Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic 807
DJRumpy writes "The Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists — that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic — are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is 'a mirage,' writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. '[I]t is a house of cards. Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature' of Lomborg's work."
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:1, Interesting)
Fourier is one of my heroes. Weierstrass, and many others, put his work on a solid mathematical foundation. Then again, the paper you're describing is a simple paper in large scale approximations of gas behavior. Falsifiable, implied by real physics (so that falsifying his hypothesis would undermine a large fragment of physics as a whole), and confirmed to a high degree.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:4, Interesting)
When you have an algorithm, for instance, that produces the 'hockey stick' even when fed random numbers, that is positive proof that the numbers have been cooked - manipulated in order to produce the predetermined outcome.
Yes but we don't have such algorithms do we? Instead we have models such as GISS-E [nasa.gov] which you can download and run on your *nix box at home.
Re:Yet Again (Score:4, Interesting)
Creationists, pro-tabacoo and anti-AGW groups fund and work for the same think tanks [wikipedia.org] that produce the red-herring theories. It may be obvious propoganda but their marketing efforts are nothing short of outstanding. I started debunking denialist on slashdot almost a decade ago, back then almost every one of my posts was modded down, nowadays I get much better treatment from the mods.
It's not the hard core nutjobs that need to be convinced, an impossible task. It's the moderate but disinterested observer who has been befudled by clever marketing. As with educating people about tabacoo and evolution, it's a slow process but a necassary one.
Re:tldr (Score:3, Interesting)
It's been a while, but I read 'Cool It' and recall that the premise was (generally) "Scientists have proven climate change is real. It's now up to ECONOMISTS to determine which would be worse for humanity- to allow the climate to continue changing or to restructure our economy to prevent climate change."
IIRC, his general premise is that the ball shouldn't be in the court of climate scientists any more. That is indeed a scary thought for folks who earn their livings studying climate change. If we all bought into Lomborg's work, they'd have a bit tougher time getting grant money.
Whether it's an accurate argument or not, I can't imagine any climate scientist out there agreeing that their research is no longer valuable.
Re:Yet Again (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of what you need to know (Score:1, Interesting)
about both sides of the climate change debate, courtesy of Dr. Feynman, 1974 http://www.gorgorat.com/#54
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:2, Interesting)
Neo-creationism by any other name.
It's a perfect remapping of Christian Apocalyptic beliefs.
And that would be you.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:1, Interesting)
The problem is that the arguments are often logically unsound. And, worse, are repeated ad nauseam as though it is unassailable despite being repeatedly assailed.
Like most people, I imagine scientists are just as susceptible to frustration and irritation over being asked to comment on and deal with the same stupid crap over and over. From there, the obvious step is to either work to exclude the opponents entirely or give up and change careers.
The unfortunate casualty here is that there may actually be good counter research being performed but the results are being buried in the tidal wave of bullshit before any attention can fall on it.
Re:The whole argument is tedious... (Score:2, Interesting)
you also attempt to make the case that spending trillions on cutting CO2 is only going to cost money, when it could in fact result in other environmental problems. what if we destroy millions of HA's of forest to plant bio crops only to find out AGW is fake?
this is the real world with grown up decisions to be made, and they shouldn't be made lightly.
oh and to suggest the human race won't survive global warming.... fuck you watch too many hollywood movies son.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:3, Interesting)
... and when you've finished counting, subtract all the scientists who asked for their names to be removed due to being misquoted in the summaries and conclusions (written by politicians and influenced by news reports and other media), but that the IPCC chose to include anyway.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about the intersection between deniers and creationists, but they do seem to have a similar philosophy. Both seem to want to think that people do not affect their environment very much. If the creationists admit that, then they couldn't ascribe bad things happening to people to a vengeful G-d. That in turn would mean they have no mooring to achieve their political ends of telling everyone else what to do...a bit like progressives and liberals but with the shadow of G-d as the enforcer. Also, they seem to have a steady state notion of the Universe...conveniently forgetting the Universe periodically tries to kill us all dead with an arrant asteroid or comet. If they were to admit that, then they'd have to admit maybe G-d doesn't think they're so special. They also seem to think that the climate change people are part of a general relativity plot where all morals and ethics are relative and not handed down by G-d. Consequently, they feel perfectly at home being scientific relativists where science is all relative.
