environmental

Bjorn Lomborg's critics would do well to begin reading his book. With that said, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" presents a plethora of arguments (nearly 3,000 footnotes and a 70 page bibliography) to confirm what saner environmentalists have always suspected: the environment and life on earth is improving! Lomborg's critics will look to his title and simply assume that because he is a professor of *statistics* that he could never make an intelligent argument on the environment. Yet, Lomborg's analysis is based on statistical evidence taken around from the world and hundreds of different sources. One suspects that even if Lomborg was the most honored environmental scientist on earth, his critics would still disparage him for no other reason than his conclusions are actually positive and not comprised of Doomsday scenarios.

Let us assume for a moment that Lomborg's optimism is naive. Even if some of Lomborg's conclusions are incorrect, or his interpretation of statistics proves wrong, his often repeated point is the same: the environment needs to be cared for and we have much work to still do, but in various aspects, the air, water, food production, life expectancy, etc. have improved! Surely this be cause for SOME celebration! Lomborg should be praised and admired at minimum for not running with the herd and instead looking at facts and reality to come to his conclusions. In this way, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is an excellent book, well researched, and even if Lomborg is incorrect in some of his conclusions, he book is definitely worth a read (or two). If environmentalists would only take his lead and present the status of the environment fully and completely, they would gain much credibility.

Highly recommended.

Jan 9th 2003
From The Economist:

THE Bjorn Lomborg saga took a decidedly Orwellian turn this week. Readers will recall that Mr Lomborg, a statistician and director of Denmark's Environmental Assessment Institute, is the author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist", which attacks the environmental lobby for systematically exaggerated pessimism. Environmentalists have risen as one in furious condemnation of Mr Lomborg's presumption in challenging their claims, partly no doubt because he did it so tellingly. This week, to the delight of greens everywhere, Denmark's Committees on Scientific Dishonesty ruled on the book as follows: "Objectively speaking, the publication of the work under consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty."

How odd. Why, in the first place, is a panel with a name such as this investigating complaints against a book which makes no claim to be a scientific treatise? "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is explicitly not concerned with conducting scientific research. Rather, it measures the "litany" of environmental alarm that is constantly fed to the public against a range of largely uncontested data about the state of the planet. The litany comes off very badly from the comparison. The environmental movement was right to find the book a severe embarrassment. But since the book was not conducting scientific research, what business is it of a panel concerned with scientific dishonesty?

One might expect to find the answer to this question in the arguments and data supporting the ruling-but there aren't any. The material assembled by the panel consists almost entirely of a synopsis of four articles published by Scientific American last year. (We criticised those articles and the editorial that ran with them in our issue of February 2nd 2002.) The panel seems to regard these pieces as disinterested science, rather than counter-advocacy from committed environmentalists. Incredibly, the complaints of these self-interested parties are blandly accepted at face value. Mr Lomborg's line-by-line replies to the criticisms ... are not reported. On its own behalf, the panel offers not one instance of inaccuracy or distortion in Mr Lomborg's book: not its job, it says. On this basis it finds Mr Lomborg guilty of dishonesty.

The panel's ruling-objectively speaking-is incompetent and shameful.

This book shows concern for the earth's environment, but at the same time refutes catastrophic ecological events and processes. It's clear that both sides (environmentalists vs. everyone else) have their own agendas, which is why they argue their viewpoints as they do. So many biases based on innumerable experiences, ideologies, faiths, etc. come into play when discussing environmental issues that any debate is futile unless certain standards are set. In my view, this book is used best for studying the data provided, and making a conclusion based on your own educated reasoning - of course not until you have read the same data as interpreted by true blue 'environmentalists'. Data can be manipulated in countless ways to accommodate many viewpoints, so instead of looking at numbers in order to prove their point, I would say it's time to use some common sense, and perhaps some plain old human emotion to determine our environmental policy stances. The book itself is well written, interesting, and informative, but I wouldn't use it as a sole basis for determining an environmental viewpoint.