The following is copied from Patrick Moore's
website greenspirit.
iGreens are proud to reprint it here and join in the campaign to ensure that
Lomborg's detailed refutation of Scientific American's criticism is not suppressed.
When Bjorn Lomborg
published The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press - 2001) he
must not have been prepared for the onslaught of comment, both personal and
professional, that has erupted in the popular and scientific press (see ). Whereas the popular media have generally reported positively on the
500-plus page analysis of the global environment, the scientific press in North
America has been negative to the point of personal insult. It is very clear that
extreme environmentalists are deeply threatened by the breath of fresh air
Lomborg brings to the debate.
Among the most scathing of
the attacks on Lomborg was an 11-page editorial in the January 2002 edition of
Scientific American. With the rather high-handed title "Science Defends
itself Against the Skeptical Environmentalist" the editorial declared the
book a "failure" and invited four prominent environmentalists to do
their worst to discredit Lomborg and his analysis.
Scientific American did
not give Lomborg any opportunity to respond to his critics, even though they
gave him a copy of the editorial before it went to press. They said they would
give Lomborg one page in a future edition to reply to 11 pages of full-on
attack. Lomborg's response was to publish the text of the Scientific American
article on his own website and to intersperse it with a detailed response to
every point raised by his critics. Scientific American then threatened to sue
Lomborg over copyright. In response to my complaint Scientific American wrote "This
is an infringement of our copyright and interferes with our business of selling
the article." Does Scientific American really think that they will lose
readership because Lomborg has posted a response to a publication that is
already off the newsstands? I believe they acted out of political motivation and
are purposefully stifling Lomborg's efforts to defend himself. And I don't blame
Lomborg for giving in to such a huge organization when threatened with legal
action. (If you go to Lomborg's website
and look under Critiques you will find he has removed the offending text, thus
gutting the effectiveness of his response.)
I
think we should defy Scientific American's blatant attempt to muzzle Lomborg.
Anyone who reads his response to the Scientific American attack will have to
agree that it is thoughtful and thorough. Here is a link to the entire response
complete with Lomborg's comments.
I call
on all scientists, organizations, and citizens to publish this document on their
websites. I do not believe Scientific American can prevent this legitimate right
of free speech. The entire editorial was an attack on Bjorn Lomborg. Surely he
has a perfect right to defend himself on his own website. I am willing to bring
this to the test. Please help with this effort. If you do not have a website
then send the document to someone who does.
You can
build a link to Lomborg's original article by referring to
or you can retrieve the Acrobat .pdf file from the Link to Lomborg's Reply above
and publish the document directly on your site.
Please let me know by
e-mail that you have published Lomborg's rebuttal and
I will publish a list of websites and organizations that have joined in this
effort to bring some critical thinking and intellectual rigor back into the
debate about the environment.
I don't necessarily agree with every word of Lomborg's impressive book, but that
is not the issue here. The environmental movement has become riddled with
extremism, misinformation, misguided priorities and downright deception. It is
wonderful that this dogmatic conceit is now being effectively challenged.
Let's put some wind in Lomborg's sails!
Here is the entire text of
Lomborg's response to the attack from Scientific American:
Bjørn Lomborg’s comments to the 11-page critique in
January 2002 Scientific American (SA), (in black)
Substantially finished December 31, 2001; latest update February 16, 2002,
16:47:45
[Background:
Recently I have received – through informal channels – the final proofs of
an 11 page feature in Scientific American, all of it devoted to a trashing of my
recent book The Skeptical Environmentalist, Cambridge University Press 2001
(referred as SE in references).
By now, it appears that I will be able to present my views in a 1- page article
in the May issue of Scientific American. This document is my chance to put my
arguments to the readers of Scientific American with much greater detail and
documentation.
References to various works are, unless otherwise noted, to the same sources as
used in SE. The full bibliography can be downloaded at ]
Scientific American, p61-71, January 2002, (in red).
The text comes from the final draft and has been
transferred from pdf into Word, meaning that occasionally italics or words may
have been dropped. Most of the layout has been retained in headings, subheadings
and usage of capital lettering. The first page (p61) is an editorial by
editor-in-chief, John Rennie, the other ten pages flow in three columns into
each other, with a sentence on each page in very large font for interest. These
sentences will be pointed out below, but may come from an editorial decision. On
the web, Scientific American describes the collection of essays thus:
(SA) Misleading Math about the Earth
ESSAYS BY STEPHEN SCHNEIDER, JOHN P. HOLDREN, JOHN BONGAARTS AND THOMAS LOVEJOY
The book The Skeptical Environmentalist uses statistics to dismiss warnings
about peril for the planet. But the science suggests that it's the author who is
out of touch with the facts.
Science defends itself against The Skeptical Environmentalist
(BL) This statement is potentially the most surprising of all – that the
following critique should be science defending itself against my book. In a
sense this encapsulates the bias of the following critiques. My book clearly
makes a claim to science and to be factually based. I openly state the facts and
my sources, and thus anybody is free to point out where these are faulty or
incorrect and of course, such errors will then be posted on my web site. Thus,
there is no need to defend science from my book – any possible defeat of
science was never the issue. The discussion is whether the statements in my book
are correct or not. The need to make it sound like a battle of science against
my book seems entirely to misplace and bias the focus. Rather, the standpoint
that might need to defend itself from my book would be the alarmist
environmentalism, and that is perhaps the headline that would make more sense:
Alarmist environmentalism defends itself against the Skeptical Environmentalist.
(SA) MISLEADING MATH about the EARTH
CRITICAL thinking and hard data are the cornerstones of all good science.
Because environmental sciences are so keenly important to both our biological
and economic survival—causes that are often seen to be in conflict—they
deserve full scrutiny. With that in mind, the book The Skeptical
Environmentalist (Cambridge University Press), by Bjørn Lomborg’s reply to
Scientific American January 2002 critique, 16-Feb-02 16:47 2/32
Lomborg, a statistician and political scientist at the University of Aarhus in
Denmark, should be a welcome audit. And yet it isn’t. As its
subtitle—Measuring the Real State of the World— indicates, Lomborg’s
intention was to reanalyze environmental data so that the public might make
policy decisions based on the truest understanding of what science has
determined. His conclusion, which he writes surprised even him, was that
contrary to the gloomy predictions of degradation he calls “the litany,”
everything is getting better. Not that all is rosy, but the future for the
environment is less dire than is supposed. Instead Lomborg accuses a pessimistic
and dishonest cabal of environmental groups, institutions and the media of
distorting scientists’ actual findings. (A copy of the book’s first chapter
can be found at www.lomborg.org) The problem with Lomborg’s conclusion is that
the scientists themselves disavow it.
Many spoke to us at SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN about their frustration at what they
described as Lomborg’s misrepresentation of their fields. His seemingly
dispassionate outsider’s view, they told us, is often marred by an incomplete
use of the data or a misunderstanding of the underlying science. Even where his
statistical analyses are valid, his interpretations are frequently off the
mark—literally not seeing the state of the forests for the number of the
trees, for example. And it is hard not to be struck by Lomborg’s presumption
that he has seen into the heart of the science more faithfully than have
investigators who have devoted their lives to it; it is equally curious that he
finds the same contrarian good news lurking in every diverse area of
environmental science.
(BL) Making it sound like all scientists disavow it is simply untrue. Many
scientists, both in private and publicly (e.g. statements on the book) have
praised the book. Below, you will see that none of the claims of
“misrepresentation”, “incomplete use of data” and “misunderstanding of
the underlying science” are substantiated. The only specific claim presented
here by the editor is that I am “literally not seeing the state of the forests
for the number of the trees.” This can only refer to the one paragraph on
forests by Lovejoy (the only treatment of the matter in the following text) –
and here the analysis is quite clear. I try to show that environmental movements
will tell us we are at risk of loosing “the last remaining forests on earth”
and that our time is “the eleventh hour for the world’s forests” (WWF,
quoted in SE:110). Yet, the longest data series actually tells us of very little
change in the world forested area in the post-war period (SE:111). Moreover, the
longest future scenarios from the UN climate panel (IPCC) show that in all
likelihood the Earth will have even greater forest cover in 2100 than it has had
since 1950 (IPCC 2000b, SE:283). Here, exactly looking coolly at the longest
data series gives us much better information than just going with the
environmental myths and hype. Thus, in the editor’s only concrete claim, he
seems to be wide off the mark.
Pointing out that it seems questionable that I should know better than the
people who’ve devoted their lives to particular areas, though clearly
circumstantial, nevertheless looks like a powerful point. Yet, any person who
has devoted his or her life to a single issue will naturally come to consider
this area one of the most crucial issues, and any problem inside the area will
likely be seen as necessary to solve.
And this is exactly my point – we should take the science of these people
seriously, but we should not uncritically adopt their evaluation of the
problems. There are a multitude of problems in any area of society – there are
always things we would like to improve – but we only have a limited amount of
resources. Thus, as a society we need to ask, whether the problems are getting
bigger or smaller (are we going in the right direction), what can we do (much or
marginal) and would this be the best use of our resources (other areas where we
could do even more good). Such an appraisal does not come automatically from any
single issue area. This is why we need to look, not only at the science of each
area, but also to ask: ‘so, all in all, how important a problem is your issue
in the big scheme of things.’ This is what I have attempted to do with The
Skeptical Environmentalist.
(SA) We asked four leading experts to critique Lomborg’s
treatments of their areas—global warming, energy, population and
biodiversity—so readers could understand why the book provokes so much
disagreement. Lomborg’s assessment that conditions on earth are generally
improving for human welfare may hold some truth. The errors described here,
however, show that in its purpose of describing the real state of the world, the
book is a failure.
John Rennie, EDITOR IN CHIEF
(BL) Notice that these four experts have certainly not been chosen randomly –
two of the four reviewers are actually directly criticized in my book. Lovejoy
predicted back in 1980, that 15-20 percent of all species on earth would have
died by the year 2000 (1980:331, SE:252), a prediction which clearly did
not hold true and this is pointed out in the book. Holdren back in 1980 also
clearly thought that many resources were running out. Along with Ehrlich and
Holdren, he bet on this belief with Julian Simon:
“Frustrated with the incessant claims that the Earth would run out of oil,
food and raw materials, the economist Julian Simon in 1980 challenged the
established beliefs with a bet. He offered to bet $10,000 that any given raw
material – to be picked by his opponents – would have dropped in price at
least one year later. The environmentalists Ehrlich, Harte and Holdren, all of
Stanford University, accepted the challenge, stating that “the lure of easy
money can be irresistible.” The environmentalists staked their bets on
chromium, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten, and they picked a time frame of ten
years. The bet was to be determined ten years later, assessing whether the real
(inflation-adjusted) prices had gone up or down. In September 1990 not only had
the total basket of raw materials but also each individual raw material dropped
in price. Chromium had dropped 5 percent, tin a whopping 74 percent. The
doomsayers had lost.
Truth is they could not have won. Ehrlich and Co. would have lost no matter
whether they had staked their money on petroleum, foodstuffs, sugar, coffee,
cotton, wool, minerals or phosphates. They had all become cheaper.” (SE:137).
Since 1990 the price of raw materials has declined another third (Economist
industrial price index, SE:138).
The editor claims that the experts are chosen to show why the book is causing so
much “disagreement,” but given the choice of four experts who clearly feel
the book is fundamentally wrong, it is unclear how the reader should be able to
understand that there might be any value to my argument, and thus to the
disagreement. The obvious lack of any concern for presenting a balanced review
of my work calls into question the real purpose of this Scientific American
feature. However, one of its contributors, Stephen Schneider, has on a former
occasion made a suggestion that might throw some light on the curious imbalance
of the Feature under consideration.
