A Smear Continues (Bjorn Lomborg's and The Skeptical Environmentalist)

techcentralstation ^ | 01/08/2003 | Nick Schulz

[SJackson]

When Bjorn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist was published a little over a year ago it caused an immediate sensation in the United States and Europe for its unconventionally optimistic take on environmental matters.

At the time, I asked Ronald Bailey, the author and editor of two books on the environment and the foremost expert in the United States on the intersection of science policy and political controversy, what he thought of the book.

"Lomborg doesn't have a clue what's about to happen to him," Bailey said. "I feel sorry for him."

Bailey was right.

In a little over a year, a global smear campaign has attempted to discredit the Danish academic who had the audacity to question the hysterics and distortions of the modern day environmental movement. So threatened were the professional environmental pessimists in academia, NGOs and think tanks by Lomborg's arguments and ideas, they lashed out and viciously attacked him, seeking to destroy his credibility. The attack included a one-sided smear in the pages of Scientific American, protesters throwing pies at him at speaking engagements, and a website, www.anti-lomborg.com, devoted to discrediting him.

The smear has now reached a new low, with the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) playing the 17th Century Catholic Church to Lomborg's heretical Galileo. The DCSD has written a 16-page book report denouncing the Dane for publishing a book that they say falls "within the concept of scientific dishonesty."

"The publication is deemed clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice," the Committees concluded. This smear was then picked up and amplified by The New York Times, Washington Post, and other publications.

But the Committees' report is nothing more than a rehashing of the complaints already lodged against Lomborg, complaints that are largely without merit or that he has refuted.

For example, the Committees rely heavily on Stephen Schneider's complaint about Lomborg's treatment of climate science in The Skeptical Environmentalist. The Committees describe Schneider as "a particularly respected researcher who has been discussing these problems for 30 years."

But Schneider is hardly always a paragon of scientific integrity. In a now famous interview with Discover magazine, Schneider showed his true colors:

"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 climate change. To do that, we need to get some broad-based 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. … Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

Would the Committees deem that admission within "the standards of good scientific practice"? It is those "scary scenarios … simplified, dramatic statements" that Lomborg sought to address in his book.

But what the Committees and others who perpetuate the smear against Lomborg don't realize just yet is they have a bigger problem on their hands. The extreme pessimism of the environmental movement doesn't stand up to scrutiny, and more and more scientists who refuse to be cowed by academic bullies and their lapdogs in the press are speaking out.

This April, Jack Hollander, the distinguished emeritus professor at Berkeley, is publishing a new book "The Real Environmental Crisis: How Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environment's Number One Enemy." An early draft of the book shows it deepens our understanding of many of the same themes Lomborg discussed in The Skeptical Environmentalist and denounces in convincing fashion the extreme pessimism of the environmental movement typified by Schneider and others who have attacked Lomborg.

In the meantime, in the effort "to capture the public's imagination," as Schneider so honestly put it, the smears against Lomborg and others will no doubt continue.

Editor's Note: For More on the Lomborg controversy click here.

[SJackson]

"For less than just one year of [the cost of] meeting Kyoto," Lomborg said by way of comparing the costs involved, "we could provide clean water and sanitation for all the developing world forever."

Lomborg's Lessons

Arnold Kling, Contributor, TCS

04/02/2002

I believe that the economist and the environmentalist can be friends. But it would help if environmentalists would, like Lomborg, try to understand important principles of economics, including substitutability, finite cost, and discounting. When environmentalists simply denounce economics, without making a convincing alternative case using analysis and data, they fail to advance our understanding.

Common Sense and Sensibility

Arnold Kling, Contributor, TCS

03/28/2002

Economists are not well thought of these days by environmentalists. Or so it seems from accounts such as a recent Scientific American excerpt of Edward O. Wilson's book, The Future of Life. He characterizes economists as narrow, myopic environmental ignoramuses.

