…and this is a 
Don't look to Bjørn Lomborg, thou sluggard
Category: Environment
Posted on: August 29, 2007 10:31 AM, by PZ Myers
Salon has a refreshingly hostile interview with Bjørn Lomborg, and they also have a strongly negative review of his new book, Cool It. This makes me very happy; I'm not a fan of the "contrarian" label for this guy — he's just another unqualified denialist, as far as I can see. I hope one of our blogs that discuss climate, like Deltoid or Island of Doubt or the Intersection, picks up on it and adds to the pile-on.
There are multiple mischaracterizations and confused arguments in the interview. Here's one that jumped out at me:
Left-wingers say it's a catastrophe and we need to change our entire means of production and society. Right-wingers say we shouldn't bother with it all. If they were right, those conclusions might follow, but that's not what the science tell us. The science tells us that global warming is problem but not a catastrophe. On the other hand, it's not a hoax. I'm trying to make a middle ground for arguing that this is not a problem that will be solved within the next five or 10 years. This is a problem that will take a half or full century, and we need to be sure we have good ways of dealing with it.
How bizarre. The right-wingers say it's a hoax, all right, but his description of the left-wing (I consider myself one of the little feathers on that wing) is so far off — the left, people like Al Gore, are actually closer to his claimed position: this is a long-term problem, it's not a catastrophe yet (but it could be), and we're going to have to spend the next century working on it. Where we differ, I think, is that we're saying we need to start taking steps now, that we can't let it just simmer and be ignored, while Lomborg is actually proposing something more favorable to the right wing: let's just talk, without doing anything.
My impression of Lomborg is that he's a fraud and front for right-wing ignoramuses scrambling frantically to use "framing" — and using the technique poorly. (Or maybe he's using it perfectly, but as I've seen far too often, framing doesn't work).
He also has a bad argument about relative spending: he suggests that spending on climate change would reduce spending on other pressing issues, like the fight against malaria. It's a bad choice. Malaria research is already underfunded — it's a third-world disease, don't you know, one that mainly affects those tropical countries, so the wealthy western nations typically don't prioritize it very highly. We don't take our big pots of money and allocate it into aliquots appropriate to the world's needs already, so for an economist to sit there and pretend that climate research is a drain on tropical disease research is comical. Especially since he seems unaware of how one feeds into the other. Hey, if the world warms up, tropical diseases will creep northward into Europe and North America, and then we'll be fighting the economic effects of both direct effects of climate change and new diseases.
And, as usual, he turns his false dilemma into an argument that we need to sit and talk about what to do, instead of actually doing anything. That's probably my main gripe with Lomborg: he's a clueless force for inertia, who's answer for everything is to do nothing that might cause us to break a sweat. Even his malaria argument is hypocritical, because he isn't asking for any increase in investment in disease research — it's nothing but an excuse to argue for doing nothing about climate.
Comments
I wondered why he was invited to scifoo - the only person there I did not try to take a picture of with Prof.Steve Steve.
Posted by: coturnix | August 29, 2007 10:45 AM
Discover magazine, in the September 2007 issue, prints a 2/3 page excerpt from Lomborg's Cool It.
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | August 29, 2007 10:47 AM
In the Discover excerpt, Lomborg compares the number of heat-related deaths during the 2003 European heat wave with "cold-related" deaths annually. Problem: the specific causes of heat-relate3d deaths is not divulged. Another problem: the cold-related deaths were not people freezing to death, but instead were heart attacks and strokes. Third problem: increasing air-conditioning to deal with excess heat will add to the effects of global warming by burning more fossil fuels. None of these problems are mentioned by Lomborg. Shame on Discover for giving this space to him without due criticism.
Posted by: Reginald Selkirk | August 29, 2007 10:53 AM
What makes it worse is that he's a statistician, so he cannot be unaware of how bogus most of his quantitative arguments are. Kind of like the situation with Behe.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | August 29, 2007 10:55 AM
The bitter irony is that Lomborg (mmmmmmmh, yeah) doesn't want to do anything for fear of breaking a sweat, but that doing nothing is going to cause him to break a sweat. I'm going to go ahead and ask him to put that in his pipe and smoke it.
Posted by: Dustin | August 29, 2007 11:09 AM
One of the key quotes from the article: "Don't do stuff before it's efficient, but make sure you get faster to the point where it gets efficient."
So this guy has no idea how technology works...
Posted by: PK | August 29, 2007 11:18 AM
A credulous interview with Bjorn Lomborg was printed several years ago in Seed Magazine, that painted him as a maverick thinker. That interview was why I cancelled my subscription.
Posted by: factician | August 29, 2007 11:21 AM
Marcus Brigstocke, again.
