vuzman wrote:
Bjørn Lomborg is pretty smart and has some convincing arguments. Too bad then, that his argumentation relies solely on stats he has found in assorted places, and aren't always reliable. Too bad also, that the world isn't as simple as he seems to think it is, and that everything will be solved if we apply free market economy principles to nature.
I think it is very telling that his backers are usually the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal...
Go hug a tree
On a serious note. Lomborg raises some interesting questions, his numbers might be the product of excess spin, but his detractors often use the same style and substance when dealing with him. Read the whole dishonestly debate, get acquainted with Kåre Fog and you'll see many similar things...just with a reverse point of view.
"it is reported that the global polar-bear population has increased dramatically over the past decades, from about five thousand members in the 1960s to twenty-five thousand today."
Comment:
This is not true. As evident from the book of Uspenskii (reference above), various estimates of the world population from the period 1957 to 1979 range between 10,000 and 20,000, but the true figures are not known with any certainty. Considering that the estimate for 2001, based on more extensive data, is 21,500 - 25,000, there is no evidence for a dramatic global population increase.
What happens here? Lomborg cites an old scientific source to say that the population has increased from 5000 to 25000. Kåre Fog cries foul saying the old data is unreliable, gives an estimate range from 10000 to 20000 as the 1960s population based on one source (probably the only one who can fit his counterclaim) and 21500 to 25000 today. Lomborgs broader point stands, there has been an increased population...from 10-20000 to 21500-25000, and Kåre Fog focuses himself on the meaning on the word dramatic increase.
But still it's clear that there is a growing population and that it's grown between 20% and 250% since 1960s...even given Kåre Fogs numbers, yet this main point is tried to be buried with the focus on the word dramatic. Funny how quick Kåre Fog and his ilk are to point out any decreasing population, yet ignore the point of increasing populations.
Second part (taken from the same page):
"it means we have lost about 15 bears to global warming each year, whereas we have lost 49 each year to hunting."
Comment:
With this sentence, Lomborg either demonstrates a blatant lack of understanding of ecology, or purports to lack this understanding. In a stable population, it is possible to obtain a `sustainable yield´, because the population each year produces a surplus of young, some of which will die from natural causes if they are not shot by man. Calculations are made by wildlife biologists to find the size of the `sustainable yield´, i.e. how many bears may be shot each year without causing the population to decline. The local inuit population is then allowed to shoot this number of bears. However, if conditions get worse, the bears produce less young, and the sustainable yield decreases. That is, the increased melting of sea ice means that the population tolerates less hunting than before.
This the best you can do to refute his claim that hunting kills more then global warming? Just claiming "I know better" isn't going to cut it when you're accusing the other of just that.
In closing, Lomborg ignites a crowd of people who have for a long time had a great power in publications but no power in politics. That they get critical feedback is good IMO. He raises some interesting questions and some of the professors I had liked that he did this work, because it required them to do their rebuttals better, others such as Kåre Fog just saw Satan and started spinning.
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
You completely ignored my three links and added your own, and even ignored the bigger issue, which is that Lomborg juggles statistics until they seem to show what he wants them to show; as he did with the 5.000 polar bear figure which is of quite dubious origins. Maybe you should switch nick to DJ Norlander?
It is, of course, nice that existing science and theories are questioned, but they already are; by real scientists. Lomborg seems to spin stuff for the sake of spinning. Hmmm... sounds familiar...
When I kill her, I'll have her
Die white girls, die white girls
Here's a new animation from NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio at the Goddard Space Flight Center. This animation compares the 2005 annual Arctic minimum sea ice from 09/21/2005 (shown in orange) with the 2007 minimum sea ice from 09/14/2007. The average minimum sea ice from 1979 through 2007 is shown in green.
When I kill her, I'll have her
Die white girls, die white girls
You completely ignored my three links and added your own.
I'll have to respond to the rest later, BUT...the link I added is from the main source for nearly all Lomborg rebuttals. The claims of his scientific dishonestly almost all originate from Kåre Fog, who is the one who raised this question in the first place, who spend a great deal of time and effort to organize the point by point rebuttals of Lomborg and who's website I linked to.
Instead of using 2nd hand accounts as you did, I added a link that went straight to the horses mouth - Kåre Fog.
