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The Skeptical Environmentalist

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The Skeptical Environmentalist, subtitled "Measuring the Real State of the World" is a controversial book by statistician Bjørn Lomborg that claims to rebut the Malthusian thesis that the world is headed for inevitable ecological disaster.

Lomborg states that he originally started work on the book as an attempt to counter what he saw as anti-ecological arguments, and changed his direction as he worked on researching his arguments. He describes the views held by many environmental campaigners as "the Litany", which his book attempts to correct.

It has a large range of detailed references to primary and secondary material, although much of its methodology and integrity has been subject to serious criticism (see below). Lomborg's supporters consider his work to be a landmark in the development of the ecological movement.

Criticism of Lomborg's views

Environmental groups as well as some members of the scientific community have heavily criticised the book for selective use of statistics - essentially, taking 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. Lomborg's responses to his critics can be found at www.lomborg.com.

The January 2002 issue of Scientific American contains, under the heading "Misleading Math about the Earth", a set of essays by several scientists of Lomborg's thesis, claiming that Lomborg is misrepresenting both scientific evidence and scientific opinion. (The magazine refused to allow Lonberg to contribute to the special section, or to quote criticisms to reply to them, forcing him to paraphrase.)

The respected journal Nature also published a harsh review of Lomborg's book. In the review, Stuart Pimm of the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University and Jeff Harvey of the Netherlands Institute of Technology make the following strong rhetorical flourish:

“[T]he 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 in turn published an annotated response to both articles and many others on his website.

In 2003, the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) determined that Lomborg was guilty of scientific dishonesty. They reached this conclusion after a yearlong investigation of his work. The committee 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]

Lomborg states on his web site:

The Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD) has found that I am "systematically one-sided" in a decision handed down 7 January 2003. Here they exclusively rely on the critique from Scientific American 2002 without taking my rebuttal into account.

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, Thosmas Lovejoy: "Misleading Math about the Earth". Scientific American, January 2002

Reviews of the book

For:

Against:

Mixed:

See also: environmentalism -- global warming
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