Schneider considers the ”ethical double bind” that might occur to the
scientist who is also concerned to contribute to a better world. As a scientist
he focuses on truth. As a concerned citizen he must take an interest in
political efficiency. Quite obviously, Schneider finds that this presents a
delicate dilemma and he expresses the hope that one might be both honest and
effective. However, as Schneider agonizes over this dilemma he does offer the
following bit of unambiguous advice “So we have to offer up scary
scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any
doubts we might have.”1 Could John Rennie have taken this as editorial
advice? I don’t know, but I feel that it would account for the tone and the
lack of balance of the Feature considered as a whole. Unfortunately, this tone
and lack of balance also seem to represent a disappointing and painful
abandonment of the long proud tradition of enlightenment and rationality for
which Scientific American has been respected in the past.
Finally, John Rennie tells us that, yes – Lomborg’s fundamental assertion
may hold “some truth,” and yet, in the very next statement that the book is
“a failure.” This could seem like somewhat of a glaring contradiction and at
least it relies heavily on the ability of the ensuing reviews to establish
fundamental and serious errors in the argument – something they never manage
to do.
1 “On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the
scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but - which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the
ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human
beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better
place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of
potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some
broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course,
entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we
might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in
cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
(Quoted in Discover, pp. 45-48, Oct. 1989,
see also American Physical Society, APS News August/September 1996, http://cyclotron.aps.org/apsnews/0896/11592.html).
(SA) Stephen Schneider
GLOBAL WARMING: NEGLECTING THE COMPLEXITIES
For three decades, I have been debating alternative solutions for sustainable
development with thousands of fellow scientists and policy analysts—exchanges
carried out in myriad articles and formal meetings. Despite all that, I readily
confess a lingering frustration: uncertainties so infuse the issue of climate
change that it is still impossible to rule out either mild or catastrophic
outcomes, let alone provide confident probabilities for all the claims and
counterclaims made about environmental problems.
Even the most credible international assessment body, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has refused to attempt subjective probabilistic
estimates of future temperatures. This has forced politicians to make their own
guesses about the likelihood of various degrees of global warming. Will
temperatures in 2100 increase by 1.4 degrees Celsius or by 5.8? The difference
means relatively adaptable changes or very damaging ones.
Against this background of frustration, I began increasingly to hear that a
young Danish statistician in a political science department, Bjørn Lomborg, had
applied his skills in statistics to better determine how serious environmental
problems are. Of course, I was anxious to see this highly publicized
contribution— The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the
World. A “skeptical environmentalist” is certainly the best kind, I mused,
because uncertainties are so endemic in these complex problems that suffer from
missing data, incomplete theory and nonlinear interactions. But the “real
state of the world”—that is a high bar to set, given the large range of
plausible outcomes.
And who is Lomborg, I wondered, and why haven’t I come across him at any of
the
meetings where the usual suspects debate costs, benefits, extinction rates,
carrying capacity or cloud feedback? I couldn’t recall reading any scientific
or policy contributions from him either. But there was this massive 515 page
tome with a whopping 2,930 endnotes to wade through. On page xx of his preface,
Lomborg admits, “I am not myself an expert as regards environmental
problems”—truer words are not found in the rest of the book, as I’ll soon
illustrate. I will report primarily on the thick global warming chapter and its
600plus endnotes. That kind of deadweight of detail alone conjures at least the
trappings of comprehensive and careful scholarship. So how does the reality of
the text hold up to the pretense? I’m sure you can already guess, but let me
give some examples to make clear what I learned by reading.
(BL) These paragraphs do not really discuss my book but establish several
important rhetorical points that need to be mentioned. First is the John
Rennie’s incantation of “investigators who have devoted their lives” to
the science: Schneider is the venerable scientist whereas I’m a nobody.
Second, he quotes my introduction where I state I’m not an expert as regards
environmental problems. True, but the quote in full actually places this point
in context:
“I have let experts review the chapters of this book, but I am not myself an
expert as regards environmental problems. My aim has rather been to give a
description of the approaches to the problems, as the experts themselves have
presented them in relevant books and journals, and to examine the different
subject-areas from such a perspective as allows us to evaluate their importance
in the overall social prioritization.
The key idea is that we ought not to let the environmental organizations,
business lobbyists or the media be alone in presenting truths and priorities.
Rather, we should strive for a careful democratic check on the environmental
debate, by knowing the real state of the world – having knowledge of the most
important facts and connections in the essential areas of our world. It is my
hope that this book will contribute to such an understanding.” (pxx)
Of course, saying that truer words are not found in the rest of the book is
clearly a rhetoric point, as much of what I say is simply quotes of the best
available statistics from the official entities like the UN, OECD, World Bank,
EU, US etc.
Third, Schneider lets us consider the argument that my many endnotes conjure at
least trappings of academic argument. This seems an unreasonable critique, since
it really makes it a lot easier for my critics to attempt to show exactly where
I might be wrong. The argument also easily backfires, since Schneider does not
supply any endnotes or other trappings of academic argument himself. Of course,
Scientific American has limited space, but one could easily have imagined that
SA would have put out an annotated version of the papers on their website. (That
Schneider considers his SA article his best argument is evident from his other,
shorter and fiercer article from http://www.gristmagazine.com/
grist/books/schneider121201.asp, where he specifically refers to his SA piece
and the Pimm & Harvey Nature article for documentation. Incidentally, the
Nature article is also almost devoid of documentation, see download on my
website, www.lomborg.org.)
(SA) The climate chapter makes four basic arguments:
Climate science is very uncertain, but nonetheless the real state of the
science is that the sensitivity of the climate to carbon dioxide will turn out
to be at the low end of the IPCC uncertainty range—which is for a warming of
1.5 to 4.5 degrees C if carbon dioxide were to double and be held fixed over
time.
Emissions scenarios, according to the IPCC, fall into six “equally
sound” alternative paths. These paths span a doubling in carbon dioxide
concentrations in 2100 up to more than tripling and well beyond tripling in the
22nd century. Lomborg, however, dismisses all but the lowest of the scenarios:
“Temperatures will increase much less than the maximum estimates from IPCC—it
is likely that the temperature will be at or below the B1 estimate [the lowest
emissions scenario] (less than 2° C in 2100) and the temperature will certainly
not increase even further into the twenty-second century.”
Cost-benefit calculations show that although the benefits of avoiding
climate change
could be substantial ($5 trillion is the single figure Lomborg cites), this is
not worth the cost to the economy of trying to constrain fossil fuel emissions
(a $3trillion to $33trillion range he pulls from the economics literature).
Asymmetrically, no range is given for the climate damages.
The Kyoto Protocol, which caps industrialized countries’ output of
greenhouse gases, is too expensive. It would reduce warming in 2100 by only a
few tenths of a degree—“putting off the temperature increase just six
years.” This number, though, is based on a straw-man policy that nobody has
seriously proposed: Lomborg extrapolates the Kyoto Protocol, which is applicable
only up to 2012, as the world’s sole climate policy for another nine decades.
(BL) Schneider deserves credit for making clear the main thrust of his criticism
in these four points, though he clearly cannot bear just to state them without
pejorative statements like “asymmetrically, no range…” and “straw-man
policy”, both of which are incorrect and will be dealt with below.
(SA) Before providing specifics of why I believe each of
assertions is fatally flawed, I should say something about Lomborg’s methods.
First, most of his nearly 3,000 citations are to secondary literature and media
articles. Moreover, even when cited, the peer-reviewed articles come
elliptically from those studies that support his rosy view that only the low end
of the uncertainty ranges will be plausible. IPCC authors, in contrast, were
subjected to three rounds of review by hundreds of outside experts. They
didn’t have the luxury of reporting primarily from the part of the community
that agrees with their individual views.
(BL) There is an important distinction between secondary sources and media
articles. When discussing the entire state of the world, it would be incredibly
inefficient not to use the vast collection of data and theory offered by
secondary sources – this is exactly the reason for secondary literature and in
general why it is possible to have specialization in science. However, almost
all of these secondary sources are exactly the ones used by almost all
discussants of the state of the world – the reports of the UN, (FAO, UNDP,
UNEP, WHO etc.), IMF, the World Bank, OECD, WRI, Worldwatch Institute, EU, US
government agencies etc. In the climate chapter, which Schneider discusses,
references to the IPCC reports constitute about one-third of all 646 endnotes.
Yet, the IPCC reports are clearly secondary sources. Surely, most people –
including myself – would consider these reports the best available summary of
our understanding of the climate science, which exactly was my argument for
primarily using them as references:
“In the following I shall – unless otherwise stated – use the figures and
computer models from the official reports of the UN climate panel, the IPCC. The
IPCC’s reports are the Lomborg’s reply to Scientific American January 2002
critique, 16-Feb-02 16:47 6/32 foundation for most public policy on climate
change and the basis for most of the arguments put forth by the environmental
organizations.” (SE:259).
When I use media articles this is almost always when analyzing media discussion
and illustrating what I believe to be a bias towards bad news or even incorrect
information that permeates environmental news reporting. When discussing the
IPCC temperature interval for 2100 of 1.4-5.8°C, I point out that:
“In the reporting from the major media, such as CNN, CBS, The Times, and Time,
it was found that all used the high estimate of 5.8°C warming, and yet none
mentioned the low estimate of 1.4°C.” Naturally, this statement uses media
articles as reference but is the use problematic? Should such a bias not be
pointed out?
Likewise, I debunk U.S. News & World Report for telling its readers in
February 2001 of how global warming would have lots of serious consequences. One
of the most outrageous would be the US prediction: “By midcentury, the chic
Art Deco hotels that now line Miami's South Beach could stand waterlogged and
abandoned,” despite IPCC estimates of a water rise of just 16cm (6in) by 2050
(SE:289-91). Is this use of media sources unreasonable?
Then, the critique of my use of sources continues with the charge that when I
use peer-reviewed articles I do so primarily to support my rosy view of a low
range but no further evidence of this is offered.
(SA) Second, it is ironic that in a popular book by a
statistician one can’t find a clear discussion of the distinction among
different types of probabilities, such as frequentist and Bayesian (that is,
“objective” and “subjective”). He uses the word “plausible” often,
but, curiously for a statistician, he never attaches any probability to what is
“plausible.” The Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, on the other hand,
explicitly confronted the need to quantify all confidence terms. Working Group
I, for example, gave the term “likely” a 66 to 90 percent chance of
occurring. Although the IPCC gives a wide range for most of its projections,
Lomborg generally dismisses these ranges, focusing on the least serious
outcomes. Not so much as one probability is offered for the chance of a
dangerous outcome, yet he makes a firm assertion that climate “will
certainly” not go beyond 2 degrees C warming in the 22nd century—a
conclusion at variance with the IPCC, other national climate assessments and
most recent studies in the field of climate science.
(BL) It is correct that IPCC has quantified its ‘plausible’, but IPCC
themselves quite rightly made it clear what the limits were on the accuracy of
their different types of probability: “the following words have been used
where appropriate to indicate judgmental estimates of confidence: virtually
certain (greater than 99% chance that a result is true); very likely (90-99%
chance); likely (66-90% chance); medium likelihood (33-66% chance); unlikely
(10-33% chance); very unlikely (1-10% chance); exceptionally unlikely (less than
1% chance),” (IPCC 2001d:2, italics added). Unless we are talking about events
with very well-established probability distributions (which is the case for
almost none of the important global warming issues) it really is just a judgment
call whether something has a 89% or 91% chance of occurring – thus, had I made
a similar endnote, defining the words of confidence, it might have appeared
slightly more objective but not really made any addition to the facts at hand.
The second claim is much more serious: that I generally dismiss the IPCC ranges
and focus on the least serious outcomes. Neglecting such ranges generally or
without reason would, of course, be seriously misleading, which is why I don’t
do it in the book and which may explain why my critic offers no examples. Take
two of the most important characteristics of global warming, sea level increases
and temperature impacts on agriculture. For sea level increase I clearly write
out the ranges from the main scenarios (SE:264) and for agriculture impact I
clearly state the IPCC ranges (SE:288).