So on that point of yours I'll add: Nice comeback, and by nice I mean horribly bad and completely misunderstanding the context of the issue at hand.:p
The rest has it's merits and I'll enjoy debating that later, just needed at clear the first part up.
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
Norlander wrote:
...the link I added is from the main source for nearly all Lomborg rebuttals. The claims of his scientific dishonestly almost all originate from Kåre Fog, who is the one who raised this question in the first place
You're spinning again.
Originally I criticized Lomborg's number juggling to support his views, and pointed out the suspiciousness of his greatest backers being from the financial sector, as opposed to the scientific.
You spun that to "His detractors do that as well, ergo they're wrong (and implicitly: Lomborg is correct)". Your appeal to authority was also cute.
I rebutted saying "You didn't rebut anything I said, but attacked his detractors instead".
You spun that to "All of Lomborg's detractors (including vuz) are actually inspired by one guy; and he's crazy as a bat!"
Well, again a bit excessive in the spin department. Fog isn't the first of Lomborg's detractors, and wasn't the only one who in 2002 filed a complaint against him with accusations of scientific dishonesty. There were actually four separate complaints.
And before those complaints there was a lot of international criticism of Lomborg.
A quick google shows us a few other critics:
Tom Burke, environmental adviser at Rio Tinto Zinc, former director of Friends of the Earth
Charles Secrett, executive director of Friends of the Earth
Tony McMichael, professor of epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Source: The Guardian - Arguments that don'%3Bt hold water
David Bellamy, president of Conservation Foundation
Stuart Chapman, UK head of species programme for WWF
John Elkington, chairman of Sustainability
Jenny Jones, Green Party London Assembly member Source: BBC News - Dr Lomborg, you'%3Bve got to be kidding
Allen Hammond, chief information officer and senior scientist at the World Resources Institute
David Sandalow, executive vice president of WWF (US) Source: Asia Times
Nigel Sizer, The Nature Conservancy, Jakarta, Indonesia
Martin Quick, Architects & Engineers for Social Responsibility
Emma Wilson, Waste Watch UK
Henning Sørensen, former president of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences
Jon Fjelds, Professor of the Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen
Andy Rowell, author, Green Backlash
[url]Source: The Guardian[/url]
Biologist E.O. Wilson -- two-time Pulitzer prize winner, discoverer of hundreds of new species, and one of the world's greatest living scientists -- debunks Lomborg's analysis of extinction rates.
Stephen H. Schneider, one of the foremost climate scientists in the United States, discredits Lomborg on global climate change and takes Cambridge University Press and the media to task for publishing and praising a polemic.
Norman Myers, an Honorary Visiting Fellow of Oxford University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of the Sciences, and a recipient of several of the world's most prestigious environmental awards, looks at Lomborg on biodiversity and concludes that he lacks even "a preliminary understanding of the science in question."
Lester R. Brown, founder of the Worldwatch Institute and the Earth Policy Institute, reviews Lomborg on population and concludes that his analysis is so "fundamentally flawed" that other professionals would do well to disassociate themselves from his work.
Emily Matthews, a forest expert and senior associate with the World Resources Institute, shows that Lomborg reaches wildly inaccurate conclusions about deforestation by fudging data or failing to interpret it correctly.
Al Hammond, senior scientist at World Resources Institute, criticizes Lomborg for mischaracterizing the contemporary environmental movement and committing precisely the sins for which he attacks environmentalists: exaggeration, sweeping generalizations, the presentation of false choices, selective use of data, and outright errors of fact.
Devra Davis, a leading epidemiologist and environmental health researcher, acknowledges that environmentalists have made some errors but argues that Lomborg, too, is seriously mistaken about how the environment affects public health.
Energy expert David Nemtzow, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, says Lomborg wastes his time battling a straw man: Virtually no one in the contemporary environmental movement disputes that fossil fuels are abundant, Nemtzow argues; in fact, it's precisely their abundance and their impact on our ecosystems that's the trouble.
Stephen Schneider, Professor of Environmental Biology and Global Change (and Professor by Courtesy in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering) at Stanford University
John P. Holdren, Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
John Bongaarts, Vice President, Policy Research Division, Population Council
Thomas Lovejoy, chief biodiversity adviser to the president of the World Bank, senior adviser to the president of the United Nations Foundation, and president of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment Source: Scientifc American - Misleading Math about the Earth
That was just some of the critcis I found on the first google page, and those sources are all articles written before Kåre Fog et al filed their complaints.
