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The Skeptical Environmentalist

The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (TSE) (Danish: Verdens Sande Tilstand) is a controversial book by political scientist Bjørn Lomborg, which argues that claims made about global warming, overpopulation, declining energy resources, deforestation, species loss, water shortages, and a variety of other global environmental issues are exaggerations and unsupported by a proper analysis of the relevant data. It was first published in Danish in 1998, and the English edition was published as a peer-reviewed work in environmental economics by Cambridge University Press in 2001.

Compared to the body of environmentalist and anti-environmentalist books currently in publication, TSE clearly stands out on two fronts:

  1. All-encompassing scope - it explicitly sets out to analyse all of the public's commonly held concerns about serious global problems with the environment;
  2. Huge international media coverage, with scientific media generally falling in the highly critical, and news media generally highly positive.


Contents

Overview

The Skeptical Environmentalist challenges many popular examples of serious environmentalist concerns, by assembling and interpreting data from a large number of sources. It cites some 3,000 individual references from primary and secondary material. Much of its methodology and integrity have been subject to criticism from scientists who argue that Lomborg has distorted the various fields of research he covers. Support for the book (and criticism of its critics) has been staunch as well, notably, from respected news media, including The Economist and the New York Times.

Lomborg, a Danish Political Sciences Ph.D and former associate professor lecturing in statistics, has no formal training in environmental science. In numerous interviews, he ascribed his motivation for writing TSE to his personal convictions, making clear that he was a pro-environmentalist and a Greenpeace supporter (contrary to reports, not a "member", as Greenpeace does not have regular card-carrying membership). He has stated that he began his research as an attempt to counter what he saw as anti-ecological arguments by Julian Simon in an article in Wired, but changed his mind after starting to analyze the data. Lomborg describes the views he attributes to environmental campaigners as "the Litany", views which he also claims to have held, and his book purports to correct.

As a footnote, Lomborg's second book, Global Crises, Global Solutions (Oct. 2004; Cambridge University Press), of which he is the editor, is based on an academic project that he initiated and presided over called the Copenhagen Consensus. It also addresses global problems in a sweeping way, using data analysis and interpretation by a panel of well-known economists. It is also controversial.

The Litany

The core of what Lomborg describes as "the Litany" comprises four widely publicized and popularly held environmental fears. He refers to statistics to refute the general claims in all four areas. He cites accepted mainstream sources, like the US government, UN agencies and the like. His preference is for global long-term data, as opposed to regional and short-term. The book is extensively footnoted.

  1. "Natural resources are running out." Lomborg's findings show increasing availability and lower cost over time of fossil fuels, minerals, and other natural resources.
  2. "The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat." Lomborg finds that population growth is not skyrocketing and, overall, hunger is down.
  3. "Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers: forests are disappearing and fish stocks are collapsing." Lomborg finds the situation highly exaggerated as to the number of species disappearing, and finds a net global increase in forested areas.
  4. "The planet's air and water are becoming ever more polluted." According to Lomborg's figures, pollution is decreasing in developed nations; for developing nations where pollution is increasing, it is likely to steadily decrease as their economic situation improves.

TSE also addresses global warming, not directly disputing its existence or potential severity, but arguing against the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol (it would have too little effect over too long a period at too great a cost, better off using Kyoto resources elsewhere).

Many of Lomborg's conclusions are not solely based on analysis of figures, but also depend on continuing advances in technology and steady economic growth (e.g. advances in industrialized agriculture will continue to increase food production; advances in oil and mineral exploration and extraction will continue to increase supplies; pollution will go down as nations get wealthier).

Praise

In spite of intense criticism in most of the scientific press, TSE generally received extremely positive reviews from the mainstream media, including:

  • The Economist - "This is one of the most valuable books on public policy - not merely environmental policy - to have been written for the intelligent general reader in the past ten years.... The Skeptical Environmentalist is a triumph.";
  • New York Times - "The primary target of the book, a substantial work of analysis with almost 3,000 footnotes, are statements made by environemtal organizations like the Worldwatch Institute, the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace.";
  • Wall Street Journal - "...a superbly documented and readable book.";
  • Washington Post - "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.";
  • Rolling Stone - "Lomborg pulls off the remarkable feat of welding the techno-optimism of the Internet age with a lefty's concern for the fate of the planet.".

