Demolishing Lomborg's Cool It
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 10. 1.07
There is nothing like a good and nasty book review to get you going in the morning, and environmental writer Alanna Mitchell does it to Bjorn Lomborg's new book Cool it. Too good not to quote directly: "In high-school biology class, we used to do an experiment with fruit flies. You put flies and food in a jar, screw the top on tight and wait to see what happens as the flies reproduce like mad.
The goal is to see at what point the limits of the jar - air, food, space - begin to affect the ability of the fruit flies to exist. At some point, the jar becomes inhospitable and the flies die en masse.
If Bjorn Lomborg, Danish author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, were to write up that high-school experiment, he would focus on the point just before the flies began to hit the limits.
He would wax on about how the population of flies had never been stronger, trot out statistics to show how astoundingly well the population had reproduced over time, and gush boyishly about the excellent living conditions in the jar. And he would be right. Given those facts, examined at that specific point in the arc of the experiment, he would have drawn the correct conclusions.
But he would have missed the facts that the food supply was getting low, that the air was becoming fouled and that fruit-fly catastrophe loomed.
In other words, he would be correct on carefully selected points of fact, but fatally incorrect about the larger picture, or the meaning of the information he was looking at.
Ms. Mitchell concludes with:
So, the fruit flies are doing great! We'll be just fine as the climate changes and we really don't need to spend all that money cutting carbon.
It would be possible to go point by point through the many similar flaws in each of Lomborg's arguments, but frankly, the book is too pitiful to merit it. It's not that his analysis is controversial - that would be fun - but that it is deeply dissatisfying, ignorant and shallow.
I remember wondering, after I interviewed Lomborg, whether he was intellectually dishonest or just not very bright. Cool It has convinced me that it doesn't matter. Lomborg has now proved beyond a doubt that he is incapable of contributing anything of merit to scientific discourse."
The question that does matter is 'why do editors and broadcast media producers continue to give him the attention that makes him money?'
I have to say that her book review is absolutely lame.
What do fruit flies have to do with anything?
Fruit flies breed too fast in a closed environment and run out of food and die.
So is her argument that population growth is the problem?
Because unlike fruit flies, human beings have access to birth control and technology, and are able to make rational choices because they have developed brains.
Or did the fruit flies in her biology experiment build a lot of factories?
If we're talking about being intellectually dishonest, I'd have to say that's the issue with the reviewer, who can't be bothered to address the actual points made in the book, but instead comes up with some stupid generalism that has nothing to do with what Lomberg has written about to "prove" that his book is incorrect.
I can't help but wonder if she actually read the book, because it does address hurricanes, drought and the other things that she claims that it doesn't.
In fact, the book goes into detail about how Lomberg thinks we could reduce CO2 more effectively than by just fiddling on and on about the Kyoto Protocol while Rome burns.
The Kyoto Protocol didn't come down from the mountain with Moses, so I don't understand why everyone acts like it is our ONLY salvation.
If Kyoto is the only way that we can address CO2 and reduce it, then we're screwed, because not even Japan has been able to get anywhere near the Kyoto numbers.
Can't we consider other ways to reduce CO2 instead of just whining about Kyoto, which no one is able to meet anyway, and completely ignores India and China?
And is it so wrong to consider backup plans that address the other effects of rising CO2 directly, since we're obviously going to have to deal with those effects anyway?
I think critiques like this do a complete disservice to the environmental movement.
Why is it that we can say Bjorn Lomberg isn't a real scientist, so his opinion is bullshit. But we then say that Al Gore's opinion is totally valid and we should listen to him?
It's a complete double standard.
At least some of the web sites or reviews that criticize Lomberg go through on a point by point basis and point out real flaws.
Before I get lumped in with the oil companies for daring to speak up for the evil Bjorn Lomberg, I would like to point out that I run a carbon neutral business, and work out of a green renovated building getting a 4 kW solar installation put in this month, have a carpool system set up at my workplace, have completely upgraded my home to make it energy efficient, and even ride my bike to work sometimes. I've been responsible for planting more than 20,000 trees in the past year through the Arbor Day Foundation and Trees for the Future. And that's just what I could fit into a single paragraph.
I suppose that my overall point is that life isn't so simple that you can just write off someone whose opinion you don't like, when you probably only heard their opinion third hand. (A blog post about a book review about a book, anyone?)
I'm frankly disappointed that no one at Treehugger has written a review of the book directly. I suppose that would be heresy though, to dare be exposed to the horrible words that Lomberg has written.
Instead, we should only read the things that we agree with 100 percent and only read critical reviews of things that we don't like, so we don't get corrupted by "bad" information. Because after all, the little people are too stupid to read Lomberg and decide for themselves. And we Treehuggers are too smart to waste our time reading such drivel because it is so obviously wrong that we don't even need to actually read it to know how wrong it is.