I am not appealing to authority or implying that these critics and their arguments are correct and Lomborg wrong; I'm just stating that Kåre Fog wasn't the first critic of Lomborg, he's not the origin of all complaints against Lomborg, and his website definitely isn't the source of all Lomborg counterarguments.
I think he has some valid points, and I also like that he brings a different perspective on the issues. I just think he sometimes does that with too much spin and prejudice.
What I most like about him is that he points to poverty and global inequality as one of the biggest threats to the environment. In that he has a very valid point.
When I kill her, I'll have her
Die white girls, die white girls
Originally I criticized Lomborg's number juggling to support his views, and pointed out the suspiciousness of his greatest backers being from the financial sector, as opposed to the scientific.
Economics is a science...
You spun that to "His detractors do that as well, ergo they're wrong (and implicitly: Lomborg is correct)".
I think you need to read my comment with quite a lot of bias to get to that conclusion...
Hmm...I didn't fill a page with namedropping...you did, but regardless of that I just stated the facts from my lessons with Kjeld Rasmussen and Stephan Anderberg, two very competent geo-physicists, who actually put Lomborg on our curriculum, so that we actally read what the man said, and were challenged to come with non-emotional critique of him.
You spun that to "All of Lomborg's detractors (including vuz) are actually inspired by one guy; and he's crazy as a bat!"
Some of his detractors are irrational in some of their claims yes. This is apparent with both the factual errors in Al Gores film, compounded with the knowledge from geology on CO2 emissions.
That is not to say that Lomborg is correct. Personally I think that natural scientists are doing themselves a disservice with emotional critique, such as "on page 48 it says 150%, which is wrong it's only 135% HA!"
Nasa Goddard link was very good on the other hand.
Fog isn't the first of Lomborg's detractors
Actually he is among the first, he started this in 1998, even if his (probably student managed) website didn't go up until 6 years later.
I am not appealing to authority or implying that these critics and their arguments are correct and Lomborg wrong; I'm just stating that Kåre Fog wasn't the first critic of Lomborg, he's not the origin of all complaints against Lomborg, and his website definitely isn't the source of all Lomborg counterarguments.
That might very well be, but you attacked me ad hominem for including Fog to your 3 links, one of which actually contained a whole paragraph on Fog (the lomborg wikipedia article)
Now to claim wikipedia as proof isn't too strong, but it is worth noticing that the only person of Lomborgs detractors that is worthy of a paragraph on the Lomborg wikipedia article is Kåre Fog...and therefore I think my point still stands: If you want to debate Lomborg and his dectractors you should include Fog.
Anyhow enough talking about what people say about Lomborg...now for your other links and opinions:
Yes something is melting, I think that the case for global warming is quite clear, though the regional effects are still incredibly hard to figure out, as various dynamic mechanisms have different effects. But something will be different.
Yes, Lomborg is in trouble when applying economic theory to the world of biology. One of the biggest problems he faces is the fact that when a species goes extincts you cannot bring it back (DNA sci-fi non withstanding). This means that when you partially destroy an ecosystem you take an irreversible loss. Economic theory on the other hand operates without this concept.
Another of his problems is related to the first. He assumes interchangeability: Energy conversion in biology doesn't work that way. One of the most basic critique points we were taught was that Lomborg assumes that destroying foodsource X doesn't matter because the total available energy from food sources is still the same. Sadly we (or whatever species in question) cannot eat diesel, we need specific things because of our biology and if that vital thing is gone then soon after we will follow.
Now for humans this isn't a likely outcome, but for a myriad of species this is a likely outcome of severe climate change.
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
Anyway, I think it was clear that I was referring to the financial newspapers I mentioned earlier, which aren't scientific journals. The financial sector might involve application of Economic science, but it isn't science in itself.
I've re-read your two posts and I still think that you're trying to spin and appeal to authority. I explicitly mentioned that I wasn't, but you went for it anyway. Oh well.
he started this in 1998, even if his (probably student managed) website didn't go up until 6 years later.
