Bjørn Lomborg

Bjørn Lomborg (born 1965) is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist -- a controversial book whose main thesis is that many of the claims and dire predictions of environmentalists are exaggerated.

Biography

Bjørn Lomborg earned a Ph.D. at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, 1994. He was an associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus. A former Greenpeace activist, he recently published four lengthy articles about the state of our environment in the leading Danish newspaper, which "resulted in a firestorm debate spanning over 400 articles in major metropolitan newspapers."

In November 2001 was selected Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. In March 2002, Lomborg was appointed to run Denmark’s new Institute for Environmental Assessment (source).

Lomborg is openly gay.

In 2003, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), which is composed of eminent Danish scientists, determined that Lomborg was guilty of "scientific dishonesty". They reached this conclusion after a yearlong investigation of his work. The committed stated that "based on customary scientific standards and in light of his systematic one-sidedness in the choice of data and line of argument, [he] has clearly acted at variance with good scientific practice.". They also criticized The Skeptical Environmentalist, stating "Subject to the proviso that the book is to be evaluated as science, there has been such perversion of the scientific message in the form of systematically biased representation that the objective criteria for upholding scientific dishonesty have been met." [1]

Over 100 scientists, both people for and against Lomborg, criticised DCSD for it's report. Now it is the DCSD that is under investigation.

Professional areas of interests

Simulation of strategies in collective action dilemmas; simulation of party behavior in proportional voting systems; use of surveys in public administration; use of statistics in the environmental arena.

References and links:

• Website of Lomborg: http://www.lomborg.org
• Bjørn Lomborg: The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge University Press 2001
• Nichola Wade: "From an Unlikely Quarter, Eco-Optimism". The New York Times, August 7, 2001.
• Stephen Schneider, John P. Holdren, John Bongaarts, Thosmas Lovejoy: "Misleading Math about the Earth". Scientific American, January 2002