[saymaListserv] Re: Re: Re: (Lomborg/Death of Environmentalism)

[Joshua Stuart Rose]

At 04:33 PM 5/7/2005, Janet  Minshall wrote:
 >
 >Joshua Rose is apparently well-qualified in environmental
 >science and, presumably, teaches at Duke University in
 >North Carolina.  Bjorn Lomborg is apparently well-
 >qualified in political science and statistics and teaches
 >at Aarhus University in Denmark. Their departments,
 >presumably full of respected scholars in their fields,
 >have seen fit to promote each of them on the merits of
 >their work.

It would be unethical for me to let the impression stand that my 
qualifications within my field are comparable to Dr. Lomborg's within his. 
I completed my Ph.D. only four months ago, and at Duke was merely a 
teaching assistant, not a professor. I have spent the last few months 
working for a local watershed association, doing extensive volunteer work 
for assorted causes, and functioning as a house-husband while my wife 
develops her career.

That being said, I will emphasize the phrase above "within my field". I 
have attempted to carefully confine my comments to the realms of ecology 
and biodiversity, which I have spent my career studying. Dr. Lomborg, a 
statistician and political scientist, uses his book to issue pronouncements 
about climatology, forestry, water quality, and many other fields far 
beyond his experience or expertise. Most of those who have devoted their 
careers to these fields find Lomborg's dabbling to be shallow at best, at 
worst an insult to their fields.


 >Friends have an old traditional belief that there is "that
 >of God in each of us" and "that each of us has a measure
 >of the truth (or Light)". Is it possible that this old
 >traditional Quaker belief is relevant to the differences
 >of opinion we are faced with here?

It is possible. I cannot see where the Light is or is not in anyone else. I 
can only judge how the data, the objective facts, reflect our beliefs.

 >Are there, perhaps, "true believers" who resist any and
 >all questions about the beliefs they hold?  And do they
 >tend to discredit those who disagree?

Such belief is contrary to the most core principles of the scientific 
community. Any dissenters must only provide the data to support its 
allegations. This leads to the ongoing problems in communication between 
the data-driven scientists and religious communities, for which data is an 
impossibility. The criticism of Lomborg is not that his views are 
unacceptable, but that his use of facts is biased.


 >  And are there also "honest skeptics" who see reason to
 >doubt and question what is commonly accepted as truth?
 >And do they tend to discredit those who disagree?

There are such skeptics. However, they tend to spend their attention on 
ideas generally accepted within their fields of study. Some examples are 
the late Stephen J. Gould, who overturned the widespread assumption that 
all characters of an organism were well adapted to its environment; and Dan 
Simberloff, who showed that random distribution of species among islands 
often explained species distributions as well or better than competition 
among species. Lomborg is being debunked by so many people in so many 
fields that I doubt the hard-core skeptics will ever find him enough of a 
challenge to be worth their energy.

 >Do you, as a Friend and as a member of the group of
 >Friends among whom this discussion is taking place, find
 >that you tend to be "a true believer" and react angrily to
 >the suggestion that your beliefs might be based on some
 >flawed information? Or, on the other hand, do you tend to
 >be an "honest skeptic" and "get your hackle up" at the
 >suggestion that you should believe something simply
 >because this or that group of experts says its true?

I do not see myself in either of these two categories. The issue with 
Lomborg is not one of belief, nor of anger. He makes statements that may 
very well be true, but his attempts to prove them are far less convincing 
than others' proofs to the contrary.

As for honest skeptics, I am glad that such people exist in the world, but 
have no desire to be one of them. As a scientist, I have some understanding 
for the ordeal required to merely understand a field of science, much less 
to become accomplished or recognized in that field as a researcher. No one 
person can claim expertise in all fields, and very few can even claim such 
status in more than one. To be an "honest skeptic" as defined above would 
be to resign myself to disbelief in statistics, economics, climatology, 
computer science, medicine, and all other fields outside of my own. I trust 
other fields of the scientific community to discredit unsupported beliefs 
from within, as I have seen happen within my own.

 >  As in innumerable court cases, we can all produce
 >whatever experts are necessary to prove the point we are
 >trying to make.

Science is not a court of law, where expert testimony and authority is the 
only source of information. Lomborg's conclusions are drawn from a medley 
of second-hand summaries rehashing work done by others. Some of the very 
people he cites in support of his statements have stated that he has 
distorted their words or misinterpreted their results. His critics have 
mountains of experimental data on their side, experiments which can be 
repeated by anyone who disputes their results.

 >George Fox often railed against "the professors", the
 >experts of his day who had pretentions that they "knew"
 >what was true and that their word should be believed above
 >anyone else's.

Again, the issue here is not belief. Science professors of this day must do 
much more than merely profess knowledge, they must back it up with data. 
Those who fail to do so do not advance very far.

 >I, on the other hand, am saying, as Steve Livingston
 >suggested in his message, that we Friends are bound
 >together in a common search for truth.

This search is not necessarily on the other hand. The scientific community, 
for the most part, is also bound together by a search for truth. While I 
use different methods to seek truth as a Friend than I do as a scientist, I 
feel that both paths wind toward the same ultimate goal. And I rather doubt 
that either path can reach that goal alone; if the goal can ever truly be 
attained, I think it will require some common ground between science and 
faith. Consensus, if you will.

Cheers,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose, Ph.D.
jsr6 at duke.edu
<http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/>http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/

Duke Natural History Society
<http://www.biology.duke.edu/dnhs/>http://www.biology.duke.edu/dnhs/

Program Director
Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association
<http://www.ellerbecreek.org/>http://www.ellerbecreek.org/

Environmental Chair
Old North Durham Neighborhood Association
<http://www.oldnorthdurham.org/>http://www.oldnorthdurham.org/

Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)



Joshua S. Rose, Ph.D.
jsr6 at duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/

Duke Natural History Society
http://www.biology.duke.edu/dnhs/

Program Director
Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association
http://www.ellerbecreek.org/

Environmental Chair
Old North Durham Neighborhood Association
http://www.oldnorthdurham.org/

Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)