The Deniers seem split between the constant Earth and the Earth's dynamics are on a trajectory that cannot be changed. Either one is consistent with a G-d who's pulling the strings behind the scenes somehow. I do think there is a large segment of Deniers who deny merely because to change their lifestyle would be too much trouble. These are rather selfish people who just want to live the high life. Then there are the Conservative Deniers who see another nefarious plot by the Liberals to stop economic and scientific development in its tracks. They are the same group who believe scientists are in on a nefarious plot of squeezing the G-d of the Gaps into smaller and smaller gaps.
Both groups believe so many inherently contradictory beliefs that you would think their heads would explode. The reason they do not is easy, they think of contradictory beliefs on different days so they never meet in their heads at the same time. Think of their brains as being timeshared among various intellectual viruses.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
You should go and visit "uncommon descent [uncommondescent.com]" the blog HQ of intelligent design. They're always bringing up AGW skepticism, since the notion of a far-reaching conspiracy of scientific propaganda and elitist repression is the same excuse they use to wave away the fact that the overwhelming majority of scientific opinion is in favour of evolution. Throwing their lot in with other denialists "makes their worldview make sense".
Also institute for creation research [icr.org] states:
Global warming may affect some parts of our society negatively but would likely benefit others. In fact, the current warming trend may be returning our global climate closer to that prevalent in the Garden of Eden. Compared to climate changes which have occurred in earth history, a temperature rise of a few degrees is a small fluctuation which will not lead to a complete melting of the polar caps or another ice age. Earth has a stable environmental system with many built-in feedback systems to maintain a uniform climate. It was designed by God and has only been dramatically upset by catastrophic events like the Genesis Flood. Catastrophic climate change will occur again in the future, but only by God's intervention in a sudden, violent conflagration of planet Earth in the end times
Answers in genesis cry conspiracy and even cite "The Day After Tomorrow"! [answersingenesis.org]
The tactic used by Lomborg (quote mining [rationalwiki.com]) is the definitive modus operandi of a denialist. It is the bread and butter of Creationists [talkorigins.org], and for the person employing it, it is a strong indicator of either severe cognitive dissonance or outright lying.
More of a problem for the US (Score:3, Interesting)
Compared to Europe and the Far East, oil consumption is very high. It takes about twice as much oil to transport an American a mile as a European or a Japanese. It takes twice as much oil to heat or cool large American houses, per occupant. US health care is two or more times as expensive per head as it is in Europe. These are real competitive disadvantages which increasingly affect the attractiveness of the US life style. It is no good having large houses if you cannot afford to heat them in winter or cool them in summer, and cannot afford the long commute to them. Whereas outside the Eastern seaboard and San Francisco, most US cities are not very pleasant to live in. The Chinese have a similar problem with the vast spaces of their interior.
It's worth considering that Lomborg is a European economist, and in many ways his arguments are valid for Europe. They may appeal to many Americans, but adopting his approach could be very bad for the US in the long term. Perhaps that's his intention.
Citations (Score:3, Interesting)
So far, these are my own writeups:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1559622&cid=31242704 [slashdot.org]
Thirty seconds and two Googlings confirm Lomborg is right (on an issue raised in TFA) and Friel is a liar.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1559622&cid=31242742 [slashdot.org]
Friel biting his own glacial ass. Delicious.
For the whole shebang, do take the time to read:
http://www.lomborg.com/dyn/files/basic_items/118-file/BL%20reply%20to%20Howard%20Friel.pdf [lomborg.com]
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:3, Interesting)
"Sequester the CO2, absorb the CO2, utilize the CO2?"
