Global Warming and the Gay, Vegetarian College Professor from Denmark

Global warming “denier” – this is the emotionally laden term that the global warming kool-aid drinkers have decided to use in their propaganda war against dissenters from global warming orthodoxy (I’m sure they will not mind me calling them “kool-aid drinkers” since they have chosen to engage in inflammatory rhetoric themselves in characterizing their opponents).

The stereotypical global warming denier might be a K Street lobbyist who knows darn well that the planet is suffering from a man-induced warming crisis but who is not going to let a little thing like the facts get in the way of his lucrative contracts to represent big oil and other powerful and corrupt business interests.

Bjørn Lomborg does not fit that stereotype. He is Danish. He has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Copenhagen. He is a college professor. He is openly gay. He’s a vegetarian. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the light fixtures in his house were filled with those funny, curly-shaped bulbs that hum and give off a dim, yellowish light.

As an urbane, educated, European working in academia and unafraid to adopt a non-traditional lifestyle, you would think that Lomborg is the kind of person who would be on board with the global warming agenda.

He is not.

He has had the temerity to question environmental alarmism in general and global warming orthodoxy in particular and this has landed him in a big vat of hot water.

Bjørn Lomborg’s story is both interesting and instructive.

After earning his PhD in 1994, Lomborg went to work teaching statistics in the Political Science Department of the University of Aarhus in Denmark. He was aware of what he now calls “The Litany” – that long list of looming environmental disasters that gives us an all pervasive sense that the planet is in bad shape. Lomborg writes:

“We are all familiar with the Litany: the environment is in poor shape here on Earth. Our resources are running out. The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat. The air and water are becoming ever more polluted. The planet’s species are becoming extinct … The forests are disappearing, fish stocks are collapsing and coral reefs are dying. We are defiling our Earth, the fertile topsoil is disappearing, we are paving over nature, destroying the wilderness, decimating the biosphere, and will end up killing ourselves in the process. The world’s ecosystem is breaking down …”

In short, he was familiar with the secular environmentalist version of Armageddon – all of the death and destruction but lacking the last minute happy ending of a rescue from the supernatural world.

So Dr Lomborg got his students working on a project to document the extent of these impending environmental catastrophes. He wanted to use statistics to back up the anecdotal stories that were used to illustrate the dire conditions that mankind was creating on our precious planet. And this is where his problems began.

It turned out that the statistical look at these issues did not back up the gloomy outlook of the Litany. Whenever he consulted the statistics, Lomborg discovered that things were getting better instead of worse. This led him to write a book entitled The Skeptical Environmentalist – Measuring the Real State of the World.

The book is a tome. If any mafia hit men are reading this and have run out of cement blocks to weigh down their victims in a nearby river, they can stop by the local Borders and pick up this book as a substitute. It is over 500 pages of very small type although, in fairness, I should note that this includes the 2,930 footnotes and a bibliography that runs to 71 pages.

What was the response to the book? It didn’t take long for the feces to hit the rotating air circulation device.

Several environmental scientists filed a complaint with the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD). This Orwellian sounding organization formally investigated charges that Lomborg deliberately used flawed data, cherry picked his studies and came to completely false conclusions.

After it investigations, the DCSC concurred with the complaints and noted that Lomborg’s book was “deemed to fall within the category of scientific dishonesty” and noted that it was “clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice.”

Lomborg fought back. He appealed the decision to the MSTI – the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation – an agency with oversight over the DCSD.

The MSTI reversed the decision of the DCSD. It did so partly on the narrow procedural grounds that the DCSD had not shown that The Skeptical Environmentalist was a scientific work that fell within the DCSD’s regulatory authority. However, most of the MSTI’s decision was based on substance. It noted that the DCSC’s ruling “was completely void of argumentation” as to why Lomborg’s book was scientifically deficient.

As a result of this incident, a group of about 300 Danish scientists signed a petition requesting that the DCSD be disbanded. According to this group, the obviously biased treatment of Lomborg was evidence that the DCSD served no useful function. But a competing group of anti-Lomborg activists got almost 600 Danish scientists to sign a petition in support of the DCSD and its action in the Lomborg case.

Scientific American joined the fray with a lengthy and scathing review of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Lomborg published a rejoinder. So as to not misrepresent the journal’s position, he quoted each of their allegations at length and then explained why each criticism was unfounded or misguided.

The response? Initially, Scientific American threatened Lomborg with a lawsuit for copyright infringement if he did not retract his paper – they were upset because he quoted the Scientific American article without permission! Ah – how nice to see an organization which is ostensibly dedicated to the free, open and dispassionate pursuit of scientific inquiry respond with such substance and grace.

I asserted earlier that Lomborg’s story is instructive and this is where it begins to be so.

We have all been told the story of poor Galileo. The scientific community has told the story (actually, they have largely mis-told the story) with great relish. This, they say, show what happens when sincere and honest truth-seeking scientists run afoul of people who let faith rather than reason dictate their view of the world.