Posted by: Dustin | August 29, 2007 11:27 AM
If you think he's a fraud then point out where he uses bad data or misrepresents good data.
He may be wrong- but he's a whole level less wrong than creationists (for instance).
I'd be interested to know if he is a fraud- but I haven't seen any evidence so far.
Posted by: Christian Burnham | August 29, 2007 11:39 AM
Or, as in the case of all "framing" or "spin" or "persuasive argument," it is aimed at a particular target audience and you ain't in it.
I suspect it is aimed, as an example, at the guy who is thinking of buying a new car in a year or two and who thinks an additional $5,000 on the price tag for it to be a hybrid or otherwise super high mileage is a pretty good reason to do some more study before making that a standard. Maybe in three years ...
We'll have to wait and see how well it's working on those folks.
Posted by: John Pieret | August 29, 2007 11:42 AM
Classic denialist misinformation from Lomborg, noticed by Deltoid among others.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | August 29, 2007 11:50 AM
I'd say he's more of a classic minimizer than classic denialist. I would guess, based on the article, he's probably a Straussian, too. As these things seem to go hand-in-hand in that crowd.
Posted by: Moses | August 29, 2007 11:57 AM
In any case, both the post and some of the comments have offered examples of the flagrant distortion you're looking for. Myers already talked about the malaria misdirection game, and post #3 makes more of a point than it lets on. How many people die of heat stroke compared to how many die in cold-related deaths is irrelevant to the discussion, and he damn sure knows that. The insinuation is that global warming isn't a problem until more people start dying of heat stroke than of cold-related deaths, and that's patently absurd. Global warming isn't a problem until summer temperatures are consistently three digit and winter temperatures are consistently above freezing? That's his argument? That's worse than the "If the world is getting hotter, why was it so cold last week?" argument.
There's also the Lomborg Catalog of Errors. It's heroic in scope.
Posted by: Dustin | August 29, 2007 12:12 PM
Lomborg also includes the old "they all believed in GLOBAL COOLING thirty years ago" tune in his minstrel show. He has also said that since we're catching more fish, fisheries must not be in decline. His entire career is the unflushed nugget that mastercrackpot Julian Simon left in the bowl.
Posted by: TTT | August 29, 2007 12:15 PM
#14: Would that be the Julian Simon who won his bet with Paul Ehrlich of "Population Bomb" fame? The economist that "denied" that we would starve to death in the '80s due to overpopulation? Quite the crackpot.
Posted by: other bill | August 29, 2007 12:22 PM
Interesting. You see, over here in Europe, what you think about global warming is not automagically linked to what you think about religion, creationism or evolution.
I suggest you guys handle this in a similar way. You wouldn't have any reason to get over-excited about a statistician that simply says "Not so fast" then.
Posted by: Manni | August 29, 2007 12:23 PM
I'm sure, once we reduce particulate emissions, and we get the temporary increase in temperature that will result from less particulate emission but the same amount of gas emission, Lomborg will be the first in the neener-neener line. That's what I really hate about him -- some denialists are denialists because they're just plain stupid. Lomborg isn't stupid, and that makes him a deliberate liar.
Posted by: Dustin | August 29, 2007 12:24 PM
Actually.............in many respects, i agree with Bjorn, and to be honest it suprises me when people attack and dismiss him outright in the same way that people on the right dismiss the middle as 'too left'. People are so fanatical about enviromentalism that anyone who isn't as alarmist as they are *must* be bad.
I've never seen bjorn take anything but a calm, metered approach to any interview he's given, and I've always seen him freely admit when he's wrong when he's been wrong. And I'm not saying that he's right in every aspect, or that I agree with him wholesale. But labeling him as a denialist, with the intent of dismissing him, is exactly what creationist do to us with calling us darwinists: mislabeling.
Is there something inherently wrong with asking us to look for the most efficient means to solve a problem before actually trying to solve it? Is there something wrong with trying to remove hysterics from the argument and saying "hey, there might be other issues that need attention as well, we can't ignore everything else just because people are yelling louder?"
I'll be honest, I've never seen a review of bjorn's books that as calculated and calm as the reviews I see from scientists about creationist argument. Any review I've seen tends to throw tons of data at it without really addressing what he says. It's like people read that bjorn doesn't say that climate change is the most dangerous thing ever (which, he *does* say it is a problem), and then just simply try to disprove him without even addressing his arguments.
Any of you read his books, or attended a lecture? He's not saying that it's not a pressing issue, or that we shouldn't address enviromental issues. He says that we most definately should (and curiously, when he does, people label him a hypocrite). But, at least from my perspective, bjorn is saying that there are other major issues that could provide far more good to the people of this world, which could then in turn provide even *more* good to the issue of climate change, rather than just throwing money at climate change and not making much of a dent.