Next, it is claimed that I do not offer any probability of a dangerous outcome.
This is plainly incorrect. In a whole section entitled “Fear of catastrophe”
(SE: 315-7) I discuss the two major worries of dangerous outcomes, the sliding
of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and the shut-down of the thermohaline
circulation (THC) that drives the Gulf Stream. Here I quote the 2001 IPCC report
that a WAIS breakup is considered “very unlikely during the 21st century”
(SE:315). Likewise, with respect to the THC, I write out that the 2001 “IPCC
conclude that ‘the current projections using climate models do not exhibit a
complete shut down of the thermohaline circulation by 2100’ but point out that
it could completely, and possibly irreversibly, shut down ‘if the change in
radiative forcing is large enough and applied long enough’” (SE:316). In the
endnote it is discussed how likely it is that the radiative forcing will be
large enough and applied long enough for this shut-down to happen. Thus, for
both the major dangerous outcomes I discuss the probability in detail, contrary
to Schneider’s claim. The final quote of “will certainly” only works
because it has been taken out of context:
“This more realistic model holds several key points. First, it shows that
global warming is not an ever worsening problem. In fact, under any reasonable
scenario of technological change and without policy intervention, carbon
emissions will not reach the levels of A1FI and they will decline towards the
end of the century, as we move towards ever cheaper renewable energy sources.
Second, temperatures will increase much less than the maximum estimates from
IPCC – it is likely that the temperature will be at or below the B1 estimate
(less than 2°C in 2100) and the temperature will certainly not increase even
further into the twenty-second century. Third, …” (SE:286, italics added).
The quote “will certainly” comes from a model which is deemed “more
realistic,” but it is naturally only within this model that I can say that the
temperature will be below 2°C and not keep increasing into the 22nd century. To
make me say otherwise (that I should make “a firm assertion”) is simply
called misquoting.
(SA) Now let us look in more detail at the four major
arguments he makes in this chapter.
Climate science. A typical example of Lomborg’s method is his
paraphrase of a
secondary source in reporting a 1989 Hadley Center paper in the journal Nature
in which the researchers make modifications to their climate model: “The
programmers then improved the cloud parameterizations in two places, and the
model reacted by reducing its temperature estimate from 5.2° C to 1.9° C.”
Had this been first-rate scholarship, Lomborg would have consulted the original
article, in which the concluding sentence of the first paragraph presents the
authors’ caveat: “Note that although the revised cloud scheme is more
detailed it is not necessarily more accurate than the less sophisticated
scheme.” In a similar vein, he cites Richard S. Lindzen’s controversial
stabilizing feedback, or “iris effect,” as evidence that the IPCC climate
sensitivity range should be reduced by a factor of almost three. He fails either
to understand this mechanism or to tell us that it is based on only a few years
of data in a small part of one ocean. Extrapolating this small sample of data to
the entire globe is like extrapolating the strong destabilizing feedback over
midcontinental landmasses as snow melts during the spring—such an
inappropriate projection would likely increase estimates of climate sensitivity
by a factor of several.
(BL) I am glad to have pointed out the typical way I refer to secondary sources
– namely quote them accurately. The quote comes from Science magazine in 1997:
“A few years ago, a leading climate model – developed at the British
Meteorological
Office's Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research, in Bracknell –
predicted that an Earth with twice the preindustrial level of carbon dioxide
would warm by a devastating 5.2 Degrees Celsius. Then Hadley Center modelers,
led by John Mitchell, made two improvements to the model's clouds--how fast
precipitation fell out of different cloud types and how sunlight and radiant
heat interacted with clouds. The model's response to a carbon dioxide doubling
dropped from 5.2 Celsius to a more modest 1.9 Celsius.” (Kerr 1997a:1040).
However, the claim that I should have gone back to the original article seems
suspect on several grounds. First, why would a major Science overview article
not be a trustworthy source in general (and why not mention that the source is
Science, rather than merely “a secondary source”)? Second, it is of course
possible that there are errors in secondary sources, though the risk is probably
very small when using reputable sources like Science. The necessary question,
though, is whether this is an important error? And if so, why has nobody
(including my critic) corrected the article when it appeared in Science?
Finally, is it really correct that the only relevant article to go back to is an
article from 1989 (eight years earlier), where they point out the more detailed
cloud scheme is “not necessarily more accurate”? Naturally, much research
has been done since 1989 to establish which cloud scheme is the more accurate;
in a 1993 article Michell points out (together with C. A. Senior):
“The importance of the representation of cloud in a general circulation model
is investigated by utilizing four different parameterization schemes for layer
cloud in a low-resolution version of the general circulation model at the Hadley
Centre for Climate Prediction and Research at the United Kingdom Meteorological
Office. The performance of each version of the model in terms of cloud and
radiation is assessed in relation to satellite data from the Earth Radiation
Budget Experiment (ERBE). Schemes that include a prognostic cloud water variable
show some improvement on those with relative humidity-dependent cloud, but all
still Lomborg’s reply to Scientific American January 2002 critique, 16-Feb-02
16:47 8/32 show marked differences from the ERBE data. The sensitivity of each
of the versions of the model to a doubling of atmospheric C02 is investigated.
Midlevel and lower-level clouds decrease when cloud is dependent on relative
humidity, and this constitutes a strong positive feedback. When interactive
cloud water is included, however, this effect is almost entirely compensated for
by a negative feedback from the change of phase of cloud water from ice to
water. Additional negative feedbacks are found when interactive radiative
properties of cloud are included and these lead to an overall negative cloud
feedback. The global warming produced with the four models then ranges from 5.4°
with a relative humidity scheme to 1.9°C with interactive cloud water and
radiative properties. Improving the treatment of ice cloud based on observations
increases the model's sensitivity slightly to 2.1°C. Using an energy balance
model, it is estimated that the climate sensitivity using the relative humidity
scheme along with the negative feedback from cloud radiative properties would be
2.8°C. Thus, 2.8°– 2.1°C appears to be a better estimate of the range of
equilibrium response to a doubling of C02.” (Senior & Mitchell 1993,
http://ams.allenpress.com/ams online/?request=getabstract&
issn=1520-0442&volume=006&issue=03&page=0393, italics added).
Here, they basically tell us that the model which produced the 1.9°C is better
though not necessarily by a lot (“some improvement”) and that the low-end
estimates are “better estimates.” Thus, the example of secondary source
quotation seems curious at best or deliberately misleading at worst.
The claim against Lindzen seems unreasonable as pointed out in Lindzen’s own
letter to Scientific American, available at my web-site. Here Lindzen writes:
“One small point of personal interest to me illustrates the rather bizarre
nature of these
attacks. Schneider claims that Lomborg cites a paper by me and colleagues (Lindzen,
Chou and Hou, Does the Earth Have an Adaptive Infrared Iris?, Bulletin of the
American Meteorological Society, 82, 2001) on what we refer to as the ‘iris
effect’ in order to reduce the IPCC claimed sensitivities by a factor of 3.
What Lomborg does, is devote a quarter of a page to our paper in order to point
out that it ‘might pose a challenge’ to the IPCC range. Schneider goes on to
chide Lomborg for failing to present an allegedly fatal flaw in our argument:
that it is simply the extrapolation of data from “a few years of data from a
small part of one ocean.”
He also presents an absurdly incomprehensible ‘analogy’ to positive
feedbacks from
midcontinental ice melts in spring. What Schneider really illustrates is that he
completely misunderstands what we have done, which is to assess the effect of
temperature on the behavior of cumulonimbus convection and its impact on large
scale upper level cirrus clouds in the tropics. The primary requirement of such
a study is that it deal with a period and a region which contain a large enough
number of cumulonimbus towers; the results (which are normalized by a measure of
cumulus activity) are then scalable to the entire tropics – a far cry from
naive extrapolation . The period we dealt with (20 months in the paper, but now
extended to 4 years) and the area looked at (30 o S-30 o N, and 130 o E-170 o W)
amply satisfied this criterion. As a logical test of this, we showed that the
dependence of the ratio of cirrus area to convective activity remained robust
even when we restricted ourselves to arbitrary small subsets in time and space
of our full data set. We have also ascertained that existing climate GCMs fail
to replicate the observations. As our paper amply stresses (and as Lomborg
acknowledges), there remain uncertainties in our work, but Schneider’s concern
over ‘extrapolation’ is not one of them.
Thus, at one fell swoop, Schneider misrepresents both the book he is attacking
and the science that he is allegedly representing.”
(SA) As a final example, he quotes a controversial
hypothesis from Danish cloud physicists that solar magnetic events modulate
cosmic rays and produce “a clear connection between global low-level cloud
cover and incoming cosmic radiation.” The Danish researchers use this
hypothesis to support an alternative to carbon dioxide for explaining recent
climate change. Lomborg fails to discuss— and I haven’t seen it treated by
the authors of that speculative theory either— what such purported changes to
this cloud cover have done to the radiative balance of the earth. Increasing
clouds, it has been well known since papers by Syukuro Manabe and Richard T.
Wetherald in 1967 and myself in 1972, can warm or cool the atmosphere depending
on the height of the cloud tops, the reflectivity of the underlying surface, the
season and the latitude. The reason the IPCC discounts this theory is that its
advocates have not demonstrated any radiative forcing sufficient to match that
of much more parsimonious theories, such as anthropogenic forcing.
Schneider calls this theory “an alternative to carbon dioxide for explaining
recent climate change.” However, neither the Danish cloud physicists nor I say
that they are an alternative, but a supplementary explanation: “the sun as
another important factor in the explication of increasing global temperatures”
(SE:276, italics added). Moreover, I do point out both its still unsolved
scientific problems but also its force and an attempt to show the relative
importance of the two:
“A number of unanswered questions and unsolved scientific problems still
remain in these theoretical relationships. But the point is that the sunspot
theory has created a possible correlation in that a shorter sunspot cycle
duration, such as the one we are experiencing now, means more intense solar
activity, less cosmic radiation, fewer low-level clouds, and therefore higher
temperatures. This theory also has the tremendous advantage, compared to the
greenhouse theory, that it can explain the temperature changes from 1860 to
1950, which the rest of the climate scientists with a shrug of the shoulders
have accredited to “natural variation.”
Notice that the connection between temperature and the sunspot cycle seems to
have deteriorated during the last 10-30 years, with temperatures outpacing
sunspot activity in Figure 165. Most likely we are instead seeing an increasing
signal, probably from greenhouse gases like CO2. Such a find exactly underscores
that neither solar variation nor greenhouse gases can alone explain the entire
temperature record. Rather, the fact that the emerging greenhouse gas signal
only appears now seems to indicate once again that the estimated CO2 warming
effect needs to be lowered. One such critical study finds that the solar
hypothesis explains about 57 percent of the temperature deviations and that the
data suggest a climate sensitivity of 1.7°C, a 33 percent reduction of the IPPC
best estimate” (SE:277-8, italics added).
In conclusion, I do not accept the charge of having misconstrued climate
science. If I am so wrong, one would expect that my critic should have had an
easy time showing it, not having to rely on nitpicking, quoting out of context,
and misrepresenting.
(SA) Emissions scenarios. Lomborg asserts that over
the next several decades new, improved solar machines and other renewable
technologies will crowd fossil fuels off the market. This will be done so
efficiently that the IPCC scenarios vastly overestimate the chance for major
increases in carbon dioxide. How I wish this would turn out to be true! But
wishes aren’t analysis. One study is cited; ignored is the huge body of
economics work he later accepts to estimate a range of costs if we were to
implement emissions controls. In fact, most of these economists strongly believe
high emissions are quite likely: they usually project carbon dioxide doubling to
tripling (or more) as “optimal” economic policy. I have attacked this
literature for failing to point out that climate policies that raise the price
of conventional fuels spur investments in alternative energy systems. But such
incentives need policies first—and Lomborg opposes those very policies. No
credible analyst can just assert that a fossil fuel intensive scenario is not
plausible—and, typically, he gives no probability that it might occur.