I know that he started in 1998 (well, that's what he claims), but I don't see that he was the origin of this debacle. I don't think all the international, relatively well-respected and prominent figures got their inspiration from him. A google for Fog turns up next to nothing, and the Lomborg Wikipedia article is heavily edited by Fog himself. The section on Fog is probably inserted by himself too (I could check, but it's too tedious). He's never quoted as a source (not that I have found, at least) by the Lomborg bashers, so he might be more of a sponge instead of a source.
you attacked me ad hominem
I gave quite clear reasons for why I thought you were spinning. That's not ad hominem. Using arguments such as "You're a treehugger, you have completely misunderstood everything", well, now that would be ad hominem.
to claim wikipedia as proof isn't too strong
I was just calling attention to the fact that his scientific honesty has been questioned. Wikipedia would be just fine for that.
Let me get back to you on the rest.
When I kill her, I'll have her
Die white girls, die white girls
Economics has a lot more in common with natural science then let's say language studies. This because language studies are based on ultimately subjective analysis of various dialects. Economics on the other hand is based upon mathematics...
Lomborg of course isn't an economist, but rather a cand.scient.pol., one of those scientific degrees, which isn't science IMO (I agree with you that a lot of social science isn't really science, but disagree on economics being a part of that, because it's in large degree upon mathematics).
Anyway, I think it was clear that I was referring to the financial newspapers I mentioned earlier, which aren't scientific journals. The financial sector might involve application of Economic science, but it isn't science in itself.
The financial newspapers arn't scientific journals, but apart from their editorial pages they are some of the most spin-free, objective news analysis you can find. This is partly because their readership base demands condensed non-spin news from which to make their daily financial decisions.
As for their editorial page...well that is a whole different matter...and often people tend to lump it all together...
The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking.
- John Kenneth Galbraith
Mathematics being a foundation of something doesn't make it a science, and apart from statistics and applied mathematics, economics is just social science and theory. Sure, I'm oversimplifying and we're nitpicking. It was a joke anyway.
I still think the financial newspapers were overly biased on the Lomborg; nothing but praise for the challenger of accepted science, while the scientific publications were the opposite.
I wouldn't assume the scientific publications to be entirely free of bias, but if I were a betting man, my money would be on the ones written by people used to the scientific process and peer reviewing rather than on the ones with economic interest in seeing global warming proved wrong. Since Lomborg's book is on environmental (and thus scientific) issues, it should be obvious that financial newspaper don't have much to say on the issue.
I don't think we're in disagreement on any of this though.
The comments you had on Lomborg I largely agree with and have no comment on.
I wanted to be a fan of Lomborg's in the start, but the fact that scientists shot down his arguments so easily made his work seem ill researched and/or deliberately misleading. His education in political science with a major in spin, rhetoric and statistics juggling (ok, I made that up) also made it harder to accept any scientific merit in his work.
I (and probably many others) felt let down.
As an aside I want to mention that he was hired as the first director of the Danish Institut for Miljøvurdering (Environmental Assessment Institute), an institute which seemed created for him, by a government who apparently believed in his ideas. Anders Fogh Rasmussen (then, and current, prime minister of Denmark) has admitted that he was a global warming skeptic back then, but now he has been "convinced by the scientific community" and wants to turbo charge the Danish governments efforts to make (keep) Denmark a front runner on environmental issues; among others, renewable energy.
When I kill her, I'll have her
Die white girls, die white girls
Here's a new animation from NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio at the Goddard Space Flight Center. This animation compares the 2005 annual Arctic minimum sea ice from 09/21/2005 (shown in orange) with the 2007 minimum sea ice from 09/14/2007. The average minimum sea ice from 1979 through 2007 is shown in green.
Where's the data pre-1979?
No decision is so fine as to not bind us to its consequences.
No consequence is so unexpected as to absolve us of our decisions.
Not even death.
-R. Scott Bakker. 'The Prince of Nothing'
The visualization was made from satellite data, which obviously doesn't go that far back.
Although sea ice records prior to late 1978 are comparatively sparse, they imply that the recent decline exceeds previous sea ice lows. Current levels of Arctic sea ice are likely the lowest they have been for the past few centuries. Source
When I kill her, I'll have her
Die white girls, die white girls
I don't think, that just because you don't have relevant and accurate data, you can just assume something to be so.
If the decline in polar ice is 8,5% pr. year then this should have led to a significant rise in sea levels by now.
where can I find the data on sea-level rise for the same period?
