X-Message-Number: 18697
Subject: SF Gate: Optimistic researcher draws pessimistic reviews/Critics attack
view that life is improving
From: "peter Christiansen" <>
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 09:09 -0800
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This article was sent to you by someone who found it on SF Gate.
The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/03/04/MN77449.DTL
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Monday, March 4, 2002 (SF Chronicle)
Optimistic researcher draws pessimistic reviews/Critics attack view that life is
improving
Keay Davidson, Chronicle Science Writer
A controversial new book by a Danish statistician claims that
environmentally speaking, the world is getting better, contrary to the
headline-making scary scenarios of the last few decades.
Some scientists are upset by the book, which they say is a case study in
the perils of the old saw about "lies, damned lies and statistics." But
other experts welcome it as a breath of optimistic air amid the often
alarmist press coverage of the planetary environment.
Whoever's right, the fuss illustrates the challenge facing scientifically
savvy citizens: How can they decide what is and isn't "good science" when
the disputes are so technically complex and the atmosphere is so
politically charged?
The book is "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjorn Lomborg, a
statistician and associate professor of political science at the
University of Aarhus, Denmark. Published by Cambridge University Press,
the book is a 515- page survey of global trends in everything from human
population and grain production to illiteracy, working hours and planetary
forest cover.
The blonde, sunny-faced, 42-year-old Lomborg says the bottom line is
clear: The world is not going to hell.
FAILED TO DISPROVE ECONOMIST
Lomborg was inspired by the writings of the late Julian Simon, an
economist who stirred controversy in the 1980s by making a similar claim.
Lomborg -- who had been a dues-paying member of the in-your-face
environmental group Greenpeace -- read an interview with Simon in Wired
magazine, and set out to disprove his claims.
But when Lomborg studied Simon's data closely, he concluded that it wasn't
"simple, American right-wing propaganda" after all. Rather, "a
surprisingly large amount of his points stood up to scrutiny."
In his book, Lomborg takes on what he calls "the litany" of environmental
gloom and doom, and concludes that on every major point, the claims made
by advocacy groups are wrong or exaggerated. Air pollution is diminishing,
not worsening, he argues; population growth is falling faster than
expected; per- capita food production is improving; and so on.
The book has some prominent champions -- especially the British business
magazine the Economist. A review in the Washington Post called it a
"magnificent achievement." And the noted science writer Matt Ridley,
writing in the London Daily Telegraph, said it was "probably the most
important book on the environment ever written."
But it has come under heavy attack by others, including the top scientific
journals Science and Nature, which ran unfriendly reviews of Lomborg's
work. Indeed, many scientists and environmental groups have gone out of
their way to criticize and even ridicule Lomborg.
"This is an old story," says Paul Ehrlich, a famed professor of
conservation biology at Stanford University whose scary book "The
Population Bomb" made him an environmental hero three decades ago. "Every
single review in the scientific literature has pointed out the many, many,
many egregious errors in this (Lomborg) book. But it's being very heavily
promoted for political purposes."
'EGREGIOUS DISTORTIONS'
The brouhaha really heated up in January, when Scientific American -- an
esteemed, 157-year-old publication -- ran an 11-page attack on Lomborg.
The piece contained articles by four well-known environmental specialists
--
Stephen Schneider of Stanford, who edits the journal Climatic Change;
environmental scientist and energy expert John P. Holdren of Harvard,
formerly of the University of California at Berkeley; John Bongaarts, a
vice president at the Population Council in New York City; and Thomas
Lovejoy, chief biodiversity adviser to the World Bank.
They assailed Lomborg for "egregious distortions" (Schneider), for
"elementary blunders of quantitative manipulation and presentation that no
self-respecting statistician ought to commit" (Holdren), and for sections
"poorly researched and presented . . . shallow . . . rife with careless
mistakes" (Lovejoy).
In reply, Lomborg's defenders accuse Scientific American's authors of
overkill, of offering more polemic than substance. The four short articles
cite few specific errors -- for example, Lomborg's use of the chemical
term "catalyzing," when he should have said "electrolyzing." And whatever
his shortcomings, they say Lomborg hardly deserves such personalized
attacks.
His defenders also assail the magazine for not giving Lomborg the
opportunity to present his own views in the same issue of the magazine.
"Scientific American . . . has stooped so low as to claim to speak for all
scientists by rounding up the usual alarmist suspects to attack Lomborg,"
says John Christy, who directs the Earth System Science Center at the
University of Alabama in Huntsville. He is a leading opponent of the idea
that the planet is experiencing unprecedented global warming.