(BL) This is perhaps the most curious and weak argument of Schneider. He does
nothing to confront my critique of the new IPCC scenarios, which in the words of
one of the modeling teams are “an attempt at ‘computer-aided
storytelling.’” Here, IPCC has abandoned any attempt to predict the future
and instead only talk about different possible futures. However, if the stories
generating the worst outcomes are
consistently unlikely, then clearly there is a great risk that we might end up
spending vast amount of resources to combat threats that only occur in very
unlikely storytelling. I point out how the price of renewables such as solar
power have been dropping by more than 50% per decade over the past 30 years.
Then I present a peer-reviewed model (Chakravorty et al. 1997), which shows that
if this trend continues it will mean the beginning of renewables as a
substantial source of energy by 2025 and the end of fossil fuels by 2065. Even
if a much lower price decrease of 30% per decade is assumed for the future, it
means phasing in renewables by 2035 and the end of fossil fuels by 2105
(SE:284ff). Schneider merely counters this by pointing to the many models of the
cost and benefits of global warming (the integrated models), which do not show
this decline in carbon emissions. This is correct but entirely irrelevant –
these models deal with different issues of costs and benefits (primarily with
the timing of costs from early phasing out of carbon emissions), and the
Chakravorty paper was exactly written to counter this problem.
Thus, my critic does not really have a counter-argument – he only seems to
dismiss the analysis as wishful thinking and stating that “no credible
analyst” can say this. These are arguments of authority, not science. If
Schneider is aware of any other study that has looked at the relative costs of
renewables and fossil fuels over time, taking into account the remarkable
increase in efficiency of the renewables over the past decades, but which shows
that renewables will not take over – we should be given these references and
more details.
(SA) Cost-benefit calculations. Lomborg’s most
egregious distortions and poorest analyses are his citations of cost-benefit
calculations. First, he chides the governments that modified the penultimate
draft of the report from IPCC’s Working Group II. These modifications
downgraded the significance of economic studies that aggregate climate change
damages. Lomborg says: “A political decision stopped IPCC from looking at the
total cost-benefit of global warming.” (As an aside, I should mention that it
is strange he chose to cite the penultimate and pre-approval draft report in
this case but didn’t mention the very first item in the approved
summary—that recent temperature trends have caused a discernible effect on
plants and animals. Even more puzzling is his failure to discuss ecological
impacts in general, focusing instead on health and agriculture, sectors he
thinks won’t be much harmed by climate change of the minuscule amount he
predicts.)
(BL) Here, two different arguments are being confused. Yes, I chide governments
for editing the WGII technical summary, which stated the controversial but
fairly well established point: Moderate global warming will have grave, negative
net impact on the developing world but zero or maybe even a positive net impact
for the developed world. In the more technical language of the WGII summary,
this was:
“Published estimates indicate that increases in global mean temperature would
produce net economic losses in many developing countries for all magnitudes of
warming studied, and that the losses would be greater in magnitude the higher
the level of warming. In many developed countries, net economic gains are
projected for global mean temperature increases up to roughly 2°C. Mixed or
neutral net effects are projected in developed countries for temperature
increases in the approximate range of 2 to 3°C, and net losses for larger
temperature increases.
The projected distribution of economic impacts is such that it would increase
the disparity in well being between developed countries and developing
countries, with the disparity growing with higher temperatures. The more
damaging impacts estimated for developing countries reflects, in part, their
lesser adaptive capacity.” (IPCC 2001b:Summary for Policymakers, original
government draft, 2.6., SE:301)
In the final version, this clear message disappeared without any additional
scientific information being supplied. It certainly seems reasonable to
criticize such a move. Schneider suggests that this should be due to a
downgrading of economic studies, and he then mentions my following quote “a
political decision…”. However, this is about WGIII – a totally different
issue. (That this is not just an accidental typo is seen in Schneider’s Grist
article, where he also talks about WG2).
Thus, Schneider makes no argument against the fact that governments changed the
unpleasant conclusion.
Instead he makes the almost incomprehensible aside that it is strange that I
mention one thing from the penultimate report but not a completely different
thing from the finished report. Such argument just does not make sense – I
mention the one thing because it is important in the context of the issues
discussed; Schneider may find that I should have talked about others, and in a
book dealing with so many and such varied issues, such a critique if of course
always possible. However, dealing with the impact of global warming on
agriculture and health rather than ecology seems entirely justified given the
much greater attention, both scientifically and media-wise, to the first two
issues, and also the human-centered evaluation presented openly in the beginning
of my book (SE:11-2).
(SA) The government representatives downgraded aggregate
cost-benefit studies for a reason: these studies fail to consider so many
categories of damages held to be important by political leaders as to render
them just a guideline on market sector transactions, not the “total
cost-benefit” analysis Lomborg wants. A total analysis would have to include
the value of species lost, crucial ecosystem services degraded, inequity created
by the poor being hurt more than the rich (which Lomborg does acknowledge),
quality of life reduced (for example, a rise in sea level driving small-island
inhabitants from traditional homelands), and likely changes to climatic extremes
and variability. Then again, Lomborg cites only one value for climate
damages—$ 5 trillion—even though the same economics papers he refers to for
costs of climate policy generally acknowledge that climate damages can vary from
benefits up to catastrophic losses.
(BL) Here it is claimed without any reference that the government
representatives should have stopped cost-benefit analysis because it did not
include all categories, but honestly, it seems highly unlikely that it would
have been stopped for such a reason – it would have been a much more obvious
choice to make the cost-benefit analysis more inclusive. Moreover, it is
scientifically unreasonable to argue that since we don’t have all the data, we
shouldn’t even try to get them but just – stop! Then what do we do?
Finally, it is claimed that the $5 trillion (total, discounted cost) is
unreasonable, since one economist (Nordhaus) has shown that the cost could be
much less and with a catastrophe it could be more. I merely write out the mean
estimated cost of Nordhaus’ latest model. The cost is also comparable to the
one estimated by IPCC in its 1996 report (which due to the end of cost-benefit
analysis is not replicated in 2001), finding an annual cost of about 1.5-2% of
global GDP. This is not unreasonable, when the global warming costs are compared
to the same mean estimates of mitigation (see discussion below).
(SA) It is precisely because the responsible scientific
community cannot rule out such catastrophic outcomes at a high level of
confidence that climate mitigation polices are seriously proposed. And to give
one number—rather than a broad range—for avoided climate damages defies
explanation, especially when he does give a range for climate policy costs. This
range, however, is based on the economics literature but ignores the findings of
engineers. Engineers dispute the economists’ typical estimates because the
economists fail to take into account preexisting market imperfections such as
energy-inefficient machines, houses and processes. These engineering studies,
including a famous one by five U.S. Department of Energy laboratories— hardly
environmental radicals—suggest that climate policies that provide incentives
to replace inefficient equipment with more efficient state-of-the- art products
could actually reduce some emissions at below-zero costs.
(BL) Of course the higher the probability of catastrophic outcomes the more
urgent climate mitigation policies appear. However, it is surprising that my
critic can now tell us unequivocally that the reason the responsible scientific
community cannot rule out catastrophic outcomes that we should cut back carbon
emissions. On his interpretation this means that almost the entire three IPCC
2001 reports are worthless in the discussion on what to do about global warming,
because almost all of the models and esults discussed are based on
non-catastrophic outcomes. Indeed, the only two major catastrophes discussed
(WAIS slipping and THC shutting down), the current models are exactly showing
very small risks of these happening (as discussed above). Moreover, almost all
of the public discussion has focused on what will happen with rising sea levels,
higher mean temperatures, possibly more malaria etc. – all of which are
dependent on the non-catastrophic models of the IPCC. (Notice also, that these
are the issues brought forth by Schneider himself above: “value of species
lost, crucial ecosystem services degraded, inequity created by the poor being
hurt more than the rich (which Lomborg does acknowledge), quality of life
reduced (for example, a rise in sea level driving small-island inhabitants from
traditional homelands), and likely changes to climatic extremes and
variability.”) I do agree with Schneider that we need to focus more of our
attention to possible catastrophic outcomes (“we ought to spend more effort
looking into the likelihood of such [catastrophic] occurrences than on improving
our mean prognosis, since it is the extreme occurrences that are truly costly”
SE:316). However, this has clearly not been the mainstay of the global warming
argument and to suddenly claim so seems both incorrect and disingenuous.
Then Schneider goes on to say, as he did in the summary above, that I give one
figure for the cost of global warming ($5T) but a range for “climate policy
costs” ($3-33T), and that this “asymmetry” is unreasonable. (In Grist,
Schneider puts it less diplomatically: “this putative statistician quotes a
range of costs when convenient but not a range of benefits when inconvenient”)
The problem is that Schneider is clearly comparing two different kinds of
numbers and two different kinds of ranges. The $5T is indeed the central cost
estimate of global warming from Nordhaus and Boyer (and it is broadly consistent
with the IPCC estimate as discussed above). This is imply the cost of global
warming when comparing a Business-as-usual (BAU) world with the hypothetical BAU
world, where there was no man-made global warming. In essence, this is the price
we’ll have to pay if we don’t do anything.
The other figures ($3-33T) come from the extra costs of choosing different
emission cut policies. For instance, the Nordhaus/Boyer estimate for a global
stabilization policy (a kind of global Kyoto) would be about $8.5T (SE:310).
However, had we done nothing the cost would still have been $5T, so the extra
cost of choosing global stabilization is about $3.5T. If we instead choose a
policy to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C, the Nordhaus/Boyer estimate
is a cost of $37.5T or an extra cost of $32.5T. These strategies are some of the
limit points in the range of $3-33T, which I mention and which Schneider quotes
(SE:318).
Now, clearly you cannot compare the $5T with the range $3-33T, because the $5T
includes the cost of global warming, the range denotes the extra cost. Thus,
Schneider is plainly wrong in comparing the two (or claiming that the one should
be the cost, and the other the benefits, as he does in Grist).
This also shows why the complaint of range vs. single number is entirely
misplaced. The $5T is the cost of global warming under BAU. You can only ‘do
nothing’ in exactly one way. Therefore there is just one number. The $3-33T is
a range of net costs under a wide variety of policy choices. Now, we can make
lots of different policies, ranging from very light to very invasive – the
light policies incurring only a smaller net cost ($3T) and the invasive ones
incurring very high net costs (e.g. $33T).
So there is no sinister, ‘putative statistician’ presenting ranges only when
it fits him – the single number is a single cost – the range is net costs of
a range of policy choices. Both comparing these, and complaining about their
asymmetry is simply incorrect.
Then it is claimed that I base the cost estimates on the economics literature,
“but ignores the findings of engineers.” This is incomprehensible and again
incorrect. I spend almost two pages discussing these alternative engineer (or
bottom-up) cost estimates (see SE:312-3). The problem with most of these
engineer estimates is that they only count direct costs and benefits but neglect
the (typically much bigger) indirect costs and benefits on economic production.
A clear example of this is given in the book, where UNEP (the UN Environmental
Programme) evaluates the CO2 reduction potential in Denmark: “The main
question is: How much of this [CO2 reduction] potential can be realised without
substantial increases in costs associated with finding and implementing these
options, and without serious welfare losses? None of these costs are included in
the following calculations, which are based on the concept of direct costs” (UNEP
1994:II, 21, SE:426). Thus, I conclude – along with most economists – that
these engineer estimates are likely to be huge overestimates of the actual
opportunities, because they systematically neglect the costs down the line.
Schneider may disagree and have new data to convince us, but he should present
such data instead of incorrectly claiming that I have not dealt with the issue.