A Disgrace to American Science

Philip Stott, Emeritus Professor

03/11/2002

The January 'issue' of the Scientific American was surely nothing less than a disgrace to American science. The now notorious attack on the young Danish statistician, Dr. Bjørn Lomborg, and his important book, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (Cambridge University Press), not only offended against the principle of open, vigorous debate in science but, more importantly, also flouted the normal rules of natural justice.

Free Speech Under Attack

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, Contributing Editor, TCS

03/06/2002

When Bjorn Lomborg wrote his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, I imagine that he expected to be criticized; one doesn't accuse an entrenched establishment of fraud without encountering some blowback. So when a critical issue of Scientific American came out, accusing Lomborg of not knowing what he was talking about, Lomborg didn't get mad: he simply posted the article, along with a detailed response, on his website.

Green with Rage

James K. Glassman, Host, TCS

02/21/2002

Sheer panic. That's the only way to describe the reaction of green activists to a fact-filled 515-page book by a young Danish statistician, published in English late last year by Cambridge University Press. The statistician, a slim, laid-back former Greenpeace member named Bjorn Lomborg, dared to question the conventional wisdom of the alarmists who dominate the fund-raising arm of the environmental movement: that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

Bjorn's Long March

James Pinkerton, Fellow, New America Foundation and TCS Columnist

02/11/2002

Lomborg freely admits that he is a statistician, not an earth scientist. As he told a recent forum at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank in New York City, "I didn't go out and measure any temperatures." Instead, true to his statistical calling, he gathered numbers. And then, in the tradition of Julian Simon and Gregg Easterbrook, he followed the trail of his data, leading him to the conclusion that, "things are getting better, doomsday is not near."

Bjorn Again! Fundamentalist Greens Launch Smear Campaign

Ronald Bailey

11/28/2001

Suggesting to ideological environmentalists that the natural world is not about to collapse under the assault of a greedy and heedless humanity is akin to telling a convention of Southern Baptist preachers that gambling, drinking and dancing are not sins. In both circumstances, the Green ideologues and the Baptists will denounce you as a venal heretic who must be cast out of the company of decent men and women before you contaminate them with your dangerous ideas.

Greener Than You Think

Denis Dutton, Professor of Philosophy

10/26/2001

Bjorn Lomborg's good news about the environment is bad news for Green ideologues. His richly informative, lucid book is now the place from which environmental policy decisions must be argued. In fact, The Skeptical Environmentalist is the most significant work on the environment since the appearance of its polar opposite, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, in 1962. It's a magnificent achievement.

Lomborg Lands in DC to Demolish Eco-Terror Myth

Duane D. Freese, Columnist, TCS

10/03/2001

"Global warming is a problem, but trying to fix it would make the world worse."
That's one of many conclusions by Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg in his iconoclastic new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, that most environmental activists don't like.

[Issaquahking]

Ping for your reading enjoyment, to bad we can't get more people to be former greens like this man is! We who acknowledge the truth need to keep pounding on the left with facts to get the rest of America to be doing the right thing when it comes The Constitution, capitalism, and property rights!!!

[Carry_Okie]

I have some disagreement with Lomborg. I think he underestimates the severity of infestations of exotic species and the impact of urbanization on coastal marine productivity, niether of which would show up in a statistical analysis. I also think he doesn't understand how productive the planet could be were we released from the straitjacket of corporate fascist environmentalism.

Lomborg's accusations that the RICOnuts lack credibility are patently obvious. That the panel cited in the article is unwilling to list specifics, calls their credibility into question, but I'll have to wait until I see a translation of the full report before forming an opinion on the legitimacy of the charges.

[JeeperFreeper]

The part about no specifics from critics in the debate is what caught my untutored eye. If someone's wrong or using scientifically bad methods, give the details. That should be elatively easy. Simply resorting to unsubstantiated ad hominem attacks smacks of deception by Lomborg's enemies.