The amount of TV, radio and press attention around the world was tremendous, and is perhaps best characterized by this statement (as excerpted in Lomborg/Cambridge University Press media clippings[1]):

"The Skeptical Environmentalist marks a critical environmental moment.... We can forget those dreary old idols: Paul Ehrlich, Lester Brown with his Worldwatch Institute, Greenpeace and all the others. They have been exiled into the darkness. Eco-optimism can begin to rise over the Earth. After Lomborg, the environmental movement will begin to wither." -- National Post

Given the timing of the English edition, which was published in August 2001, it has been suggested that the media coverage of TSE would have been considerably greater, had not the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US dominated the news media for several months.

Individual scientists, and some of the hardcore environmentalists whom the book is seen as attacking, have also supported Lomborg or aspects of TSE.

Criticism

Environmental groups as well as members of the scientific community have criticised the book for what they claim to be a selective use of statistics, and an incomplete understanding of the many areas and disciplines being covered. Essentially, they argue that Lomborg takes the most optimistic view on the environmental damage being caused by current human activity, and the most pessimistic view of the adjustment costs of changing to less environmentally-damaging technologies. Two related critical charges recur: that TSE discounts and ignores the importance of biodiversity and ecological connectedness (insofar as the effects of interconnectedness have not been quantified, they are ignored); and that TSE uses of global figures to define regional occurences (e.g. the percentage of a rain forest destroyed as a percentage of global forest area, as opposed to the percentage of that forest itself).

Anti-publication pressures

While criticism of the book was to be expected, the publishers, Cambridge University Press, were apparently surprised by the pressure brought against them not to publish TSE. They felt it necessary to issue a formal, written statement, in order to "explain the editorial decisions that led not just to publishing the book but also to Cambridge's resistance to concerted pressure to withdraw it from the market."

In the article, entitled "Peer review, politics and pluralism", author Dr. Chris Harrison (Publishing Director of social science publishing for Cambridge University Press) noted that "many of the critical reviews of TSE went beyond the usual unpicking of a thesis and concentrated instead on the role of the publisher in publishing the book at all. The post tray and e-mail inbox of editors and senior managers at the press bore witness to a concerted campaign to persuade Cambridge to renounce the book." He went on to describe complaints from environmentalists who feared the book would be "abused by corporate interests ".

The complaints of some critics included demands that Cambridge convene a special panel to review the book in order to identify errors (despite existing pre-publication peer review), that Cambridge transfer their publishing rights to a "non-scholarly publishing house" and that they review their own policies to prevent publication of books described as "essentially a political tract" in future.

With these complaints and the publication of a Scientific American issue dealing with the book (described below), Cambridge stated, in response to those who claimed the book lacked peer-review credentials, "it would be quite wrong to abandon an author who had satisfied the requirements of our peer-review system."

Cambridge took the additional step of inviting submissions of publishing proposals for book which offered an opposing argument to Lomborg's but noted that they had, to the best of Chris Harrison's knowledge, seen no attempt by any of the critics to submit such a proposal. This is seen by some to suggest that criticism of the book was political rather than scientific.

Subsequent to Cambridge's unequivocal assertion that TSE had been subject to peer-review, Harrison noted that "we were surprised and disappointed to see the critics' letter being quoted in an issue of Time magazine (2nd September 2002)... in which the authors repeated their charge that the book had not been peer-reviewed despite the assurances to the contrary that they had by then received by the press... It has become part of the anti-Lomborg folklore that this book bypassed the usual Cambridge peer-review process... This is a charge that is repeated in many of the public and private attacks in the press, and it is unfounded."

Dr. Harrison also noted that, anticipating the level of controversy a book like this would likely provoke, Cambridge took extra care with their peer-review process. For example, instead of choosing candidates from the usual list of social science referees, they chose from a list provided by their environmental science publishing program. Four were chosen: a climate scientist, an expert in biodiversity and sustainable development, a specialist on the economics of climate change (whose credentials include reviewing publications for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC)) and a "pure" economist. All four members of Cambridge's initial review panel agreed that the book should be published.

Criticism from scientific circles

The January 2002 issue of Scientific American contains, under the heading "Misleading Math about the Earth", a set of essays by several scientists, claiming that Lomborg and TSE misrepresent both scientific evidence and scientific opinion. The magazine refused Lomborg's request to write a point-by-point rebuttal in his own defence and, for this reason, has been criticized for failing to deal with the issue objectively.