Finally, Schneider writes that researchers have found that it is possible to
provide incentives, which in some cases will cut carbon emissions with net
benefits. He also writes this as if it was astounding and somehow in opposition
to my arguments. However, the statement that some emissions may actually be cut
at below-zero costs is entirely standard, and also replicated in my book. The
argument is not whether there are below-zero cost ways to cut emissions (the
so-called ‘no regret’ options) but how much:
“Most economists are therefore extremely skeptical towards assertions of such
improvements in efficiency which can be implemented at no cost or even produce a
profit, among other things because these calculations, as we have seen above,
often omit important items of expenditure. For this reason, economists also
argue that if it really is possible to implement profitable restructuring then
it would be reasonable to expect that the possibility would already have been
exploited.
One typical economist’s expression is that “there is no such thing as a free
lunch” – that costs are bound to occur somewhere along the line. Nordhaus
expresses the problem of the possible, profitable carbon dioxide emissions
reductions thus: “In the colloquialism of economics, this analysis suggests
not only that there are free lunches, but that in some restaurants you can get
paid to eat!”
A new study also seems to suggest that these “no regret” possibilities are
much more limited than normally assumed; it turns out that they can probably
only reduce consumption by a couple of percent and could possibly be pushed to
providing 5 percent. Equally, a study of monthly electricity bills showed that
the engineers’ estimates of huge savings from attic insulation fell far short
of real payoffs, which were closer to what economists would have expected.”
(SE:313).
Again, Schneider does not add to our information but he manages to make it seem
as if he has countered an argument of mine, though I clearly write that there
could 2-5% cuts that could be made at below-zero cost.
(SA) The Kyoto Protocol.
Lomborg’s creation of a 100-year regime for a decade-long protocol is a
distortion of the climate policy process. Every IPCC report has noted that
carbon dioxide emissions need to be cut by more than 50 percent below most
baseline projections to avoid large increases in concentration in the late 21st
and 22nd centuries.
Most analysts know “Kyoto extended” can’t make such large cuts and that
both developed and developing nations will have to fashion cooperative and
cost-effective solutions over time. This will take a great deal of
learning-by-doing: international cooperation is not a common experience. Kyoto
is a starting point. And yet Lomborg, with his creation of a straw-man 100-year
projection, would squash even this first step.
(BL) The book clearly shows that Kyoto-in-itself will have very little effect on
global warming, and it is good to see that Schneider concurs. However, he then
claims that Kyoto-in-itself is a straw-man, because we should be doing much
more. Now, this entails both an analytic and a democratic problem.
To take the democratic first: almost all democratic discussion is about choosing
or not choosing Kyoto.
Since this is the deal offered, would it not be reasonable to discuss what is
the actual outcome of the deal that we are talking about? Likewise, if Schneider
contends that the real issue is not Kyoto but something much more restrictive,
would it not be democratically more honest to say that the decision is not Kyoto
but something much more stringent? Moreover, it is somewhat of a rhetorical
misnomer to talk about “Lomborg’s creation of a 100-year regime for a
decade-long protocol is a distortion of the climate policy process.” This
extension I refer to actually comes from an article written by one of the
lead-authors of the 1996 IPCC report, Wigley. He does in fact extend the Kyoto
protocol to ascertain what its effect might be. In doing this, is professor
Wigley really creating a distortion of the climate policy process?
The other, analytic problem is that Schneider only talks about my analysis of
Kyoto and actually neglects that I deal with a range of much more stringent
policies (which was why we got the $3-33T range, mentioned above). This seems
odd, to say the least. Of course, if Schneider wants to advocate a policy of
much-more-than-Kyoto, that is fine, but the cost-benefit analyses are very clear
on the issue. Kyoto is almost irrespective of how it is implemented a bad deal,
and going even further is a much worse deal.
This is the absolutely central issue of the book, which Schneider ignores: That
all cost-benefit analyses show that high carbon reductions are not justified
(SE:318): “A central conclusion from a meeting of all economic modelers was:
‘Current assessments determine that the ‘optimal’ policy calls for a
relatively modest level of control of CO2.’” The last sentence, which claims
that I want to “squash” the Kyoto protocol, is language from policy, not
science. I try to point out the costs and benefits of our different policy
choices, and yes, I point out that for the benefit of Kyoto will be to postpone
global warming in 2100 by six years, whereas the cost of Kyoto each year will be
as great as the one-off cost of giving clean drinking water and sanitation to
every single human being, forever.
(SA) So what then is “the real state of the world”?
Clearly, it isn’t knowable in traditional statistical terms, even though
subjective estimates can be responsibly offered. The ranges presented by the
IPCC in its peer-reviewed reports give the best snapshot of the real state of
climate change: we could be lucky and see a mild effect or unlucky and get the
catastrophic outcomes. The IPCC frames the issue as a risk-management decision
about hedging. It is not the everything-will-turn-out-fine affair that Lomborg
would have us believe.
(BL) It ought not to be necessary to point out, but IPCC offers us insight into
the science of global warming, but they (exactly because of the political
decision to stop pursuing cost-benefit analysis) do not give us the answer to
whether our limited resources are better spent on averting more global warming
or on e.g. supplying clean drinking water and sanitation to the world.
Saying that my book is an everything-will-turn-out-fine statement is a
rhetorical and entirely misleading treatment of my book. I point out that we
should deal with environmental problems, work to decrease air pollution even
further, invest in renewable energy research and development etc., as well as
tackle the many other, important global problems such as poverty and starvation.
The point I make, however, is that we should continuously be aware of the
necessary prioritization – that we should strive to make the decisions, which
actually do good and not just the ones that sound good. This requires straight
and honest analysis that is willing to challenge any however well established
myth.
(SA) For such an interdisciplinary topic, the publisher
would have been wise to ask natural scientists as well as social scientists to
review the manuscript, which was published by the social science side of the
house. It’s not surprising that the reviewers failed to spot Lomborg’s
unbalanced presentation of the natural science, given the complexity of the many
intertwining fields. But that the natural scientists weren’t asked is a
serious omission for a respectable publisher such as Cambridge University Press.
(BL) The claim of “unbalanced presentation of the natural science” clearly
cannot be upheld, given my critic’s lack of ability to provide such examples.
This also suggests that his stated regret that Cambridge University Press has
chosen to publish my book really amounts to a desire to see critical arguments
suppressed.
(SA) Unfortunately, angry reviews such as this one will be
the result. Worse still, many laypeople and policymakers won’t see the reviews
and could well be tricked into thinking thousands of citations and hundreds of
pages constitute balanced scholarship. A better rule of thumb is to see who
talks in ranges and subjective probabilities and to beware of the myth busters
and “truth tellers.”
(BL) This, of course, is a surprising ending. The entire Scientific American
piece is sold as a truth-telling story. My own understanding of science is that
we should exactly try to bust myths and be truth tellers. Questioning truth
saying and myth busting seems to undercut the entire endeavor that Scientific
American is trying to achieve, but perhaps and unfortunately it is a very
accurate description of the
state of the critique.
(SA) Stephen Schneider, professor in the department of
biological sciences and senior fellow at the Institute for International Studies
at Stanford University, is editor of Climatic Change and the Encyclopedia of
Climate and Weather and lead author of several IPCC chapters and the IPCC
guidance paper on uncertainties.
(SA) John P. Holdren
ENERGY: ASKING THE WRONG QUESTION
Lomborg’s chapter on energy covers a scant 19 pages. It is devoted almost
entirely to attacking the belief that the world is running out of energy, a
belief that Lomborg appears to regard as part of the “environmental litany”
but that few if any environmentalists actually hold. What environmentalists
mainly say on this topic is not that we are running out of energy but that we
are running out of environment—that is, running out of the capacity of air,
water, soil and biota to absorb, without intolerable consequences for human
well-being, the effects of energy extraction, transport, transformation and use.
They also argue that we
are running out of the ability to manage other risks of energy supply, such as
the political and economic dangers of overdependence on Middle East oil and the
risk that nuclear energy systems will leak weapons materials and expertise into
the hands of proliferation prone nations or terrorists.
(BL) It is good to see that Holdren is actually saying it is correct, we’re
not running out of energy, and that I am right. Somewhat contradictorily is the
pejorative “scant” 19 pages – if I’m right and the issue is easily
settled, presumably there is no need to use many more?
However, Holdren then goes on to say that environmentalists are worrying about
running out of environment (the statement singled out in SA) and running out of
the ability to manage political, economic and military dangers. This is exactly
the kind of exposition which I try to counter in my book – without any
references Holdren manages to describe everything as going ever worse and even
include into the environmental agenda concepts that are far removed from its
core, such as nuclear proliferation, terrorism and economic recession from oil
price hikes. Let us just point out one issue area, air pollution (estimated by
the US EPA to be the by far most important area, SE:163). Here we are plainly
not running out of environment or running out of the air’s capacity to absorb
without intolerable consequences for human well-being – all criteria
pollutants in the US have diminished in concentration over the past few decades,
as I demonstrate EPA references for in the book (SE:ch.15).
Here, Holdren simply choose a sound-good quote (running out of environment),
presumably in the quest to defend science, but without references and plainly
incorrect, even as demonstrated in my book.
(SA) That “the energy problem” is not primarily a
matter of depletion of resources in any global sense but rather of environmental
impacts and sociopolitical risks—and, potentially, of rising monetary costs
for energy when its environmental and sociopolitical hazards are adequately
internalized and insured against—has in fact been the mainstream
environmentalist position for decades. It was, for example, the position I
elucidated in the 1971 Sierra Club “Battlebook” Energy (coauthored with
Philip Herrera, then the environment editor for Time). It was also the position
elaborated on by the Energy Policy Project of the Ford Foundation in the
pioneering 1974 report A Time to Choose; by Amory Lovins in his influential 1976
Foreign Affairs article “Energy Strategy: The Road Not Taken”; by Paul R.
and Anne H. Ehrlich and me in our 1977 college textbook Ecoscience; and so on.
So whom is Lomborg so resoundingly refuting with his treatise on the abundance
of world energy resources? It would seem that his targets are pundits (such as
the correspondents for E magazine and CNN cited at the opening of this chapter)
and professional analysts (although only a few of these are cited, and those
very selectively) who have argued not that the world is running out of energy
altogether but only that it might be running out of cheap oil. Lomborg’s
dismissive rhetoric notwithstanding, this is not a silly question, nor one with
an easy answer.
(BL) Holdren acknowledges that my targets are pundits and analysts, who have
been arguing that we would be running out of cheap oil. Are these not reasonable
people to challenge? He also tries to point out that many even in the 70s did
not worry about running out of oil, but it is curious how he neglects the most
important and influential environmental influence from the 70s, the Limits to
Growth argument that clearly predicted oil to run out before 1992 (Meadows et
al. 1972:58). Likewise, Ehrlich worried in 1987 that the oil crisis would return
in the 1990s (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1987:222). Finally, he tries to say that the
pundits and analysts say something else than do I, because they just worry about
running out of cheap oil. But of course, this is the same thing, as is also
pointed out in the book: “Even if we were to run out of oil, this would not
mean that oil was unavailable, only that it would be very, very expensive. If we
want to examine whether oil is getting more and more scarce we have to look at
whether oil is getting more and more expensive” (SE:122).
(SA) Oil is the most versatile and currently the most
valuable of the conventional fossil fuels that have long provided the bulk of
civilization’s energy, and it remains today the largest contributor to world
energy supply (accounting for nearly the whole of energy used for transport,
besides other roles). But the recoverable conventional resources of oil are
believed (on substantial evidence) to be far smaller than those of coal and
probably also smaller than those of natural gas; the bulk of these resources
appears to lie in the politically volatile Middle East; much of the rest lies
offshore and in other difficult or environmentally fragile locations; and it is
likely that the most abundant potential replacements for conventional oil will
be more expensive than oil has been. For all these reasons, concerns about
declining availability and rising prices have long been more salient for oil
than for the other fossil fuels. There is, accordingly, a serious technical
literature (produced mainly by geologists and economists) exploring the
questions of when world oil production will peak of oil might be in 2010, 2030
or 2050, with considerable disagreement among informed professionals on the
answers.