I do not find bjorn as outlandish and some wish to make him. I do think that climate change is a bigger issue than he makes it out to be, absolutely, but I like the fact that he wishes to appeal to our sense of reason rather than our sense of passion. When someone does that, I wish to listen to their argument, because most likely something is actually being said.
Posted by: Jayson B | August 29, 2007 12:35 PM
Please tell me this is not a community that believes Ehrlich had it all right? I'm all for rational and appropriate discounting for Global Warming, but I am not an ascetist freak.
More on topic, I am open to the calculation that the monetary penalties of GW are less than the opportunity cost of massive intervention, but I haven't seen many willing to talk numbers. I hope this sort of thing grows. In any case, intervention is the sort of thing that will require ironclad analysis and cooperation on a global scale, first.
Posted by: NE1 | August 29, 2007 12:44 PM
The bottom line is, it doesn't matter what Lomborg says, or how he supports it. His position is "wait and see". We know what's happening, we don't need to "wait and see". Waiting because we're taking a nap on a fence gets the same result as waiting because we're actively denying that it's even happening.
Posted by: Dustin | August 29, 2007 12:45 PM
Jayson, he's not at all outlandish. He's just a garden-variety liar. Dime a dozen.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | August 29, 2007 12:47 PM
"And, as usual, he turns his false dilemma into an argument that we need to sit and talk about what to do, instead of actually doing anything."
Yeah, but what DO we do about global warming? Everyone in my generation knew about it since the 70s. I don't even know anyone who runs the water while brushing their teeth. Yes, most people use the energy saving bulbs, all new appliances have the star rating. Everyone freakin' recycles. Blah, blah, blah. It hasn't made any difference yet. Know why? There's nothing we CAN do, people aren't causing the problem. Businesses are causing the pollution and it's been our governments that have allowed it. Even if we got America all locked down and fixed our part of the problem, what about China and Mexico and India...? There is nothing in our everyday lives that we, as individuals, can do. We need scientists invented air travel and space travel that doesn't pollute. We need mass transit in every city. We need power companies to consider alternatives like wind and solar, THEY can afford the start-up fees that regular people can't attempt. We need incentive plans for regular people on normal paychecks to add solar panels or wind turbines. Ain't non of that ever going to happen. It won't. Everyone needs to stop talking about global warming and start REALLY doing. Adjusting your thermostat, car-pooling, and recycling your coke bottles aren't even drops in the bucket. DO something serious or STFU.
Posted by: k | August 29, 2007 12:52 PM
Miss! Miss! Chiner aren't doing 'er sums! Miss!
They are. There are refunds, subsidies, and (I can only speak for Colorado) a coordinated and effective program to implement these that's being run by the utilities company.
Yes, it has. Suppose every car on the road today had the same emissions and piss-poor mileage they had back in the '60's and '70's. Suppose everyone who recycles now hadn't been. That the problem is getting worse is not an indicator, in any way, of the extent to which efforts have helped since it's due in no small part to an increasing population. And, even if we aren't addressing the primary causes, that's no reason to trivialize what's been done. You sound like the people on a city council who oppose banning cell phone use in cars because cell phones aren't the leading cause of car wrecks, but maybe the 7th or 8th item on the list. Weak.Posted by: Dustin | August 29, 2007 1:00 PM
I considered reading The Skeptical Environmentalist when the furor arose over that back in 2001, but I let it slip by. From what I do know I disagree with him on a number of points, but I think there's a kernel of a valid point there that Lomborg doesn't seem capable of expressing effectively.
Global warming is a bad thing. We've screwed ourselves proper, and it's going to cost us piles of cash to fix it. This is a given. It is also a given, although an often misunderstood point, that we are not saving the Earth. We are saving our Earth. The one on which humans can live reasonably comfortably. It's all about us, and if the actions taken to prevent global warming result in more long-term human misery than actually enduring the effects of global warming, then we've screwed up.
At heart, Lomborg seems to be saying that overestimating the impact of any threat is likely to lead to precisely such missteps. Imagine a typical (modern) kid who gets suckered into overwhelming credit card debt in college. Somebody tells him (correctly) that paying off his bills and improving his credit score is of paramount importance. But at some point he needs to evaluate whether to forego food and medical care, or to take a second job in order to accomplish this goal within a certain timeframe, or whether the negative effects of poor credit are bearable enough that he can extend the timeframe. This sort of balancing is obvious when you're an individual, but turns out to be less so in practice when talking about political actions. However good the science, a solution to a problem as big as global warming is necessarily political in character. This is what economic and policy wonks like Lomborg are for. Someone has to be making these evaluations and offering the practical alternatives. Unpleasant as it may be, someone has to ask questions like, "if saving polar bears means we cannot afford a national healthcare program, a credible military defense or infrastructure repairs, do we really need polar bears?" The answer may be "yes," but the question must be asked.