Nature also published a harsh review of Lomborg's book. In it, Stuart Pimm of the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University and Jeff Harvey of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology wrote: "the text employs the strategy of those who, for example, argue that gay men aren't dying of AIDS, that Jews weren't singled out by the Nazis for extermination, and so on."

Lomborg has published an annotated response to both articles and many others on his website. Later, Scientific American also printed a response to the rebuttal [2].

Other critics have questioned Lomberg's academic qualifications, and knowledge of the issues he discusses. For example, the Australian economist John Quiggin noted that Lomborg had not published any articles on environmental issues in peer-reviewed journals, and that Lomberg's only peer-reviewed paper prior to TSE is on games theory.

The World Resources Institute stated: "[Lomborg's] prior publications are in game theory and computer simulations. He has no professional training -- and has done no professional research -- in ecology, climate science, resource economics, environmental policy, or other fields covered by his new book. Lomborg says the book grew out of a class project for his students."[3]

Lomborg has also been criticised (in, for example, a 2002 review in the UK journal Local Environment) for using straw man arguments, with charges that his Litany of environmental doom-mongering does not accurately represent the mainstream views of the contemporary green movement.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), referring to their own set of commissioned rebuttals, summarized: These separately written expert reviews unequivocally demonstrate that on closer inspection, Lomborg’s book is seriously flawed and fails to meet basic standards of credible scientific analysis. The authors note how Lomborg consistently misuses, misrepresents or misinterprets data to greatly underestimate rates of species extinction, ignore evidence that billions of people lack access to clean water and sanitation, and minimize the extent and impacts of global warming due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases. Time and again, these experts find that Lomborg’s assertions and analyses are marred by flawed logic, inappropriate use of statistics and hidden value judgments. He uncritically and selectively cites literature -- often not peer-reviewed -- that supports his assertions, while ignoring or misinterpreting scientific evidence that does not. His consistently flawed use of scientific data is, in Peter Gleick’s words "unexpected and disturbing in a statistician". [4]

The "separately written expert reviews" individually further detail the various expert opinions . Peter Gleick 's review, for example, states "There is nothing original or unique in Lomborg's book. Many of his criticisms have appeared in... previous works -- and even in the work of environmental scientists themselves. What is new, perhaps, is the scope and variety of the errors he makes." Jerry Mahlman 's review of the chapter he was asked to evaluate, states "I found some aspects of this chapter to be interesting, challenging, and logical. For example, the author's characterizations of the degree of difficulty in actually doing something meaningful about climate change through mitigation and coping/adaptation are perceptive and vaulable. In principle, such characterizations could provide a foundation for more meaningful policy planning on this difficult problem. Unfortunately, the author's lack of rigor and consistency on these larger issues is likely to negate any real respect for his insights."

TSE as media construct

Another angle of critical attack focussed as much on Lomborg as it did on the book, charging that TSE's prominence was due to the intense media coverage: had not the coverage been so great, neither would its impact. The controversial statements the book presents, and the fact that Lomborg offered a catchy public image - "[Lomborg] not a steely-eyed economist at a conservative Washington think tank but a vegetarian, backpack-toting academic who was a member of Greenpeace for four years" - New York Times - made the package of contrarian book and hip author eminently media-ready.

One critical article, "The Skeptical Environmentalist: A Case Study in the Manufacture of News"[5], attributes this media success to its initial, influential supporters:

News of the pending book first appeared in the UK in early June of 2001 when a Sunday Times article by Nayab Chohan featured an advanced report of claims made by Lomborg that London's air was cleaner than at any time since 1585. Headlined "Cleanest London Air for 400 Years," the publicity hook was both local and timely, as the tail end of the article linked the book's questioning of the Kyoto climate change protocol to U.S. president George W. Bush's visit the same week to Europe, and Bush's controversial opposition to the treaty. The Times followed up the report the next day with a news article further detailing the book's Kyoto protocol angle.
With The Times reports, Lomborg and his claims had made the Anglo media agenda. As is typically the case, other media outlets followed the reporting of the elite newspaper. Articles pegging the claims of The Skeptical Environmentalist to Bush's European visit ran later that week in the U.K's The Express and Daily Telegraph, and Canada's Toronto Star."