(BL) This paragraph does not really criticize, but contains the statement “it
is likely that the most abundant potential replacements for conventional oil
will be more expensive than oil has been.” This statement is supplied without
references and on faith, but I actually give reference to the US Energy
Information Agency (EIA 1997c:37) that today it is “possible to produce about
550 billion barrels of oil from tar sands and shale oil at a price below $30,
i.e. that it is possible to increase the present global oil reserves by 50
percent. And it is estimated that within 25 years we can commercially exploit
twice as much in oil reserves as the world’s present oil reserves” (SE:128).
Thus, Holdren’s statement seems wrong.
(SA) Lomborg gets right the basic point that the dominance
of oil in the world energy market will end not because no oil is left in the
ground but because other energy sources have become more attractive relative to
oil. But he seems not to recognize that the transition from oil to other sources
will not necessarily be smooth or occur at prices as low as those enjoyed by oil
consumers today. Indeed, while ridiculing the position that the world’s heavy
oil dependence may again prove problematic in our lifetimes, he shows no sign of
understanding (or no interest in communicating) why there is real debate among
serious people about this.
(BL) Holdren then agrees with me again, but accuses me of neglecting that the
transition may not necessarily be smooth or cheap. It is of course true that
this could happen (nobody can predict anything 100%) but the basic argument in
the book is exactly that the crisis, Holdren sees may happen is indeed very
unlikely – we have had this kind of fear of running out many times, and each
time it has proven incorrect, and moreover, we have good reason to believe that
the many different energy sources can give us sufficient energy also for future
use at competitive prices.
(SA) Lomborg does not so much as offer his readers a clear
explanation of the distinction— crucial to understanding arguments about
depletion—between “proved reserves” (referring to material that has
already been found and is exploitable at a profit at today’s prices, using
today’s technologies) and “remaining ultimately recoverable resources”
(which incorporate estimates of additional material exploitable with today’s
technology at today’s prices but still to be found, as well as material both
al will be exploitable with future technologies at potentially higher future
prices). And, while noting that most of the world’s oil reserves lie in the
Middle East (and failing to note, having not even introduced the concept, that a
still larger share of remaining ultimately recoverable resources is thought to
lie there), he placidly informs us that it is “imperative for our future
energy supply that this region remains reasonably peaceful,” as if that
observation did not undermine any basis for complacency. (At this juncture, one
of his 2,930 footnotes helpfully adds that this peace imperative for the Middle
East was “one of the background reasons for the Gulf War”!)
(BL) Holdren spends half this paragraph complaining that I do not explain all
distinctions, while above arguing that I make an obvious point (so that I
presumably should not spend vast amounts of space explaining everything). Even
on a kind reading, this critique seems excessively compulsive.
Accepting that I do point out that most of the world’s oil reserves lie in the
Middle East, Holdren nevertheless criticizes me for not spending enough paper on
digressing into other areas like International Relations (the relative
peacefulness of the Middle East and its consequences for Lomborg’s reply to
Scientific American January 2002 critique, 16-Feb-02 16:47 17/32 commodity
trade). Again, it is unclear what standard this critique sets up, wanting the
energy discussion to take much more space or much less?
The final parenthetical comment entirely leaves out that I actually refer to a
congressional research paper for this statement.
(SA) Lomborg’s treatment of energy resources other than
oil is not much better. He is correct in his basic proposition that resources of
coal, oil shale, nuclear fuels and renewable energy are immense (which few
environmentalists—and no well-informed ones—dispute). But his handling of
the technical, economic and environmental factors that will govern the
circumstances and quantities in which these resources might actually be used is
superficial, muddled and often plain wrong. His mistakes include apparent
misreadings or misunderstandings of statistical data—in other words, just the
kinds of errors he claims are pervasive in the writings of environmentalists—
as well as other elementary blunders of quantitative manipulation and
presentation that no self-respecting statistician ought to commit.
(BL) This is the paragraph in which Holdren gets tough. Here he says that the
rest is not much better than the treatment of oil (where Holdren agreed with
much and found no concrete errors). Here he also says Lomborg “is correct in
his basic proposition,” but then that I make loads of misreadings or
misunderstandings as well as elementary blunders. These are harsh words Holdren
should be able to back up below.
(SA) He tells us correctly, for example, that the world
has huge resources of coal, but in observing that “it is presumed that there
is sufficient coal for well beyond the next 1,500 years” he says nothing about
the rate of coal use for which this conclusion might obtain.
Concerning the environmental questions that increased reliance on coal would
raise, he writes the following: “Typically, coal pollutes quite a lot, but in
developed economies switches to low-sulfur coal, scrubbers and other
air-pollution control devices have today removed the vast part of sulfur dioxide
and nitrogen dioxide emissions.” To the contrary, data readily available on
the Web in the Environmental Protection Agency report National Air Pollutant
Emission Trends 1900–1998 reveal that U.S. emissions of nitrogen oxides from
coal-burning electric power plants were 6.1 million short tons in 1980 and 5.4
million short tons in 1998. Emissions of sulfur dioxide from U.S. coal-burning
power plants were 16.1 million short tons in 1980 and 12.4 million short tons
1998. These are moderate reductions, welcome but hardly the “vast part” of
the emissions.
(BL) The first main example of how I misread or misunderstand environmental data
(“just the kinds of errors [Lomborg] claims are pervasive in the writings of
environmentalists”) clearly suggests a casual reading of what I have written.
Holdren claims that I’m correct in saying that the world has huge coal
resources, but when stating that the world has 1,500 years of coal, that I
should say nothing about the rate of coal use for which this conclusion might
obtain. This is curious, because I use the same metric throughout: that the
years-of-consumption are measured from the year discussed (SE:127):
“As with oil and gas, coal reserves have increased with time. Since 1975 the
total coal reserves have grown by 38 percent. In 1975 we had sufficient coal to
cover the next 218 years at 1975 levels, but despite a 31 percent increase in
consumption since then, we had in 1999 coal reserves sufficient for the next 230
years. The main reason why years-of-consumption have not been increasing is due
to reduced prices. The total coal resources are estimated to be much larger –
it is presumed that there is sufficient coal for well beyond the next 1,500
years.”
And if readers are curious about the 1,500 years, they (as almost everything
else in the book) have a reference, which can be consulted. Why not get hold of
this reference before attacking me for misreading or misunderstanding? And even
if there was a problem, why would it be important, when Holdren accepts that the
main point (huge coal resources) is correct?
Holdren’s other claim is that my statement on diminished pollution from coal
is incorrect. It is unclear whether he believes that I am misreading or
misleading, since he does not seem to have checked my source, from which I take
this statement. Anyway, Holdren claims that US emissions for SO2 have only
declined 23 percent since 1980 (0.23=1-12.4/16.1), rendering my statement
incorrect.
However, Holdren seems to neglect that the US use of coal for coal-burning power
plants has increased dramatically over the past decades – since 1980 it has
increased from 569.3 million short tons to 951.6 million short tons in 1999
(http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/txt/tab0703.htm). Thus, the SO2 pollution per
quantity of coal burned has declined not just 23 percent but 56 percent.
Moreover, why did Holdren pick 1980 as the starting point, when clearly
environmental improvements have been taking place since at least 1970? And from
1970, the SO2 pollution per quantity of coal has dropped by 75 percent,
underscoring that the statement of vastly diminished pollution from coal burning
is correct.
Moreover, I clearly state the very significant contribution to air pollution
that is still being made by coal but this goes unrecognized in the SA critique.
For the benefit of those who do not have access to my text I repeat below the
unequivocal statement I make about the environmental hazard of coal (SE:127):
“Typically, coal pollutes quite a lot, but in developed economies switches to
low-sulfur coal, scrubbers and other air-pollution control devices have today
removed the vast part of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide emissions. Coal,
however, is still a cause of considerable pollution globally, and it is
estimated that many more than 10,000 people die each year because of coal,
partly from pollution and partly because coal extraction even today is quite
dangerous.”
(SA) Concerning nuclear energy, Lomborg tells us that it
“constitutes 6 percent of global energy production and 20 percent in the
countries that have nuclear power.” The first figure is right, the second
seriously wrong. Nuclear energy provides a bit less than 10 percent of the
primary energy supply in the countries that use this energy source. (It appears
that Lomborg has confused contributions to the electricity sector with
contributions to primary energy supply.) After a muddled discussion of the
relation between uranium-resource estimates and breeding (which omits altogether
the potentially decisive issue of the usability of uranium from seawater), he
then barely notes in passing that breeder reactors “produce large amounts of
plutonium that can be used for nuclear weapons production, thus adding to the
security concerns.” He should have added that this problem is so significant
that it may preclude use of the breeding approach altogether, unless we develop
technologies that make breeding much less susceptible to diversion of the
plutonium while not making this approach even more uneconomic than it is today.
(BL) Holdren is correct here that the 20 percent is an error – I should have
written 20 percent of the electricity generation from nuclear power (this will
naturally be put up on the error page of my web site). Naturally, one would like
such errors not to occur, but to claim that it is a “serious error,” when
the figure is given as general information and not used in any arguments seems
out of proportion.
The other critique, that Lomborg “barely notes in passing” the added
security concerns seems again out of proportion – the entire nuclear fission
discussion takes up three paragraphs of 272 words, where the security concern is
mentioned twice. This is hardly “barely notes in passing.” For reference,
here are the three paragraphs (SE:129):
“Ordinary nuclear power exploits the energy of fission by cleaving the
molecules of
uranium-235 and reaping the heat energy. The energy of one gram of uranium-235
is equivalent to almost three tons of coal. Nuclear power is also a very clean
energy source which, during normal operation, almost does not pollute. It
produces no carbon dioxide and radioactive emissions are actually lower than the
radioactivity caused by coal-fueled power plants.
At the same time nuclear power also produces waste materials that remain
radioactive for many years to come (some beyond 100,000 years). This has given
rise to great political debates on waste deposit placement and the
reasonableness of leaving future generations such an inheritance. Additionally,
waste from civilian nuclear reactors can be used to produce plutonium for
nuclear weapons. Consequently, the use of nuclear power in many countries also
poses a potential security problem.
For the moment there is enough uranium-235 for about 100 years. However, a
special type of reactor – the so-called fast-breeder reactor – can use the
much more common uranium-238 which constitutes over 99 percent of all uranium.
The idea is that while uranium-238 cannot be used directly in energy production
it can be placed in the same reactor core with uranium- 235. The uranium-235
produces energy as in ordinary reactors, while the radiation transforms
uranium-238 to plutonium-239 which can then be used as new fuel for the reactor.
It sounds a bit like magic, but fast-breeder reactors can actually produce more
fuel than they consume.
Thus it is estimated that with these reactors there will be sufficient uranium
for up to 14,000 years. Unfortunately these reactors are more technologically
vulnerable and they produce large amounts of plutonium that can be used for
nuclear weapons production, thus adding to the security concerns.”
(SA) Lomborg has some generally sensible things to say
about the large contributions that are possible from increased energy end-use
efficiency and from renewable energy—on these topics he seems, to his credit,
to be more a contributor to the “environmental litany” than a critic of it.
But on these subjects as on the others, his treatment is superficial, uneven and
marred by numerous errors and infelicities. For example, he persistently
presents numbers to two- and three-figure precision for quantities that cannot
be known to such accuracy: “43 percent of American energy use is wasted”;
“the costs of carbon dioxide” emissions are “0.64 cents per kWh”; plant
photosynthesis is “1,260 EJ” annually. He makes claims, based on single
citations and without elaboration, that are far from representative of the
literature:
“We know today that it is possible to produce safe cars getting more than
50-100 km per liter (120–240 mpg).” (How big would these cars be, and
powered how?) He bungles terminology: “Energy can be stored in hydrogen by
catalyzing water.” (He must mean “by electrolyzing water” or “by
catalytic thermochemical decomposition of water.”) And he propagates a variety
of conceptual confusions, such as the idea that grid-connected wind power
requires “a sizeable excess capacity” in the windmills because these alone
“need to be able to meet peak demand.”