For a similar perspective to which you may be more sympathetic, consider terrorism. There are a few sage individuals out there who point out, quite correctly, that even completely unchecked terrorism would kill far fewer people each year than traffic accidents, fewer even than the flu, and that while a certain focus on preventing attacks is warranted, the incredibly massive spending undertaken by the United States since 9/11 is simply unjustified, particularly when we talk about mounting a military response to terrorism. A more sane response treats possible terrorist acts as a very serious criminal act, but not a sui generis threat. People espousing this position meet a popular reaction similar to Lomborg's. They are accused of wanting to do nothing to stop terrorist acts, wanting people to get killed and so forth, because people have bought into an overvaluation of an otherwise real threat, and are thus vulnerable to the idea that no amount of money spent (or liberty surrendered) in the name of preventing terrorism is too much. So the overreaction continues apace.
The difference between these "terrorism skeptics" (for want of a better term) and Lomborg is which side of the argument industry falls on. Industry opposes overhyped fear about global warming because it will cost them money. Industry supports overhyped fear about terrorism because it will make them money. Thus Lomborg is vulnerable to being used by self-serving denialists to support an agenda I don't get the impression Lomborg himself would.
And he lets them. This may indicate closet denialism, but I'm more inclined to suspect a lack of savvy to prevent it. Furthermore, he muddles his own arguments in ways that make it sound like he's talking science when he's actually talking policy. Calling himself a "skeptic" is a bad way to start here. He may also be a shameless self-promoter. His core point is almost uninteresting in its obviousness, but he has spiced it up with things that sound controversial, which, if that was his intent, makes him little better than those he criticizes. Then there are the things that are just wrong. We shouldn't erect windmills because somebody will likely someday invent a better windmill? That's just crazy talk.
So in summary my opinion of Lomborg is complicated. I'm pretty sure he isn't a denialist, I don't think he's entirely wrong, but I also don't think he's especially interesting or useful, and I don't think his argument is one that is suitable for the court of public opinion at this point. Gore-style presentations, while admittedly a little alarmist and worst-case, are to some extent necessary to actually whip up support for action in the face of well-funded denialism. It's still necessary to get it into most Americans' heads that this is a problem at all. The "voice of reason" Lomborg is trying to play will be valuable later, and even then I'm not sure Lomborg will be it.
Posted by: Gelf | August 29, 2007 1:17 PM
Interesting typo (my emphasis)! :-)
What, is that within the power of cities in the USA? Not of the states or something? Over here phoning while driving is forbidden nationwide.
Posted by: David Marjanović | August 29, 2007 1:22 PM
The 'cost' people also tend to forget that the advances and improvements advocated for curbing global warming are what we will in the future depend upon, with or without global warming. Fossil fuels will provide insufficient and waste too massive to be dealt with at the current rate. Better get a start on dealing it with now, than wait until social conditions degrade to the point where bottom half of populace is priced out of the energy market. We are already heading that way today.
Posted by: daenku32 | August 29, 2007 1:29 PM
Not only. Remember why the golden toad went extinct? It lived on a mountain in Costa Rica. Then the lowland heat came up, and with it a deadly mold species or three. That's just the most famous example.
You'll evacuate Bangladesh, then, not me. 150.5 million inhabitants, sez Wikipedia, and almost all of them live less than 12 m above sea level. Sure, said level won't rise by 12 m anytime soon, but the great flood of 1998 set 2/3 of the country underwater. Now imagine the sea level were just 1 m higher (which alone would flood 10 % of the country), and then imagine a monsoon storm.
Posted by: David Marjanović | August 29, 2007 1:35 PM
Sorry Gelf & Jayson,
As LaBonne proves with his excellently reasoned remark, because Lomborg is not 100% for immediately dismantling the industrial complex, he's one of them and should be shouted down at every opportunity.
Posted by: Spike | August 29, 2007 1:42 PM
#18: "Is there something inherently wrong with asking us to look for the most efficient means to solve a problem before actually trying to solve it?"
If the problem you're trying to fix is getting rapidly worse, it is quite foolish to sit around and look for the most efficient solution, since in a large part the most efficient solution will be by default the one that starts addressing the problem immediately. I'm guessing that when a dying patient arrives at the ER, the doctors look for the quickest way to stabilize a patient, and don't wait for the full picture of injury before acting. ("Sure, he's flatlining, but we still don't know why his heart stopped! Let's think about this some more!")