Piece of cake, Coca Cola has been doing it for ages.
Lomborg is not a climate change skeptic (Score:3, Interesting)
I challenge anyone to find a quote from Lomborg suggesting that he questions climate change or its anthropogenic origin.
He does, however, make a pretty convincing case [ted.com] that focusing on it diverts resources and attention away from some other very serious issues. But I guess it's easier to vilify him than to actually LISTEN to him.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:3, Interesting)
LOMBORG: Out of Europe's 731000000 inhabitants, 14000000 die of cold-related causes every year, so warming is obviously a good thing! (cite: WHO documents so and so)
FRIEL: I checked those WHO documents. They say no such thing as 14 million dying of cold related causes every year, you lying scumbag.
LOMBORG: Hey, I only meant to cite the WHO for the population of Europe part! What is this, some kind of witch hunt? I'm being persecuted!!1!
(freely paraphrased from the Newsweek review of Friel's book [newsweek.com])
Correct (Score:5, Interesting)
A: Correct. It is about manipulating the IPCC, not the peer review literature itself. I dont really know if that strengthens your case, however. For more extensive discussion, head over to the CRU nemesis himself: http://climateaudit.org/2009/12/17/climategatekeeping-2/ [climateaudit.org]
B: But here you go for some cut n paste - how to deep six a "dangerous" paper or journal editor in some easy steps (as far as I know it has not been published so far):
From: Phil Jones
To: rbradley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,mhughes@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,srutherford@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, "Michael E. Mann" ,tcrowley@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
Subject: Fwd: Soon & Baliunas
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 08:49:22 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@xxxxxxxxx.xxx,jto@u.arizona.edu,drdendro@xxxxxxxxx.xxx, keith.alverson@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
I will be emailing the journal to tell them I'm having nothing more
to do with it until they
rid themselves of this troublesome editor. A CRU person is on the
editorial board, but papers
get dealt with by the editor assigned by Hans von Storch.
Cheers
Phil
Dear all,
Tim Osborn has just come across this. Best to ignore probably, so
don't let it spoil your
day. I've not looked at it yet. It results from this journal having a
number of editors. The
responsible one for this is a well-known skeptic in NZ. He has let a few
papers through by
Michaels and Gray in the past. I've had words with Hans von Storch about
this, but got nowhere.
Another thing to discuss in Nice !
Cheers
Phil
"From: Keith Briffa
To: Edward Cook
Subject: Re: Review- confidential REALLY URGENT
Date: Wed Jun 4 13:42:54 2003
I am really sorry but I have to nag about that review – Confidentially I now need a hard and if required extensive case for rejecting - to support Dave Stahle’s and really as soon as you can. Please
Keith"
Hi Keith,
Okay, today. Promise! Now something to ask from you. Actually somewhat important too. I
got a paper to review (submitted to the Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and
Environmental Sciences), written by a Korean guy and someone from Berkeley, that claims
that the method of reconstruction that we use in dendroclimatology (reverse regression)
is wrong, biased, lousy, horrible, etc. They use your Tornetrask recon as the main
whipping boy. I have a file that you gave me in 1993 that comes from your 1992 paper.
Below is part of that file. Is this the right one? Also, is it possible to resurrect the
column headings? I would like to play with it in an effort to refute their claims.
If published as is, this paper could really do some damage. It is also an ugly paper to
review because it is rather mathematical, with a lot of Box-Jenkins stuff in it. It
won't be easy to dismiss out of hand as the math appears to be correct theoretically,
but it suffers from the classic problem of pointing out theoretical deficiencies,
without showing that their improved inverse regression method is actually better in a
practical sense. So they do lots of monte carlo stuff that shows the superiority of
their method and the deficiencies of our way of doing things, but NEVER actually show
how their method would change the Tornetrask reconstruction from what you produced.