I think what lomborg is trying to get accros is that the problem the world is facing (pertaining to climate change) is so incredibly large that the only way to make a difference and change the problem is either totally change the way the economy runs and the way we do business, or put are efforts towards something that is more realistic, which obviously will never happen, because the select small part of the population really has the power to change things, and thats the rich people. They runs things, and the only way to get them to change is effect there bottom line, but to do that we have to stop buying the things we need to survive, so its really a catch22
>why do editors and broadcast media producers continue to give him the attention that makes him money
Because alternate points of view are necessary in any progression. Think of it like competition in the marketplace - monopolies are bad because they only allow one model, take it or leave it. It stagnates, and wallows. Competition forces the competitors to constantly innovate (like Apple's innovation as the inevitable fight to stay noticed).
Without a differing point of view, you have fascism. With many points of American voices, we get a better picture of any situation, which makes us constantly upgrade our ideas and thinking. Alternative ideas are perfect to make us delve deeper into the FACTS, searching for the truth - which is often nothing more than a different reading (or opinion) of the facts.
Rejecting other opinions is taking the environmental issue as emotion, not fact, which will help none of us in the long run. Alternative ideas help our progress, Apple-style, instead of stifling us like the church in the "dark ages". Funny, because the environmental movement was started as an "alternative" point of view. Don't make the mistake of seeing it as the "only" point of view.
I haven't read the book yet but I did see him on a couple of shows. The glaring problem I've seen in his argument is his claim that the Kyoto Protocol doesn't directly address the issue of carbon emissions and is too costly/difficult to enact. If a cap-n-trade market is designed and implemented correctly (and we know how to do it correctly), it adds an additional cost to carbon intensive activities thereby making alternatives less costly by comparison (i.e. solar becomes more economical and is implemented faster, clean technologies have a greater financial incentive to be developed, etc.). With such a market you don't have to have a bureaucrat in Washington deciding what he/she thinks should get funding and what shouldn't (but you'll get the "benefit" of both). A market will automatically invest in everything under the sun that holds out some hope for carbon reduction and hence profits (don't under estimate the profit motive) and that will bring about change much quicker than anything else. That said, it is not going to happen over night. You cannot successfully implement a market wide change in just a few years, it takes time for the incentives to be corrected and strategies/behaviors to adjust. However, while that correction is occurring, you are by no means preventing the other actions that Lomborg is suggesting (i.e. the reduction in the cost of solar isn't going to be slowed down or halted if the cost of carbon is increased).
In fact, just the expectation of a cap-n-trade program is helping push investment in clean energy right now (if you remove that expectation, you'll remove a good portion of investment). Another added benefit of cap-n-trade over taxes/subsidies is that market interactions determine the real price of carbon and a Washington politician doesn't get to decide (after being lobbied endlessly by the energy industry) at what level to set a new tax, subsidy, or what have you. With a market you will have investors working to protect the integrity of the market and their investments as where with a tax you have those that are harmed by it endlessly pushing to weaken it.
Quite simply, cap-n-trade is not unrealistic and it is hilarious that people keep painting it as so. The United States invented the cap-n-trade concept and successfully implemented it under the Clean Air Act to control nox and sox emissions in the Northeast in the 1990s. The program was so enormously successful, saved so much money for power plants versus traditional command and control approaches to pollution, and cut emissions so drastically and ahead of schedule that the U.S. demanded it be in the Kyoto protocol. The naysayers point to the problems in Europe and Japan (even though Kyoto isn't totally live until 2008) but they ignore the success of the clean development mechanism and the success the protocol is having in changing the long-term strategies of companies and investors that operate under the protocol's umbrella.
http://www.epa.gov/clearskies/captrade.html
Cap-n-trade is a huge part of the answer and it does not prevent us from pursuing all of the other means at our disposal. I believe that when you attack something you should attack it from all angles.
i gotta say i'm with lomborg.
he points out the bs behind so much hand wringing and sky-is-falling that is out there. certainly, there's a problem--which he does not deny. but there are better ways to solve it than demanding that everyone go carbon neutral in four years and use 30% the resources they do today.
his argument would be that you can solve extreme poverty with a small investment, which would go much further to improving the globe than making the same investment in carbon reduction, which, dollar for dollar, would do absolutely nothing.
I'd have to say I agree with JL.
And Treehugger, you have way too many ads on your site. Way, way too many.
hehehe put that douche bag in his place...
Malthusian poppycock.
Your fruitfly lady should read some Julian Simon. The world's population and resources is not a closed system. The fruitfly jar is. Come on.