Global warming has hit that point. The consensus is that the problem is getting worse, and action should be taken now to mitigate potentially catastrophic effects down the road. In other words, 'efficiency' takes a back seat or at least a passenger seat to actually implementing some immediate fixes.
Lomborg seems to be about ten years behind the rest of the scientific community in thinking about ways to solve the problem. The fact that his arguments are in line with most climate denialists ("Don't act until all the facts are in") is disappointing and a little suspicious.
Posted by: gg | August 29, 2007 1:44 PM
Ahh, the spiketroll is back. It's true, compared to the troll Lomborg is a relatively honest man.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | August 29, 2007 1:47 PM
"As LaBonne proves with his excellently reasoned remark, because Lomborg is not 100% for immediately dismantling the industrial complex, he's one of them and should be shouted down at every opportunity."
Yeah, that's exactly what he said.
Posted by: Rey Fox | August 29, 2007 1:54 PM
Posted by: Spike | August 29, 2007 1:55 PM
Global Warming is real but just a distraction from Peak Oil which is what will completely and truly devastate major world economies.
Posted by: Vitis01 | August 29, 2007 2:01 PM
Aww, that hurts me! I'm one of you now! I renounced my libertarainim due to your excellent dismantling of my arguments on some other thread.
I believe what you believe: Socialism must triumph. Government solutions are best. Anyone who disagrees with you about global warming is a denier. Nationalized health care or bust. Big corporations are the root of all evil.
I apologize that I'm a neophyte. I'm sure a few hundred more posts and I'll get it right, sorry, I mean "left."
Posted by: Spike | August 29, 2007 2:02 PM
/alarm
Posted by: Vitis01 | August 29, 2007 2:03 PM
When do I get to learn that mindreading technique? You know, the one where you can tell who a person really is from 5-10 posts?
Posted by: Spike | August 29, 2007 2:04 PM
Yeah, it's mostly on the cities. I think Connecticut and New Jersey have statewide bans of some sort, but most of the others are enforced by cities or counties. You should see the editorials that light up the op-ed sections whenever a new city takes up the issue, too. It's nanny-state this, big brother that. I'd put dollars to navy beans that, if someone tried to make it a national policy, we'd have one of our world famous bunker vs. FBI standoffs as a result.
Mark my words, though -- the North will rise again!
Posted by: Dustin | August 29, 2007 2:13 PM
Maybe putting this in evolutionary terms will make a case against this notion. What proto-birds really need to do is fly. So forget about using a proto-wing for thermoregulation, then using it for an airfoil, then using it for short glides, and then longer glides. Let's wait until we have evolved a fullly-formed wing.
Posted by: natural cynic | August 29, 2007 2:18 PM
Spike, I'm getting a pretty clear picture of you from just the four comments on this post. You seem to be.....a whiny brat. Am I close?
Posted by: Rey Fox | August 29, 2007 2:20 PM
This is exactly why I hate medicine. They go right on ahead and try to treat cancer, even though they don't have a way of reliably curing it yet. What a bunch of maroons.
Posted by: Dustin | August 29, 2007 2:21 PM
Spike, I'd like to introduce you to a group of my friends: the colours red through indigo. They reside between black and white, and can be very useful when not trying to paint everything into strawman extremes.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention the numbers 1 through 99. They reside between 0% and 100% and can be used to represent most informed people's opinions on things.
Posted by: Brownian | August 29, 2007 2:25 PM
"Spike, I'd like to introduce you to a group of my friends: the colours red through indigo."
What about violet? Are you some kind of antipurplist?
Posted by: Rey Fox | August 29, 2007 2:28 PM
Rey, I refuse to ackowledge violet until all the facts are in.
Posted by: Brownian | August 29, 2007 2:29 PM
#42 & #43: "What about violet? Are you some kind of antipurplist?" "Rey, I refuse to ackowledge violet until all the facts are in."
Indeed; I personally believe that violet is a hoax devised by indigo to put a scare in the other colors and get more attention for its end of the spectrum.
Posted by: gg | August 29, 2007 2:33 PM
Re: 19
Want numbers justifying beginning abatement investments in the near term? Try http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/dicemodels.htm or http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/sternreview_index.cfm . And yes, they disagree about the magnitude of action needed, but both agree on the need for action.
Posted by: Zeke | August 29, 2007 2:34 PM
Now you're just picking on me 'cause I'm the new guy.
Maybe I am young, but I want to be just like LaBonne when I grow up. Can I call somebody a "liberturd" now?
Posted by: Spike | August 29, 2007 2:39 PM
As a quick addendum, http://www.mnp.nl/ipcc/pages_media/AR4-chapters.html is worth the read as well. I'd suggest the summary for policymakers and chapters 11-13.