Your assistance here is greatly appreciated. Otherwise, I will let Tornetrask sink into
the melting permafrost of northern Sweden (just kidding of course).
Cheers,
Recently rejected two papers (one for JGR and for GRL) from people saying CRU has it
wrong over Siberia. Went to town in both reviews, hopefully successfully. If either
appears
I will be very surprised, but you never know with GRL.
Cheers
Phil
And another one:
Thanks a bunch Phil,
Along lines as my other email, would it be (?) for me to forward this to the chair of our commitee confidentially, and for his internal purposes only, to help bolster the case against MM?? let me know
t
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:2, Interesting)
You've got it backwards - people who seek to demonstrate that anthropogenic climate change IS happening are much closer to scenario 2 than scenario 1. Natural Climate Change deniers/denialists/skeptics are arguing the affirmative in this case, and simply accepting them blindly based on models and anecdotal evidence cherry picked by anyone from GISS to the WWF is a disservice.
We've got a paleoclimate record that shows incredible variation in CO2 and temperature, rates of increase and decrease that overwhelm anything we've seen in modern times, but we're supposed to believe that just because of little old us, and a trace gas measured in parts per million, we're going to suddenly walk outside of the bounds of the negative feedbacks that exist? We've got millions of years of Natural Climate Change, and at most, 150 years of proposed AGW.
Which hypothesis am I supposed to be more critical of again?
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:3, Interesting)
There are several flaws in your argument.
First you say "by 30%". This is often misunderstood. While accurate, it makes it seem that what is being increased in relation to the total. This is not the case as there is no fixed number of molecules in the atmosphere. What you have to realize is CO2 makes up 338 out of every 1,000,000 molecules (today). A 30% increase adds ~100 more molecules for 438 out of 1,000,000 molecules. It still remains a trace element.
Another problem is you assume CO2 is well-mixed, as the IPCC does. The data from the NASA AIRS satellite and subsequent validation by plane measurements, shows it is not well-mixed and that the northern and southern hemispheres have separate carbon cycles. (Due to land mass vs ocean, and land mass distribution)
Another problem is that you assume the forcing is linear, or worse. There is quite a bit of data that suggests it is logarithmic. The observation that CO2 "warms" is done in a closed laboratory environment. (a 1L bottle of 100% CO2)
Another problem is that while you concede temperature rises first, you fail to account for water vapor forcings, which is a much worse GHG, which we can't control. What if we could dehumidify the atmosphere at a fraction of the cost of controlling CO2? Why would that not be a more appropriate avenue?
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:2, Interesting)
Here we get to the rub. You dismiss Lomberg based on a selective quotation of a supposed mistake and then bend over backwards to excuse data manipulation, censorship and interference in peer review, and other forms of scientific misconduct.
No. That's not a supposed mistake. Read the book, then come back.
Why should we, when you argue that every single quote from Bjorn Lomberg is dishonest and 'crap'.
Bjorn Lomborg is dishonest. You're doing yourself a massive disservice defending him. It means you don't understand data analysis. Not to mention that when you make a claim that every scientist in support of AGW is dishonest, you better support that claim by showing exactly that. I only have to show that Lomborg is dishonest when claiming that.... Lomborg id dishonest.
There are a number of scientists at least doing actual work to try to put a hole in the theory of AGW. Go to those. The guy who proposed that space radiation increases cloud cover might be wrong or might be right, but at least his stuff is worth looking into and talking about.
Re:Absence of Evidence (Score:2, Interesting)
A better analogy would be paleoanthropology. The science is fairly young, and not very amenable to experimentation. From time to time, someone is able to do something like check DNA from a frozen specimen.
But there doesn't seem to be thesame kind of horrified reaction, with cries of "skeptic" or "denier," when someone proposes an alternative theory in this field.
