posted by hatrack (584 posts) Dec-12-01, 07:24 PM (ET) @ http://DemocraticUnderground.com (SOURCE)

Goodbye, Bjorn Lomborg, goodbye "Skeptical Environmentalist"

Vanishing Point
On Lomborg and extinction
By E. O. Wilson
"My greatest regret about the Lomborg scam is the extraordinary amount of scientific talent that has to be expended to combat it in the media. We will always have dishonest contrarians like Lomborg, their sallies characterized by willful ignorance, selective quotations, disregard for communication with genuine experts, and destructive campaigning to attract the attention of the media rather than scientists. And ambition: theirs is the back door by which the second-rate gain quick status. They are the parasite load on scholars who earn success with the slow process of peer review and approval. The question is: How much load should be tolerated before a response is necessary? Lomborg is evidently over the threshold."

EDIT

http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/wilson121201.asp

Not seeing the forest for the trees
Bjorn Lomborg and deforestation
By Emily Matthews
"In The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg writes that 'basically the world's forests are not under threat.' A charitable reader could attribute this flawed conclusion to errors of omission and ignorance; perhaps the author simply doesn't know the sources well enough to interpret them properly. Less charitably, one might reasonably conclude that Lomborg intentionally selects his data and citations to distort or even reverse the truth. His interpretations of data on global forest cover and Indonesian forest fires aptly illustrate both failings.

EDIT

Lomborg devotes an entire page to Indonesia's forest fires of 1997-98, acknowledging that they were serious, but also claiming that they were not out of the ordinary. He criticizes WWF for estimating that 2 million hectares burned and contrasts this claim with the 'official Indonesian estimate' of 165,000-219,000 hectares. He notes that the WWF estimate included both forest and non-forestland, but does not point out that the official Indonesian estimate he quotes was for forestland only.

EDIT

Regarding estimates of how much forest actually burned, Lomborg cites a UNEP report, which in turn refers to an analysis, 'A Study of the 1997 Fires in Southeast Asia Using POST Quicklook Mosaics', that was based on 766 satellite images. These images covered the islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra only for just August to December, 1997. The study did not examine burn areas for 1998, nor did it take into account fires on other islands. The UNEP report states that this estimate represents 'only a lower limit estimate of the area burned', although Lomborg's readers are not so informed."

EDIT

http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/matthews121201.asp

Where's Waldo?
A Review of the Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg
Dr. Peter H. Gleick
Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security

EDIT

"To justify his belief that desalination will be the solution for water availability problems, he quotes prices of $0.5 to $0.8 per cubic meter to desalinate seawater (Ibid., p.153). He fails to note that these are the estimated prices for a single plant that has yet to be built and has several atypical characteristics (Gleick, 2000, pp. 108-109). In fact, prices for desalination remain between $1 and $2 per cubic meter, and even if they were to drop by a factor of two, they would remain well out of the reach of most water users. Lomborg states that 'we will no longer destroy aquatic ecosystems because we have learned the lesson' of the Aral Sea (Lomborg, 2001, p. 157). Yet the destruction of the Aral Sea continues to this day, and inappropriate water management and use threatens other bodies of water."

EDIT

http://www.ucsusa.org/environment/gleick_review.pdf

Let us not praise infamous men
On Bjorn Lomborg's hidden agenda
By Kathryn Schulz

EDIT

"What has caused the bipartisan media love-in? Not the author's credentials: an associate professor of statistics, Lomborg has never published an article or done original research in any field related to biology, ecology or environmental science. And not his arguments: these were not peer-reviewed and in many cases are simply erroneous . . . "

EDIT

http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/schulz121201.asp

And there's much, much more!

Specious
On Bjorn Lomborg and species diversity
By Norman Myers
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/myers121201.asp

Bjorn again
On Bjorn Lomborg and Population
By Lester R. Brown
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/brown121201.asp

Counter Arguments
On Bjorn Lomborg and Statistics
By Allen Hammond
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/hammond121201.asp

Unhealthy Skepticism
On Bjorn Lomborg and environmental hazards to human health
By Devra Davis
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/books/davis121201.asp

Oh, and if you're wondering, yes I did read Lomborg, it was possibly the most irritating weekend of my life and a monumentally frustrating foray into a wonderland of half-baked assumptions, rosy forecasts, straw-men arguments and unsupported happy assertions. The book is, in short, a piece of shit by an author who pretends to speak with authority on the biosphere but who has no - ZERO - background in any natural science.