Posted by: Zeke | August 29, 2007 2:41 PM
Exactly; and acknowledging purple will divert needed resources from orange and yellow. Also, it will have zero impact on the problems associated with infrared.
Posted by: Brownian | August 29, 2007 2:41 PM
Now you're just picking on me 'cause I'm the new guy.
You'll speak when I tell you to, freshman!
Posted by: Brownian | August 29, 2007 2:47 PM
That evolution analogy was grotesque at best. Evolution is directionless. Evolution didn't say "we need to make wings to fly," because that wasn't the goal.
The medical analogies are poor as well, because we know the causes of global warming, and if the solution was as simple as our knowledge of getting a heart beating again, then it would be done now.
A better medical analogy is of a small growth that is found. do we biopsy and to find out the best course of action, or do we send the person immediately into chemotherapy and ultra expensive treatments, because it doesn't matter how much we spend, even if its grossly over a better treatment if we looked, because we saved a life?
Bjorn has not, and I've never seen him say it, state that we should do nothing. Hell, look at the damned wired interview! He gives us a *perfect* example of what he's trying to say with the windmills. He says that windmills are good, and that his home country is very proud of all of their windmills. however, then made tens of thousands of them. Come to find out, they weren't very good. And he states, QUITE PLAINLY, that making even a couple of hundred or so would've given us the same conclusion with money more wisely spent.
And as side note, people are so obsessed about renewable energy sources that they desperately want to ignore nuclear power altogether, where if we started builting plants now would make a large impact and be fiscally responsible to boot.
Posted by: Jayson B | August 29, 2007 2:48 PM
#15:Would that be the Julian Simon who won his bet with Paul Ehrlich of "Population Bomb" fame?
The same Julian Simon who LOST his bet with David South and then refused another bet with Ehrlich years later.
More importantly, it's the same Simon who claimed we were not depleting fisheries based on his citatons of unnamed, unpublished articles that now, over 15 years later, are still unnamed and unpublished. And then there was that whole "we have enough food to sustain a human population of eleventy-squajillion" or however the math works out on his infamously kooky made-up projection.
Posted by: TTT | August 29, 2007 2:57 PM
Changed my mind. LaBonne can't argue his way out of paper sack.
Zeke's links are actually convincing, on the other hand. His post inspires me to want to grow up to be someone who thinks, can't get there by imitating LaBonne.
Posted by: Spike | August 29, 2007 2:59 PM
Ah, denialism. Is there anything it can't do?
Oh, yeah. Solve the problems at hand, or provide any kind of knowledge or evidence.
Posted by: stogoe | August 29, 2007 3:00 PM
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | August 29, 2007 3:13 PM
So witty! Perhaps I should become one of your disciples after all!
Posted by: Spike | August 29, 2007 3:26 PM
So witty! Perhaps I should become one of your disciples after all!
I don't think we do the disciple thing here. That's more of a religious/personality cult thing.
Posted by: Brownian | August 29, 2007 3:30 PM
Your first act of leadership, oh mighty Steve (can I call you Prof. Steve Steve?), would be to tell me what's incorrect about Jayson B's post of August 29, 2007 2:48 PM.
I know it must be incorrect, because he isn't calling Lomborg a liar, in fact, he's even defending him! Where does he go wrong?
Posted by: Spike | August 29, 2007 3:33 PM
It seems to me that what's wrong with Jayson B's post is that Lomborg is a liar and a denialist, or at least, the results from his stance are analogous to those of denialists (wait and do nothing until we drown and/or boil).
Posted by: stogoe | August 29, 2007 3:57 PM
And we have two links in comments above to documentation of Lomborg's, shall we say, disingenuous use of his sources.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | August 29, 2007 3:59 PM
Isn't it obvious that with no regulation and no incentives, they will invent our way out of the problem and we'll never have to spend a dime! Don't ask me who they are, or how or why they would do this. If you don't believe that they will magically appear and fix everything for us you're a fanatic!
Posted by: MikeJ | August 29, 2007 4:10 PM
And stogoe, for the last time, I'd love to see where he says do nothing. Where does he tell us to put up our feet and wait? He does the opposite, and I've provided examples just within the wired article itself.
what's contentious here is that he calls for a LESSER degree of action to focus on other more pressing issues and to better focus our funding on better solutions, not a complete withdrawel. To label him as such is disengenuious.
Again, this is like conservatives stating that anyone in the middle is on the left. Anyone who isn't declaring throwing money at climate change at the cost of debatedly more pressing humanitarian issues simply must be a denialist according to your argument. If they're not with you, they're against you.
and that's just not healthy debate.