Explanation Needed (Score:2, Interesting)
Without starting a giant flame war (too late?), could someone please explain the following data from two ice-core samples:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-icecore-2475.html [noaa.gov]
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-icecore-2453.html [noaa.gov]
This data is referenced in the following article, which claims global warming cannot be man-made:
http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=3553 [foresight.org]
I would love for someone to explain either; why the data is wrong, or how it could be misconstrued.
Please please please, no name calling. I'm uninterested in shouting matches, and am only after logical argument.
Re:The Friel Emergency Literacy Fund (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not through the rebuttal yet, but Lomborg is doing very, very well so far.
My only issue is with this section:
It wasn't clear to me that he was talking about young people based on the excerpt from the book. I mean, it's clear the preceding sentence was referring to young people, but not the next one.
Every other point in the rebuttal I think is beyond doubt.
For full disclosure: I've read much of The Skeptical Environmentalist, but I didn't get all the way through the book because (frankly) it's so dry and boring. I have no doubt of Lomborg's ability, though, and in this case I think he's clearly in the right.
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Normally, temperature starts to rise due to e.g. distance to the sun decreasing slightly, which leads to increased CO2 which enhances the effect of the warming, causing further CO2 to be released until a new balance is achieved (essentially that the energy absorbed from the sun equals the earths black-body radiation). CO2 increase with temperature because CO2 is less soluble in warm (sea)-water, and a number of other effects (Tundra melting is often mentioned as a big one, though I don't personally know.). Now, into this system we (the humans) release enough CO2 to increase the concentration by what, 30%? What do *you* think will happen?
You have such a simple-minded view of the planetary climate...that is...unfortunately...wrong. Planetary temperatures are not correlated with (in the order you mention them) 1)short-term earth-solar distance, 2)CO2 increases, 3)solar absorbtion-black body radiation 'balance', 4)warming sea water CO2 solubility decrease (also bad chemistry as carbonate chemistry is far more complex than just 'CO2 solubility') or 5) tundra melting.
That CO2 must warm the earth can also be concluded directly by looking at the absorbtion bands of CO2. You could even calculate the approximate effect (though not the feedback loops) from this, the atmospheric and distribution of CO2 and from the distribution of the electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere.
Apparently you have never actually looked at the absorption bands for CO2. There is already more than sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb all of the IR radiation that is capable of being absorbed by CO2, within the first few hundred meters of the atmosphere above the surface. Once absorbed, the energy is not trapped but is immediately re-emitted. The wavelength of the reemitted thermal radiation is a probability distribution depending ONLY on temperature that can be predicted with Planck's law and it is NOT concentrated within the narrow CO2 absorption band so almost all of that re-emitted raditation is free to radiate out into space untouched any further by your nemesis CO2.
But of course, you knew all this. What pisses me off about all this that while the above is well-known science and has been for a long time, the economic aspects are far from clear to me.
It's precisely all of that 'well-known science' that is giving you so much difficulty.
Re:Cue the teabaggers. (Score:3, Interesting)
It seemingly cannot be stated enough, because the "skeptics" don't get it: of COURSE temperature leads CO2 levels. What would a sudden, pre-temperature rise of CO2 levels come from?
Ok. Just to play devils advocate, I have a couple of questions.
Re:He's more pragmatic than skeptic (Score:2, Interesting)
It is in the best interest of OPEC to keep the price of oil at or around the oligarchy price (the oligarchy analogy of the monopoly price). If the price goes enough above that price, people will use enough less oil that they'll be worse off (consider that OPEC doesn't simply charge $1 million/barrel of oil...even if there were no threat of invasion). More importantly, currently, the price of oil is high enough (above ~$50/barrel, IIRC) that tar sands and oil shales are price competitive against normal oil wells. With the amount of oil available in tar sands and oil shales, such a situation significantly reduces OPEC's strength as an oligarchy.
In short, OPEC might very well try to keep the price at $49/barrel, but at $80/barrel a lot of people are buying tar sand oil instead of their oil.
Re:Potential maximum annual removals (Score:0, Interesting)
Enjoy your distraction, human fools.