(BL) Again, Holdren says I am right about many things, but still the treatment
is criticized thoroughly.
Most incredibly, I am criticized for being too precise. Of course, there are a
lot of numbers that we do not know well, but the general idea in statistics is
that if these numbers have been generated by a process described by evenly
distributed errors, the more precise number is still the best predictor of the
real number – or to put it more clearly: If studies have shown that 43 percent
of all American energy use is wasted, then the real number may very well be
38-48 percent, but had I rounded this figure down to 40 or up to 45, it would
have been worth less – and Holdren could then have criticized me for conveying
muddled results. Moreover, the 43 percent is actually described right off one of
the bestselling college environment books by professor Miller – is Holdren
also claiming that he is wrong?
Holdren claims that I make claims that are far from representative of the
literature, gives us one example, but does not give us other references that
show this statement to be incorrect or even an indication of why this statement
would be far from representing the literature.
I am accused of bungling terminology – it is true that ‘catalyzing’ was
translated from the Danish version, and should have been electrolyzing. But
again, how important is this?
The conceptual confusion seems to stem from Holdren not reading the two
paragraphs. If the windmills were connected to a coal-fired power grid, then
clearly they would not need to be able to meet peak demand, but this clearly
would not be a long-term renewable strategy. Rather, I discuss the interaction
of dams and windmills (SE:134):
“If the power grid is hooked to dams, these can be used for storage.
Essentially, we use wind power when the wind blows, and store water power by
letting water accumulate behind the dams. When there’s no wind, water power
can produce the necessary electricity.
However, this implies that both wind power and water power require a sizeable
excess capacity, since both need to be able to meet peak demand. The solution
also depends on relatively easy access to large amounts of hydroelectric
power.”
(SA) Of course, much of what is most problematic in the
global energy picture is covered by Lomborg not in his energy chapter but in
those that deal with air pollution, acid rain, water pollution and global
warming. The last is devastatingly critiqued by Stephen Schneider on page 62.
There is no space to deal with the other energy-related chapters; suffice it to
say that I found their level of superficiality, selectivity and misunderstanding
roughly consistent with that of the energy chapter reviewed here. This is a
shame. Lomborg is giving skepticism— and statisticians—a bad name.
(BL) Given that Holdren could find little but a badly translated word and a
necessary specification for nuclear energy production in this chapter, I find
comfort that he finds the other chapters of equal value.
However, I do find the tone of the entire critique surprisingly rough,
indicating that Holdren found it necessary to substitute good analysis with
plain negative words.
(SA) John P. Holdren is the Teresa and John Heinz
Professor of Environmental Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government,
as well as professor of environmental science and public policy in the
department of earth and planetary sciences, at Harvard University.
From 1973 to 1996 he co-led the interdisciplinary graduate program in energy and
resources at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the
National
Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.
(SA) John Bongaarts
POPULATION: IGNORING ITS IMPACT
Around the world, countries are experiencing unprecedented demographic change.
The best-known example is an enormous expansion in human numbers, but other
important demographic trends also affect human welfare. People are living longer
and healthier lives, women are bearing fewer children, increasing numbers of
migrants are moving to cities and to other countries in search of a better life,
and populations are aging. Lomborg’s unbalanced presentation of some of these
trends and their influences emphasizes the good news and neglects the bad.
Environmentalists who predicted widespread famine and blamed rapid population
growth for many of the world’s environmental, economic and social problems
overstated their cases. But Lomborg’s view that “the number of people is not
the
problem” is simply wrong.
(BL) First, Bongaarts write that things are going better and that the
environmentalists’ predictions of widespread famines were wrong. Okay. So, not
much of ‘Science defending itself against Lomborg’ here. But then he sets
the high standard of saying that I am wrong in saying that the number of people
is not the problem. We will see below that Bongaarts does not even try to lift
the burden of proving this statement and rather abandon it at the end. But, of
course, its inclusion here makes the piece appear stronger.
Curiously, Bongaarts also neglects to write why I say the number of people is
not the problem and instead identify poverty (SE:48):
“We often hear about overpopulation of the Earth. We most often see
overpopulation illustrated by large glossy color pictures of tightly packed
masses or overcrowded underground stations.
The famous population biologist Paul Ehrlich in his best-seller on the
population explosion wrote: “Psychologically, the population explosion first
sunk in on a stinking hot night in Delhi. The streets were alive with people.
People eating, people washing themselves, people sleeping, people working,
arguing and screaming. People reaching their hands in through taxi windows to
beg. People shitting, people pissing. People hanging off buses. People driving
animals through the streets. People, people, people.”
The point is, however, that the number of people is not the problem. Many of the
most densely populated countries are in Europe. The most densely populated
region, Southeast Asia, has the same number of people per square km as the
United Kingdom. The Netherlands, Belgium and Japan are far more densely
populated than India, and Ohio and Denmark are more densely populated than
Indonesia.
Today, Ehrlich and others also agree on this. Instead, two other interpretations
of overpopulation have come into the fore. One of them conjures up images of
starving families; wretched, cramped conditions and premature death. Such images
are real enough but are actually the result of poverty rather than population
density. We shall discuss poverty below.”
(SA) His selective use of statistics gives the reader the
impression that the population problem is largely behind us. The global
population growth rate has indeed declined slowly, but absolute growth remains
close to the very high levels observed in recent decades, because the population
base keeps expanding. World population today stands at six billion, three
billion more than in 1960. According to U.N. projections, another three billion
will likely be added by 2050, and population size will eventually reach about 10
billion.
(BL) Here, Bongaarts accuses me of fudging the statistics. However, the ensuing
documentation seems to point its accusing finger the other way. Bongaarts says
that the global population growth rate has indeed declined slowly, but the
absolute growth remains close to the top. First, he makes it sound like I
don’t say that, but I do, as can be seen here in the relevant paragraph from
the book (SE:47):
“As demonstrated in Figure 13 [graph of the rate and absolute number of
growth], the growth of the global population peaked in the early 1960s at just
over 2 percent a year. It has since fallen to 1.26 percent and is expected to
fall further, to 0.46 percent, by 2050. Even so, the absolute growth of the
population did not peak until 1990, when almost 87 million people were added to
world population. Today growth is around 76 million per year and will have
fallen to approximately 43 million by 2050.”
Second, when Bongaarts say that the rate has only declined “slowly”, though
it has actually declined from 2.17% in 1964 down to 1.26% today (more than a 40%
decline). Bongaards claim that the absolute growth remains close to the very
high levels of the recent decades – yet today’s 76 million is the lowest
number in the last two decades.
I also show the UN graph of population development from 1750-2200 (SE:46), with
the latest 2000 UN estimates, where I point out that the expectation is actually
9.3 billion in 2050, and the stable population estimated at almost 11 billion
(not 10, as Bongaarts claim):
“The UN continuously calculates how many of us live on Earth now and will in
the future.
These figures have been adjusted downward by 1.5 billion for 1994, 1996 and 1998
and upwards again by half a billion for 2000, because of changes in the speed
with which the fertility falls in different countries. The latest long-term
forecast from 2000 can be seen in Figure 11. It shows that there will be almost
8 billion people on Earth by 2025 and about 9.3 billion by 2050. It is estimated
that the world’s population will stabilize just short of 11 billion in the
year 2200.” (SE:47).
Apparently, Bongaarts’ paragraph was supposed to show that I fudged the
statistics, but not only did Bongaarts not show this, indeed his own argument
seemed curiously fudged.
(SA) Any discussion of global trends is misleading without
taking account of the enormous contrasts among world regions. Today’s poorest
nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America have rapidly growing and young
populations, whereas in the technologically advanced and icher nations in
Europe, North America and Japan, growth is near zero (or, in some cases, even
negative), and populations are aging quickly. As a consequence, nearly all
future global growth will be concentrated in the developing countries, where
four fifths of the world’s population lives. The projected rise in population
in the developing world between 2000 and 2025 (from 4.87 to 6.72 billion) is
actually just as large as the recordbreaking increase in the past quarter of a
century. The historically unprecedented population expansion in the poorest
parts of the world continues largely unabated.
(BL) Again, Bongaarts seem to accuse me of not taking into account the enormous
differences among world regions, though one of the most consistent factors in
the book is the presentation of data for both developed and developing
countries. Yet, I did not present a chart for population growth in the
developing world, so I will bring it here (Figure 1). Here, again we see almost
the same pattern as in Figure 13 from the book (SE:47), and indeed we also see
how questionable Bongaarts analysis is: He claims that the historically
unprecedented population expansion continues largely unabated, yet, the growth
of 74 million in 2001 is the lowest since 1984, and the rate has dropped from
the maximal 2.6% to 1.5% today. The claim that the growth from 1975- 2000 is
almost the same as the growth 2000-2025 is technically true, but very misleading
– the growth in the early quarter century period came from ever increasing
numbers of people being added, whereas every year from 2000 onwards will see
ever fewer numbers being added.
(A graph of population growth for developing countries
is omitted here because I couldn't figure out how to copy it into my website. To
see it open the .pdf file as noted above)
(SA) Past population growth has led to high population
densities in many countries. Lomborg dismisses concerns about this issue based
on a simplistic and misleading calculation of density as the ratio of people to
all land. Clearly, a more useful and accurate indicator of density would be
based on the land that remains after excluding areas unsuited for human
habitation or agriculture, such as deserts and inaccessible mountains. For
example, according to his simple calculation, the population density of Egypt
equals a manageable 68 persons per square kilometer, but if the unirrigated
Egyptian deserts are excluded, density is an extraordinary 2,000 per square
kilometer. It is therefore not surprising that Egypt needs to import a large
proportion of its food supply. Measured properly, population densities have
reached extremely high levels, particularly in large countries in Asia and the
Middle East.
(BL) It is curious that Bongaarts, trying to show how wrong I am, is forced to
use a hypothetical argument (of Egypt) and does not even find it necessary to
point out that I never make this argument. The real challenge is in the text
shown above, where I point out some of the most densely populated areas of the
world are in Europe. Is Bongaarts obvious point at all relevant to my examples
of e.g. the Netherlands being far more densely populated than India? We are
never told.
(SA) Why does this matter? The effect of population trends
on human welfare has been debated for centuries. When the modern expansion of
human numbers began in the late 18th century, Thomas Robert Malthus argued that
population growth would be limited by food shortages. Lomborg and other
technological optimists correctly note that world population has expanded much
more rapidly than Malthus envisioned, growing from one billion to six billion
over the past two centuries. And diets have improved. Moreover, the
technological optimists are probably correct in claiming that overall world food
production can be increased substantially over the next few decades. Average
current crop yields are still below the levels achieved in the most productive
countries, and some countries still have unused potential arable land (although
much of this is forested).
(BL) Again, Bongaarts almost tell us that I am correct, though he does underplay
the argument in two rather conspicuous ways. He says diets have improved. That
is true, though an understatement.
Actually, the global availability of calories has increased from 2257 calories
in 1961 to 2792 in 1998, an increase of 24%, and for the developing world an
even greater increase of 38% from 1932 to 2663 calories (FAO 2001a).
Moreover, he says that food production is probably capable of being increased
substantially because of yield increases and “some countries still have unused
potential arable land (although much of this is forested).” This, again, is a
serious understatement for arable land and an overstatement for forests. In the
latest FAO report on Agriculture towards 2030 (FAO 2000d), FAO explicitly
discusses the use of land in agricultural production and the extra availability
of agricultural land.
FAO estimates that at present about 1.5 Gha or 11% of the globe’s land surface
is used for agriculture, and an additional 2.9 Gha has crop production potential
(FAO 2000d:98). Of this area about 45% is forested (FAO 2000d:103). So there is
ample room for bringing in new agricultural land and none of it needs be
forested. Actually, the FAO estimate for the developing countries (developed
will probably not increase their area at all) a much lower increase in land use
till 2030 of about 0.12 Gha, an increase of 12%. This means that the
agricultural land usage will go from 32% of the potential land use to 36% in
2030. Globally, this probably means an increase in agricultural land use from
11% to 12% of the land surface.