And the links provided don't show lomborg lying at all, those are all reassesments of the risks that lomborg plays down. Someone says they're worth it, lomborg disagrees. Everyone's playing with the same facts here. Nobody is reinventing anything. And if you read the goddamn wired article, lomborg states that assuming worst case isn't always the best thing to do, which when you re-attach anything that supposedly he is editing out, is exactly what's going on.
I hate to sound like I agree with the guy on all fronts, but c'mon guys, why are you so scared of grey areas in arguments?
Posted by: Jayson B | August 29, 2007 4:13 PM
You must have a very low standard for truthfulness, somewhere in the vicinity of giving Enron's financial statements a pass. Lomborg is a serial misrepresenter and cherrypicker of data.
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | August 29, 2007 4:16 PM
Rey, I refuse to ackowledge violet until all the facts are in.
Heh. Funniest thing I've ready all day. :)
Posted by: factician | August 29, 2007 4:19 PM
You miss my point. Yes, animals go extinct as a result of human effects on climate. In the big picture that is one possible cause of species extinction among many. There are two main reasons to avoid allowing human action to drive species extinct: First is the sentimental reason, which frankly has no place in rational decisionmaking processes. Second is that species extinction is causally related (in either direction) to changes in the same ecosphere that we have to live in. That which kills golden toads may one day kill us directly, and the lack of golden toads may have unforseen long-tail consequences for the entire biosphere that are likewise detrimental to humanity.
Absent human values to judge what changes in a biosphere are "good," all you have is change. Ecological conservatism, including even the blindly sentimental variety, is fundamentally, inescapably rooted in satisfying human priorities. Any hypothetical set of human priorities that includes a decrease in the habitability of Earth for humans is ipso facto insane. Ergo the goal of environmentalism is maintaining Earth the way humans like it.
This is certainly a factor to consider. I wasn't suggesting any particular course of action. However, this is perhaps an example of faulty alarmist thinking in action. Yes, having that many people living that close to the sea is an issue, but even in the most pessimistic projections the sea won't rise quickly enough that people cannot relocate or otherwise compensate for the change. Naturally if you project conditions of 200 years hence and apply them to the present population living exactly where and as they do today, then you've imagined up a horrific catastrophe, but the changes generally happen year upon year, and people adapt their behavior to those changes at that rate.
This may amount to hardship and expense that would be otherwise unnecessary, but it isn't an instant wholesale catastrophe. It is necessary to come up with a realistic estimate of how much hardship and expense we can reasonably expect and to compare that to the hardship and expense entailed by implementation of any particular proposal to counteract those effects.
Again, I am in no way suggesting that human-generated climate change is not a problem, or that we should not take action. This is just sound policy in addressing any problem, not denialism or "waiting until all the facts are in." The facts are in; we just need to do something smart with them.
The real problem here is distinguishing between reasonable prudence and denialism attempting to disguise itself as reasonable prudence.
Posted by: Gelf | August 29, 2007 4:23 PM
There we go Steve, thank you for proving my point. Calling someone a liar doesn't make them so. Back it up.
Show me a fact that he invented. Please. After that, so me a fact that if he 'cherry picked', that the didn't already address what he omitted somewhere else. the man stands behind what he says. Anytime I've seen someone say "the dude is cherrypicking!" I've read it, and Lomborg already addressed what he omitted many times and why. Hell, again going back to the wired article you can easily read yourself (because it becomes more apparent you have not), he talks about worst case scenarios and essentially statistical blips that you can't base everything off of, and why.
And wouldn't you know, everything that you say he cherrypicked sure does seem like that's the case.
So, pony it up. If you got something showing lomborg is invented data, show it.
Unlike you, I don't toss around words like 'liar' and 'denialist' in the same way that christians call a girl with a short a 'whore'.
Posted by: Jayson B | August 29, 2007 4:27 PM
what's contentious here is that he calls for a LESSER degree of action to focus on other more pressing issues and to better focus our funding on better solutions, not a complete withdrawel. To label him as such is disengenuious.
No sir, it is Lomborg who is being disingenuous. Lomborg doesn't ever define less than what? He just wants less. It is a thinly disguised veil for saying none. In fact people who are serious about global warming are already having the type of conversations that Lomborg is pretending aren't happening. What should we do? How austere should we be? What will it cost to do it? What will it cost not to? All of these questions are being asked (and answered). Lomborg merely adds a "let's do less!" to the debate. That is the height of disingenuousness...
Lomborg is trying to hail back to the early 90s when it was cool to say, "More research needed!". Rather than saying what exactly it would take to convince them that something needs to be done, they keep the vague "More research needed!" because it doesn't have an expiration date on it. Likewise, his "Let's do less!" sounds good on paper, because he paints himself as being in the middleground, without ever honestly defining the two extremes.