No decision is so fine as to not bind us to its consequences.
No consequence is so unexpected as to absolve us of our decisions.
Not even death.
-R. Scott Bakker. 'The Prince of Nothing'
jogvanth wrote:
If the decline in polar ice is 8,5% pr. year then this should have led to a significant rise in sea levels by now.
No. Since the Arctic sea ice is already floating on the ocean, it does not raise sea levels when it melts.
This does not mean we shouldn't worry about it though. For one thing, less sea ice means that the ocean absorbs sunlight that the ice would have reflected away. This warms the water. Also, less sea ice means animals such as polar bears and seals have a harder time.
The melting of the Antarctic ice sheet however would cause a significant rise in sea levels; over 60 m. That is quite unlikely to happen as the average temperature in Antarctica is -37°C.
The real worry is the Greenland ice sheet. As the Arctic ice melts, Greenland will warm up too (Greenland is also closer to the Equator than bothe the poles, and so receives more energy from the sun, and is more vulnerable to rises in temperature). The melting of the Greenland ice sheet would mean an increase in sea level of about 6.5 m.
jogvanth wrote:
where can I find the data on sea-level rise for the same period?
From 3,000 years ago to the start of the 19th century sea level was almost constant, rising at 0.1 to 0.2 mm/yr. Since 1900 the level has risen at 1 to 2 mm/yr; since 1993 satellite altimetry from TOPEX/Poseidon indicates a rate of rise of 3.1 ± 0.7 mm/yr. It is very likely that 20th century warming has contributed significantly to the observed sea-level rise, through thermal expansion of sea water and widespread loss of land ice.
When I kill her, I'll have her
Die white girls, die white girls
If you want serious scientific data, then google is not the best way to go.
If all of your 'research' has been googled or from Wikipedia, then you are quite likely deceived. Or do you automatically trust anything you find on the web?
Where can I find a scientifically aclaimed database, accessible to me, that can divulge raw information on these subjects? Anything you find googled, is re-written by someone, who (like your assesment of Lomborg) can have scoured the data, until they have found it or rewritten it, to suit their desired perspective.
No decision is so fine as to not bind us to its consequences.
No consequence is so unexpected as to absolve us of our decisions.
Not even death.
-R. Scott Bakker. 'The Prince of Nothing'
jogvanth wrote:
If all of your 'research' has been googled or from Wikipedia, then you are quite likely deceived.
I disagree. With extreme prejudice. You are, in fact, saying that credible sources will not be indexed by Google, and will not appear in Wikipedia. Of course they will. With a sensible amount of source bias it should be extremely easy to find the right information. I wasn't saying that anything that popped up on Google would be the truth, but just a little effort goes a long way. Everything on Wikipedia should be sourced, and while that is not the case every time, it is pretty damn reliable. The quality of the articles on Wikipedia have time and again been shown to be of higher quality than other encyclopedias, and while there certainly are errors, it is a good starting point. Start there, and work your way through the sources, and make your own conclusions. Most frequently I think you'll find Wikipedia to be correct and unbiased. And if you find this not to be the case: Go ahead and change it yourself.
If you had bothered to check up on it yourself; a Google for, oh I don't know "sea level rise", you would have found a Wikipedia page with interpretation of data from two NASA satellites, TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason-1. Using the source links provided on that very same page you would have found the very data you were looking for. Not interpreted, not biased, just raw data.
jogvanth wrote:
Anything you find googled, is re-written by someone, who (like your assesment of Lomborg) can have scoured the data, until they have found it or rewritten it, to suit their desired perspective.
Why are you assuming that I can't find the sources on Google? I can, and I did.
And don't assume you know how I do my research. I never settle for one site for my information, and I always try to get as close to the source and original data as I can. I usually source my claims (you never do), and I usually use well-respected, scientifically credible sources. Just take a look at the claims and sources I have given in this thread, as an example.
Where can I find a scientifically aclaimed database, accessible to me, that can divulge raw information on these subjects?
Oh what the hell, let me do it for you. How about data from the Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center? They would be the authority on this matter, since they own the fucking satellites. And since it's a part of NASA, its data is free (in both senses of the word) for everyone to use.
Here you go. Please let me know the results of your research...
When I kill her, I'll have her
Die white girls, die white girls
