I am glad to have pointed out the typical
way I refer to secondary sources - namely quote
them accurately. The quote comes from Science
magazine in 1997:
"A few years ago, a leading climate model -
developed at the British Meteorological
Office's Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and
Research, in Bracknell - predicted that an Earth
with twice the preindustrial level of carbon
dioxide would warm by a devastating 5.2 Degrees
Celsius. Then Hadley Center modelers, led by John
Mitchell, made two improvements to the model's
clouds--how fast precipitation fell out of
different cloud types and how sunlight and
radiant heat interacted with clouds. The model's
response to a carbon dioxide doubling dropped
from 5.2 Celsius to a more modest 1.9 Celsius."
(Kerr 1997a:1040).
However, the claim that I should have gone back
to the original article seems suspect on several
grounds. First, why would a major Science
overview article not be a trustworthy source in
general (and why not mention that the source is
Science, rather than merely "a secondary
source")? Second, it is of course possible that
there are errors in secondary sources, though the
risk is probably very small when using reputable
sources like Science. The necessary question,
though, is whether this is an important error?
And if so, why has nobody (including my critic)
corrected the article when it appeared in
Science? Finally, is it really correct that the
only relevant article to go back to is an article
from 1989 (eight years earlier), where they point
out the more detailed cloud scheme is "not
necessarily more accurate"? Naturally, much
research has been done since 1989 to establish
which cloud scheme is the more accurate; in a
1993 article Michell points out (together with C.
A. Senior):
"The importance of the representation of cloud in
a general circulation model is investigated by
utilizing four different parameterization schemes
for layer cloud in a low-resolution version of
the general circulation model at the Hadley
Centre for Climate Prediction and Research at the
United Kingdom Meteorological Office. The
performance of each version of the model in terms
of cloud and radiation is assessed in relation to
satellite data from the Earth Radiation Budget
Experiment (ERBE). Schemes that include a
prognostic cloud water variable show some
improvement on those with relative
humidity-dependent cloud, but all still Lomborg's
reply to Scientific American January 2002
critique, 16-Feb-02 16:47 8/32 show marked
differences from the ERBE data. The sensitivity
of each of the versions of the model to a
doubling of atmospheric C02 is investigated.
Midlevel and lower-level clouds decrease when
cloud is dependent on relative humidity, and this
constitutes a strong positive feedback. When
interactive cloud water is included, however,
this effect is almost entirely compensated for by
a negative feedback from the change of phase of
cloud water from ice to water. Additional
negative feedbacks are found when interactive
radiative properties of cloud are included and
these lead to an overall negative cloud feedback.
The global warming produced with the four models
then ranges from 5.4° with a relative humidity
scheme to 1.9°C with interactive cloud water and
radiative properties. Improving the treatment of
ice cloud based on observations increases the
model's sensitivity slightly to 2.1°C. Using an
energy balance model, it is estimated that the
climate sensitivity using the relative humidity
scheme along with the negative feedback from
cloud radiative properties would be 2.8°C. Thus,
2.8°- 2.1°C appears to be a better estimate of
the range of equilibrium response to a doubling
of C02." (Senior & Mitchell 1993,
http://ams.allenpress.com/ams
online/?request=getabstract&
issn=1520-0442&volume=006&issue=03&page=0393, italics added).
Here, they basically tell us that the model which
produced the 1.9°C is better though not
necessarily by a lot ("some improvement") and
that the low-end estimates are "better
estimates." Thus, the example of secondary source
quotation seems curious at best or deliberately
misleading at worst.
The claim against Lindzen seems unreasonable as
pointed out in Lindzen's own letter to Scientific
American, available at my web-site. Here Lindzen
writes:
"One small point of personal interest to me
illustrates the rather bizarre nature of these
attacks. Schneider claims that Lomborg cites a
paper by me and colleagues (Lindzen, Chou and
Hou, Does the Earth Have an Adaptive Infrared
Iris?, Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society, 82, 2001) on what we refer to as the
'iris effect' in order to reduce the IPCC claimed
sensitivities by a factor of 3. What Lomborg
does, is devote a quarter of a page to our paper
in order to point out that it 'might pose a
challenge' to the IPCC range. Schneider goes on
to chide Lomborg for failing to present an
allegedly fatal flaw in our argument: that it is
simply the extrapolation of data from "a few
years of data from a small part of one ocean."
He also presents an absurdly incomprehensible
'analogy' to positive feedbacks from
midcontinental ice melts in spring. What
Schneider really illustrates is that he
completely misunderstands what we have done,
which is to assess the effect of temperature on
the behavior of cumulonimbus convection and its
impact on large scale upper level cirrus clouds
in the tropics. The primary requirement of such a
study is that it deal with a period and a region
which contain a large enough number of
cumulonimbus towers; the results (which are
normalized by a measure of cumulus activity) are
then scalable to the entire tropics - a far cry
from naive extrapolation . The period we dealt
with (20 months in the paper, but now extended to
4 years) and the area looked at (30 o S-30 o N,
and 130 o E-170 o W) amply satisfied this
criterion. As a logical test of this, we showed
that the dependence of the ratio of cirrus area
to convective activity remained robust even when
we restricted ourselves to arbitrary small
subsets in time and space of our full data set.
We have also ascertained that existing climate
GCMs fail to replicate the observations. As our
paper amply stresses (and as Lomborg
acknowledges), there remain uncertainties in our
work, but Schneider's concern over
'extrapolation' is not one of them.