Posted by: factician | August 29, 2007 4:28 PM
Now, as for Jayson: Lomborg or no Lomborg, does Jayson's argument that it is worthwhile to make sure that the solution we are applying actually solves the problem hold water? Is it rational to reject Jayson's arguments just because he doesn't reject Lomborg?
Posted by: Spike | August 29, 2007 4:29 PM
#51: Yes, that Julian Simon. When he was wrong (with South), he admitted it and paid up early, hardly a crackpot.
He did pass on the second bet, and explained why. He was forecasting what he thought of as direct measures of human welfare, while Ehrlich was offering a bet on indirect measures (the size of the fishery rather than the yield per person or demand.)
I didn't track the details on his fisheries forecast and have no comment on the latter part of your post.
Posted by: other bill | August 29, 2007 4:33 PM
Spike, where did I attack Jayson? If you want to be pedantic about it, I AGREED with him that there's nothing outlandish about Lomborg. (Unfortunately, that's not to Lomborg's credit as Jayson appears to think.) For the rest, see stogoe @ #58.
Jayson's point seems superficially reasonable, but the problem is that he is relying on Lomborg's misinformation for his definition of "making sure that the solution we are applying actually solves the problem hold water".
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | August 29, 2007 4:36 PM
Lomborg is either intellectually dishonest or stupid. His book is full of errors and these have been pointed out in numerous reviews.
He is unbelievably dishonest with his Copenhagen consensus which is his little spiel about the other problems we should focus on. He always forgets to mention the fact that the starting point is "you have 5 years and $50bn" to sort the problems.
You wouldn't put global warming on top of that list. You can't solve it in 5 years and $50bn. So you would do other things with the money. We are not restricted to his stupid little starting premise.
The other thing that some of the GW deniers have been doing is trying to pretend to be the middle ground. A tactic borrowed from the ID crowd. "Oh, there's people on the far left and the deniers... I'm the voice of reason, etc, etc."
Posted by: Mark UK | August 29, 2007 4:39 PM
I have to come down on the side of Jayson and Spike here. I read the interview, it was the first time I remember hearing of Lomberg, so I came to this fresh. The interview shows me a man who appears to be thoughtful, trying to figure out which giant world problems we should address. Seems reasonable to me. That doesn't mean that Lomberg is a creep, nor does it mean he's a great intellect. Maybe his books are another story.
Does anyone know of any great resources projecting the impact of certain actions in reducing emissions on global temperatures? I'd like to see something that quantifies the effect of reducing the human impact on warming. How much warming is already inevitable? What happens if all countries magically start following the kyoto protocol and return emissions to 1990 standards?
As far as I recall from my college courses we're in an interglacial period right now - an historically cool period in the earth's history. I think that it's in our interest to reduce human impact on climate as much as we can, but I also think that the questions that Lomberg raises are interesting.
I think that we human beings have a sense of the world as a timeless place that doesn't change. Our system of thinking and infrastructure isn't set up to deal with natural, unstoppable processes like the changing course of the Mississippi River or forest fires. How are we going to deal with something like a massive sea level rise? So when the sea level rises like it's already primed to do, what are we going to do about the people in Bangladesh and other areas around the world? It seems reasonable to think that it will take people who think like Lomberg to solve those problems. Economists and policy makers are going to be the people who decide what gets implemented. If plans are to be made soon (and hopefully they will be) he will probably be in on the conversation, and that doesn't seem all bad to me.
Posted by: CG | August 29, 2007 5:00 PM
It seems reasonable to think that it will take people who think like Lomberg to solve those problems.
Only if you want your thinkers to be disingenuous, dishonest, used-car salesmen types.
The part of Lomborg that is disingenuous (as I pointed out above) is that he pretends that he is the only one asking these questions about how expensive the remedies are and how expensive doing nothing is. But the thing is, there are already legions of economists asking (and answering!) those questions, only he pretends they don't exist. Of course he seems like a reasonable guy. That's his schtick. He's "the reasonable middle-ground guy(tm)". Except that he's a liar. He's not contributing to the process, he's muddying it up by pretending that many of these things haven't been done already. And because there are a lot of moneyed interests that like what he has to say, they ensure he gets a fair amount of publicity (think Rupert Murdoch, et al).
Posted by: factician | August 29, 2007 5:06 PM
People are already having those discussions and making those decisions, and Lomborg is on the outside, screaming to anyone who will listen that whatever we decide to do, we should do LESS of it. Just because.
Posted by: stogoe | August 29, 2007 5:08 PM
Factician and stogoe, would you mind listing a couple of examples? I'd love to read some reputable people who are addressing solutions and their impact.
Thanks,
Chris
Posted by: CG | August 29, 2007 5:13 PM