(SA) Agricultural expansion, however, will be costly,
especially if global food production has to rise twofold or even threefold to
accommodate the demand for better diets from several billion more people. The
land now used for agriculture is generally of better quality than unused,
potentially cultivable land. Similarly, existing irrigation systems have been
built on the most favorable sites. And water is increasingly in short supply in
many countries as the competition for that resource among households, industry
and agriculture intensifies.
Consequently, each new increase in food production is becoming more expensive to
obtain.
This is especially true if one considers environmental costs not reflected in
the price of agricultural products.
(BL) This is one of the stunningly simplistic analyses from the environmental
Litany: Since we have already used the best land sites with the easiest
irrigation etc., an expansion of the agricultural production will lead to higher
prices. However, this clearly neglects the historical trend towards ever more
efficient production and better crops which has given us steadily declining
prices. However, Bongaarts simply does not supply any evidence that his scenario
of increasing prices should become true – yet, both IFPRI, USDA and the World
Bank predicts ever lower prices (IFPRI 1997, 1999; ERS 1997:4; USDA 2000b;
Mitchell et al. 1997), which is a continuation of the almost constant decrease
in food prices since 1800 (data on wheat prices from 1316-2000 in SE:62).
(SA) Lomborg’s view that the production of more food is
a non-issue rests heavily on the fact that world food prices are low and have
declined over time. But this evidence is flawed.
Massive governmental subsidies to farmers, particularly in the developed
countries, keep food prices artificially low. Although technological
developments have reduced prices, without these massive subsidies, world food
prices would certainly be higher.
(BL) The last hypothetical sentence is true – without subsidies, prices would
be higher, but the argument lies with the trend of the price, which is
downwards, and has been so since early 1800s. It is still curious that
Scientific American lets their critic ‘defend science’ by referring to such
fickle speculation instead of giving real references. Again, this could possibly
be due to the fact that all major food analysis institutions still predict
decreasing food prices (as above, IFPRI 1997, 1999; ERS 1997:4; USDA 2000b;
Mitchell et al. 1997).
(SA) The environmental cost of what Paul R. and Anne H.
Ehrlich describe as “turning the earth into a giant human feedlot” could be
severe. A large expansion of agriculture to provide growing populations with
improved diets is likely to lead to further deforestation, loss of species, soil
erosion, and pollution from pesticides and fertilizer runoff as farming
intensifies and new land is brought into production. Reducing this environmental
impact is possible but costly and would obviously be easier if population growth
were slower.
Lomborg does not deny this environmental impact but asks unhelpfully, “What
alternative do we have, with more than 6 billion people on Earth?”
(BL) Surprisingly and without any statistical backing, Bongaarts invoke the
doomsday metaphor of “turning the earth into a giant human feedlot.”
However, as we saw above, we are currently using about 11% of the global land
surface area for agriculture, and in 2030, where we will be feeding more than 8
billion much better (3100 calories per person) we will be using 12% – hardly
“turning the earth into a giant human feedlot.” Moreover, had Bongaarts
accessed the available statistics, he could have seen that the increase in
agricultural land use was actually bigger over the last 25 years than the coming
30 years (increasing land use by 0.173 Gha, compared to the expected increase of
0.12 Gha, FAO 2000d:105).
Again, Bongaarts actually acknowledges that I do discuss the environmental
impact, and yet only says I ask the unhelpful question of what are the
alternatives? Yet, this is misleading on at least three counts. First, I do give
an insight as to how to control population in the long run – this is a
question of poverty reduction and development (SE:46). This is why it was also
problematic that Bongaarts cut off the quote at the top of his article where I
also point out poverty (SE:48).
Second, I do actually show some of the bad consequences of listening to parts of
the environmental movement in their advice as to abating some of the problems
with food production. An often heard call is to move to organic farming, because
it would mean less fertilizer runoff. Yet, this would have other, much more
drastic consequences (SE:197):
“Today, it is estimated that 40 percent of all crop nitrogen comes from
synthetic fertilizer, and about one-third of human protein consumption depends
on synthetic fertilizer. Moreover, fertilizer allows us to produce more food on
less farmland. This is one of the reasons why the global population could double
from 1960 to 2000 and get better fed, although farmland area only increased 12
percent.
This should be compared with the quadrupling of farmland from 1700 to 1960 which
of course came from the conversion of large tracts of forests and grasslands.
Essentially, the extraordinary increase in fertilizer availability from 1960
onwards has made it possible to avoid a dramatic increase in human pressure on
other natural habitats. Had fertilizer use remained at the 1960 level, we would
need at least 50 percent more farmland than the present-day use – the
equivalent of converting almost a quarter of the global forests. Over the coming
decades to 2070, were we to forsake fertilizer, the need for farmland to feed 10
billion people better would place ever higher demands on the globe – one study
puts the farmland requirement at an impossible 210 percent of the land surface
area. Thus, synthetic fertilizer has been and especially will be crucially
important in feeding the world while leaving sufficient space for other species.
However, the doubling of globally available nitrogen has also caused
problems.”
[The text goes on to talk about the problems of fertilizer runoff problems.]
Third, it is amazing that Bongaarts criticizes me for not answering the question
(which I do) and yet does not himself come up with any answer. This becomes
evident in the following paragraph.
(SA) Lomborg correctly notes that poverty is the main
cause of hunger and malnutrition, but he neglects the contribution of population
growth to poverty. This effect operates through two distinct mechanisms. First,
rapid population growth leads to a young population, one in which as much as
half is below the age of entry into the labor force. These young people have to
be fed, housed, clothed and educated, but they are not productive, thus
constraining the economy. Second, rapid population growth creates a huge demand
for new jobs. A large number of applicants for a limited number of jobs exerts
downward pressure on wages, contributing to poverty and inequality. Unemployment
is widespread, and often workers in poor countries earn wages near the
subsistence level. Both of these adverse economic effects are reversible by
reducing birth rates. With lower birth rates, schools become less crowded, the
ratio of dependents to workers declines as does the growth in the number of job
seekers. These beneficial demographic effects contributed to the economic
“miracles” of several East Asian countries. Of course, such dramatic results
are by no means assured and can be realized only in countries with otherwise
sound economic policies.
(BL) Here, Bongaarts makes what seems like a reasonable argument – though
unfortunately without any references. But notice his argument is entirely
conditional: “Both of these adverse economic effects are reversible by
reducing birth rates.” Yes, and that was the main problem, right? Yet, his
only indication of how these birth rates could be reduced is that this can
happen “in countries with otherwise sound economic policies.” Thus,
Bongaarts solution is a subset of my point that in order to combat population
growth, we need to address and reduce poverty. (It is a subset, because sound
economic policies that only benefit the rich will probably still leave the mass
of poor people with a high reproduction.)
(SA) Lomborg approvingly notes the huge ongoing migration
from villages to cities in the developing world. This has been considered a
welcome development, because urban dwellers generally have higher standards of
living than villagers. Because the flow of migrants is now so large, however, it
tends to overwhelm the absorptive capacity of cities, and many migrants end up
living in appalling conditions in slums. The traditional urban advantage is
eroding in the poorest countries, and the health conditions in slums are often
as adverse as in rural areas. This points to another burden of rapid population
growth: the inability of governments to cope with large additions of new people.
In many developing countries, investments in education, health services and
infrastructure are not keeping up with population growth.
(BL) Here, Bongaarts again makes an unsubstantiated claim that “the
traditional urban advantage is eroding in the poorest countries.” Where does
this come from? However, the following sentence is logically flawed because it
compares health conditions among the worst areas of the city (slums) with the
average rural areas, a typical and incorrect comparison as I have already
pointed out in my book (SE:362):
“Of course, shanty-town newcomers may not compare favorably with the average
rural population, but presumably many left the countryside because they were
worse off than the average, see e.g. Siwar and Kasim 1997:1,532 for a partly
unsuccessful test.”
(SA) It is true that life has improved for many people in
recent decades, but Lomborg does not acknowledge that this favorable trend has
been brought about in part by intensive efforts by governments and the
international community. Investments in developing and distributing “green
revolution” technology have reduced hunger, public health campaigns have cut
death rates, and family-planning programs have lowered birth rates. Despite this
progress, some 800 million people are still malnourished, and 1.2 billion live
in abject poverty. This very serious situation calls for more effective remedial
action. Lomborg asks the developed nations to fulfill their U.N. pledge to
donate 0.7 percent of their GNPs to assist the
developing world, but few countries have met this goal, and the richest nation
on earth, the U.S., is one of the stingiest, giving just 0.1 percent of its GNP.
The trend in overseas development assistance from the developed to the
developing world is down, not up.
Unfortunately, the unrelenting we-are-doing-fine tone that pervades Lomborg’s
book
encourages complacency rather than urgency.
(BL) This is another give-away like Schneider saying that one should be wary of
truth-tellers and mythbusters.
Basically, Bongaarts is telling us that I am correct in my description of life,
but that I should also have said who exactly carried out the concrete
improvements. This borders to silly – of course, the improvement has
physically been carried out “in part by intensive efforts by governments and
the international community,” and presumably in part by intensive efforts by
individuals and communities.
Who else could have done so? This is seemingly a request to make an almost
tautological addition to the text: “These documented examples of progress were
in part due to actions from government and the international community” and
that this statement is missing constitute a failure of the analysis.
Yet, the issue, as Scientific American puts it up, is whether my data is correct
– whether the state of the world has indeed improved or whether the doomsayers
have been right in claiming declines everywhere. And their third critic simply
comes out and says: ‘Yes, Lomborg is right, but he fails to add a tautological
statement.’
(SA) Population is not the main cause of the world’s
social, economic and environmental problems, but it contributes substantially to
many of them. If population had grown less rapidly in the past, we would be
better off now. And if future growth can be slowed, future generations will be
better off.
(BL) This last statement takes out much of the strength of the entire piece. It
basically leaves the argument to a plain conditional: if we could have cut
population growth things would be better, but of course, we could only have cut
population growth if things would have been better – which is what is
happening now, and which is why population growth is constantly decreasing.
(SA) John Bongaarts is vice president of the Policy
Research Division of the Population Council in New York City. From 1998 to 2000
he chaired the Panel on Population Projections of the National Academy of
Sciences, National Research Council. He is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy
of Sciences.
(SA) Thomas Lovejoy
BIODIVERSITY: DISMISSING SCIENTIFIC PROCESS
Biologists are trained to have a healthy respect for statistics and
statisticians. It was
disconcerting, therefore, to find that before even examining the extinction
problem— and the numbers invoked to demonstrate that it is or is not a
problem— Lomborg begins the chapter on biodiversity with a section questioning
whether biodiversity is important. In less than a page, he discounts its value
both as the library for the life sciences and as provider of ecosystem services
(in part because of a general absence of markets for these services).
(BL) Lovejoy opens his critique with saying that it was
“disconcerting” that I begin the biodiversity chapter with questioning
whether biodiversity is important before discussing its size. I understand why
this would be disconcerting to an environmental advocate or policy participant,
but why would it be disconcerting to a scientist that we question the basis for
our concern?
Notice, how Lovejoy does not actually contend the finding of my discussion –
only that simply by asking the question, it should be obvious to any good man or
woman that I am wrong.
(SA) When he finally gets to extinction, he totally
confounds the process by which a species is
judged to be extinct with the estimates and projections of extinction rates.
Highly conservative rules hold that to be declared officially extinct, not only
does a species have to be known to science, it has to be observed going to
extinction (as in the case of the passenger pigeon, the last individual of which
perished in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914). Or, in the absence of direct
observation, it must not have been seen in nature for 50 years.
(BL)