Thus, at one fell swoop, Schneider misrepresents
both the book he is attacking and the science
that he is allegedly representing."
(SA) As a final example, he quotes a
controversial hypothesis from Danish cloud
physicists that solar magnetic events modulate
cosmic rays and produce "a clear connection
between global low-level cloud cover and incoming
cosmic radiation." The Danish researchers use
this hypothesis to support an alternative to
carbon dioxide for explaining recent climate
change. Lomborg fails to discuss- and I haven't
seen it treated by the authors of that
speculative theory either- what such purported
changes to this cloud cover have done to the
radiative balance of the earth. Increasing
clouds, it has been well known since papers by
Syukuro Manabe and Richard T. Wetherald in 1967
and myself in 1972, can warm or cool the
atmosphere depending on the height of the cloud
tops, the reflectivity of the underlying surface,
the season and the latitude. The reason the IPCC
discounts this theory is that its advocates have
not demonstrated any radiative forcing sufficient
to match that of much more parsimonious theories,
such as anthropogenic forcing.
Schneider calls this theory "an alternative to
carbon dioxide for explaining recent climate
change." However, neither the Danish cloud
physicists nor I say that they are an
alternative, but a supplementary explanation:
"the sun as another important factor in the
explication of increasing global temperatures"
(SE:276, italics added). Moreover, I do point out
both its still unsolved scientific problems but
also its force and an attempt to show the
relative importance of the two:
"A number of unanswered questions and unsolved
scientific problems still remain in these
theoretical relationships. But the point is that
the sunspot theory has created a possible
correlation in that a shorter sunspot cycle
duration, such as the one we are experiencing
now, means more intense solar activity, less
cosmic radiation, fewer low-level clouds, and
therefore higher temperatures. This theory also
has the tremendous advantage, compared to the
greenhouse theory, that it can explain the
temperature changes from 1860 to 1950, which the
rest of the climate scientists with a shrug of
the shoulders have accredited to "natural
variation."
Notice that the connection between temperature
and the sunspot cycle seems to have deteriorated
during the last 10-30 years, with temperatures
outpacing sunspot activity in Figure 165. Most
likely we are instead seeing an increasing
signal, probably from greenhouse gases like CO2.
Such a find exactly underscores that neither
solar variation nor greenhouse gases can alone
explain the entire temperature record. Rather,
the fact that the emerging greenhouse gas signal
only appears now seems to indicate once again
that the estimated CO2 warming effect needs to be
lowered. One such critical study finds that the
solar hypothesis explains about 57 percent of the
temperature deviations and that the data suggest
a climate sensitivity of 1.7°C, a 33 percent
reduction of the IPPC best estimate" (SE:277-8,
italics added).
In conclusion, I do not accept the charge of
having misconstrued climate science. If I am so
wrong, one would expect that my critic should
have had an easy time showing it, not having to
rely on nitpicking, quoting out of context, and
misrepresenting.
>
>Thanks for your reply, Janet. It seems to me
>that we might be mutually engaged in a search to
>find what is accurate, or true, and that we
>benefit from sharing what we learn in our
>communal effort to round out our perspective.
>Therefore I encourage you to share what you have
>found to be inaccurate about the biographies of
>Lomborg that I have read, as well as the
>endorsements you refer to that he has received
>from other Greenpeace activists.
>
>It seems to me that Lomborg has offered some
>wisdom on the matter of the so-called "Death" of
>environmentalism, in his references to the great
>progress that has been realized in making
>business and industry more cosiderate of the
>environment. Is this not precisely because the
>environmental movement has brought stewardship
>into the global consciousness, and conscience?
>
>After the elections last November, there was a
>lot of talk in the "Liberal Media" about the
>tremendous losses sustained by the Liberal
>Element of our society: maps were drawn to
>demonstrate how tiny was the support of the Blue
>candidate, and the media declared that the
>Majority Party had won a "mandate" based on
>something called "moral values". Now a bit of
>time has passed, and it is becoming more clear
>just what that "mandate" was, and what the
>"values" were that vaulted the current
>leadership into power.
>
>In "The Death of Environmentalism",
>Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that
>environmentalists have failed to energize the
>public because their approach is fear-based
>rather than visionary. If their observation is
>accurate, it bodes ill for the current
>anti-environmental regime, because their
>approach is fear-based rather than visionary.
>How else could they convince the people to act
>against our own better interests and judgment to
>support the most environmentally destructive
>policy ever devised: the policy of war as a
>diplomatic tool?
>
>If their observation is accurate, it bodes well
>for the future of environmentalism as a
>spiritual practice, inspiring people to rejoice
>in their service to the earth and to their
>fellow beings, to practice mindfulness of their
>personal habits and consumption, and to never
>shy away from naming what they see as harmful
>out of fear that they may be perceived as
>standing in the way of profit-making.
>
>Steve
>
>On 3 May 2005 at 18:58, Janet Minshall wrote:
>
> > Dear Steve Livingston, Sorry, I think you haven't even read an
> > accurate biography of Lomborg or the several confirmations of his
> > activism from other Greenpeace activists. I would expect
> > environmentalists whose work he questions to retaliate.
> >
> > I am glad that you are open to market-based approaches to cleaning up
> > the environment. Would that others were so open. Best Regards, Janet
> > Minshall
>--
>Steve Livingston
>nc_stereoman at charter.net
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