Another influential UK news publication, The Economist, also weighed in at the start with heavy support, publishing an advance essay by Lomborg in which he detailed his Litany, and following up with a highly favorable review and supportive coverage of the critical controversy.

Formal charge of scientific dishonesty

Several enviromental scientists brought a complaint before the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD). This action was greeted with praise by the environmental community, some of whom were outraged by Lomborg's book and were eager to see him penalized for writing it. A publication called "The Ecologist" wrote in 2003 "It can only be a matter of time before he loses his job with the Danish government and sinks back into the obscurity from whence he came, with only his hair bleach and tight t-shirt collection for company." [6]

January 6, 2003: The DCDS reached its decision, finding that, from an objective point of view, it was a matter of scientific dishonesty on the part of Bjørn Lomborg, because, among other reasons, the book was based on what they believed was a systematic bias. Because of what they felt was Bjørn Lomborg?s lack of scientific expertise in the themes treated in the book, the DCDS did not find that he had shown intentional or gross negligence. He was therefore acquitted of the accusations of having acted in a scientifically dishonest manner. But the DCDS stated, at the same time, that they believed he had acted in a manner contrary to good scientific practice.

February 13, 2003: Bjørn Lomborg filed a complaint with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation against the DCDS?s decision of 6 January 2003.

December 17, 2003: The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation found that the DCDS has made a number of procedural errors, specifically:

  • The DCSD did not use what the Ministry believed to be a proper standard for deciding "good scientific practice" in the social sciences.
  • The DCSD did not evaluate its authority to decide the case in regards to the requirement that "The case must be of importance to Danish research.".
  • The DCSD did not document where the defendant (Lomborg) was biased in his choice of data and his argumentation, and did not support their acceptance of complainants' criticisms of Lomborg's working methods. It was not enough that criticism simply exists. The Ministry reiterated that the DCSD must take a stance as to the validity of the criticism, and support it, and indicated that it is exactly these tasks that are DCSD's primary duty to solve. Since they didn't believe this had occurred, the decision was remitted to DCSD. The Ministry cited a considerable breach in DCSD's consideration of the complaint as to itself merit critique.

The Ministry therefore sent the case back to the DCDS for their reconsideration and subsequently emphasized that their finding must be taken to mean that the DCDS?s decision of 6 January 2003 is invalid.

12 March 2004: The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DSCD) ended their case, rejecting the original complaints. They have decided that the original decision is invalid and have ended any further inquiry.

Longer-term impact of TSE

Early in 2005, in the fourth year following its English-language publication, an informal survey of publicly accessible online sources indicates that TSE continues to be prominent and highly controversial. However, there is no obvious evidence of it having a major public impact on the Litany of environmental issues, as suggested by many of the media reviews. Impacts on policymaking, in business and government, are harder to assess.

  • The Kyoto Protocol, went into effect on Feb. 16, 2005.
  • TSE appears on the reading list of a variety of university courses, as recommended or required reading on subjects as diverse as biodiversity and eco-terrorism.
  • TSE became an international bestseller. It initially reached into the Top 50 in sales ranking at Amazon.com, and currently resides around the 2,000 mark, far above other titles categorized with it.
  • Based on Amazon.com's "Customers who bought this book also bought" , which listed the following five titles for TSE(Feb. 2005): Global Warming and Other Eco Myths: How the Environmental Movement Uses False Science to Scare Us to Death, Global Crises, Global Solutions, Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists, The Satanic Gases, Hard Green: Saving the Environment from the Environmentalists A Conservative Manifesto, Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death.
  • Lomborg was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world for 2004. He initiated and lead the Copenhagen Consensus, a Danish project involving prominent economists that attempted to find the most efficient uses for aid money. The project and resulting book, Global Crises, Global Solutions, have helped to keep Lomborg and TSE in the spotlight.

References

  • Bjørn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World, Cambridge University Press 2001, ISBN 0521010683
  • Stuart Pimm and Jeff Harvey: "No need to worry about the future". Nature vol. 414, November 8, 2001
  • Stephen Schneider, John P. Holdren, John Bongaarts, Thomas Lovejoy: "Misleading Math about the Earth". Scientific American, January 2002
  • Julian Simon article in Wired magazine

External links

Reviews of the book

For:

Against:

Mixed:

See also

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