But the Lomborg incident gives us a different and a better perspective. The Galileo case is not one of science against religion or faith against reason. It shows us what happens frequently when someone challenges the cherished beliefs of those in authority in any community be it religious, philosophical, scientific, political, cultural or national.

In this case, we have a reigning scientific paradigm about the environment that is being challenged and the ruling authorities in that scientific community do not like it one bit. The Lomborg story shows us that bias and an unreasonably strong commitment to certain points of view and the desire to punish those who deviate from orthodoxy are not particularly religious phenomena but are common human failings that infect all types of human endeavors.

And there is another and even more important lesson to be learned from the Lomborg incident.

Strictly speaking, Lomborg is not a global warming “denier”. He believes that global warming is occurring and that it is caused, at least in part, by the activities of man. However, he believes that the results of global warming will not be catastrophic, that some of the effects will be positive and that most of the proposed cures will be worse than the disease.

Lomborg has started a project called The Copenhagen Consensus. He brought economists together in 2004 to perform a cost/benefit analysis on a variety of proposals to mitigate human suffering and improve the environment. An expanded group met again in 2006 and it will meet yet again in 2008. Their mission is to determine which projects can do the most good for the greatest number of people at a given cost. Global warming projects tend to rate very poorly in this kind of evaluation – requiring a lot of dollars for marginal benefits.

Lomborg points out that the only resource that is always in short supply is money and that we need to focus on spending money wisely. If we choose our projects poorly, we end up doing less good than we could otherwise have achieved and we may even make matters worse.

Lomborg argues that we live in a world that is full of “inconvenient truths”. Over 15 million people die each year from preventable diseases like malaria and cholera and HIV. Half of the people in the world are malnourished. A billion people do not have clean drinking water and almost as many lack basic education. The UN, according to Lomborg, claims that $75 billion a year over the next century would largely solve these problems.

In contrast, he claims that the Kyoto Protocol will cost $150 billion annually if fully implemented and it will only delay, not eliminate, our warming trend. According to Lomborg, the temperature we will reach in the year 2100 without any action on climate change is the same temperature we will reach in the year 2106 with a fully implemented Kyoto agreement! Lomborg’s rhetoric is forceful:

“… Gore argues that future generations will chastise us for not having committed ourselves to the Kyoto Protocol. More likely, they will wonder why, in a world overflowing with ‘inconvenient truths’, Gore focused on the one where we could achieve the least good for the highest cost.”

Again, this is one of those aspects of his story that makes it even more instructive. Lomborg agrees that global warming is occurring. He is only dissenting from the public policy prescriptions that grow out of the global warming phenomenon and this causes the wrath of the kool-aid drinkers to descend on him.

This suggests strongly to me that it is the public policy prescriptions that are more important to the global warming crowd than the issue of global warming itself. Global warming gives them an excuse to pursue public policies like higher taxes and more government regulation – policies that they have supported long before global warming was on anyone’s radar screen. In fact, I’m pretty sure that Al Gore’s political leanings are no different in 2006 than they were in 1976 when one of the nation’s popular news magazines warned us the earth was cooling and that we were threatened with a new ice age.

In other words, a warming world is no good to global warming advocates if it does not allow them to seize the kind of control and power that they desire. Why else would they react with such vitriol and vehemence against such a non-stereotypical global warming skeptic as Lomborg?

All of this becomes terribly important since we have an upcoming election. Global warming will be one issue. Many voters, especially younger ones, are increasingly concerned about social justice and want the United States to do more in this area. Their hearts are in the right place and I'm sure that their minds are capable of evaluating complex issues. Regretably, few have the time or take the time to become informed? On this particular issue, who has the time to read a 500-page book or to digest the recommendations of The Copenhagen Consensus?

As a result, decisions get made on the superficial coverage that floats around in the main-stream media and this may end up being disastrous. To slightly modify a well-known and oft quoted phrase: All that is needed for evil to triumph is for well-intentioned people to make misinformed decisions. Good intentions will not prevent the bad consequences that arise from poor choices.

And, as I said, I fear that decisions on this issue will get made based on the lopsided coverage of the issue by the main-stream media. They report only the message of the global warming advocates and this message is simple: Sit down. Shut up. The debate is over. Anyone who disagrees is stupid or dishonest or co-opted by a special interest.

Kool-aid, anyone?



Suggested Reading:

At a minimum, go here for a brief article by Lomborg that summarizes his critic of global warming orthodoxy. It is very short and succinct.

The Skeptical Environmentalist – Measuring the Real State of the World. Most people will not have time to read this lengthy book but go to your library or book store and read Chapter 1. That chapter alone will give you a different look at the environment than you are getting through popular media sources.

Lomborg’s newest book is entitled Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet but I’m looking forward to it.