"Lomborg's real personal achievement was to break out of the Northern
European mind set of an almost religiously held belief in 'climate
calamity' and look at the science," says Christy, a native of Fresno.
"Lomborg hasn't discovered 'new' information -- many of us have been
publishing these real numbers for over a decade."
'NUTS' TO SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
Scientific American chose to air the story in a very biased way, some
critics say. That belief spurs one detractor, David Wojick of Electricity
Daily, an industry newsletter, to claim the magazine is "an American
institution now apparently gone nuts."
The "nuts" charge draws a laugh from Scientific American Editor in Chief
John Rennie.
"I still don't really feel that we've handled this in a bad way,
notwithstanding the critics," Rennie said in an interview. The magazine
originally considered doing a book review of Lomborg's tome, but "we
started to hear very clearly from scientists (saying) the book was doing a
disservice to their field."
Rennie considered giving Lomborg space to present his views in the same
January issue, alongside the attacks by Schneider, Holdren, Bongaarts and
Lovejoy. This idea was dropped, though. The reason: Lomborg had already
received so much press in other publications that "we felt it would not be
a terrible disservice" to run just the four critics, while allowing
Lomborg to reply in a future issue. Lomborg's reply is tentatively
scheduled to run in the May issue.
The brouhaha has left Lomborg -- formerly an obscure specialist in
theoretical topics such as game theory -- dizzy over his sudden ascent to
international fame and notoriety. "I thought initially we would have a
couple of weeks of debate and that would be it and we'd all move on," he
said in a phone interview. "But it just kept on and on and on."
Scientific American "should have focused on giving a balanced view of the
book," Lomborg says. The four critics offered mainly "a few nitpicking
points. . . . (But) on the important issues, it seems like they (give)
lots of very negative adjectives and fairly little substance."
Lomborg took a 1 1/2-year sabbatical from his university to debate his
critics and promote his book. Last week, the Danish government announced
it was appointing Lomborg to head a new, small environmental monitoring
agency, the Institute for Environmental Evaluation. It will operate
independently of the Danish version of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency.
Lomborg says he plans to postpone indefinitely his return to academia
while he runs the new agency, which he expects will have a staff of 10 and
a budget of about $1 million. He says its mission will be to decide the
best ways to spend taxpayer dollars on environmental remediation. He adds
that his appointment has made "a lot of people very angry" in Denmark.
MAKINGS OF A MARTYR
Meanwhile, it seems that the controversy over his book has helped to drive
up sales. If so, it won't be the first time that part of the scientific
community has shot itself in the foot. History shows that when scientists
attack a lone figure so relentlessly, they risk transforming him into
someone's martyr.
David Wojick, one of Lomborg's defenders, says Lomborg can be grateful for
Scientific American's "incredible arrogance and bias." The magazine "is an
American institution. It is sold in drugstores and supermarkets across the
land. And they spelled Bjorn's name right.
"So I can imagine millions of four-eyed high school science nerds, like I
once was, now wanting to read 'The Skeptical Environmentalist.' Thank you,
Scientific American. Thank you very much."
Chronicle Science Writer Keay Davidson has been a paid contributor to
Scientific American. / E-mail Keay Davidson at COSTS
OF SOLVING ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS
One argument of Bjorn Lomborg's book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," is
that it is not cost efficient to spend money on certain environmental problems.
He cites a Harvard University study comparing the cost efficiency of various
life-saving initiatives.
An example: regulating radioactive emissions at phosphorous plants costs $2.
8 million. Doing so would save only one life per decade. The cost per year of
life saved, the researchers calculated, is $9.2 million. By contrast,
requiring smoke detectors in homes is so cost-efficient that it saves money.
Here is a selection of the initiatives studied and the corresponding cost
per year of life saved.
Cost per
Initiative life-year saved
Federal law requiring smoke detectors in homes < $0
Reduced lead content of gasoline from 1.1 gram
to 0.1 gram per leaded gallon < $0
Measles, mumps and rubella immunization < $0
Mandatory seatbelt use laws $69
Influenza vaccination for high risk people $570
Mammography for women age 50 $810
Pneumonia vaccination for people 65 and older $2,000
Chlorination of drinking water $3,100
Screening blood donors for HIV $14,000
Low-cholesterol diet for men age 30 $19,000
Improve basic driver training $20,000
Flashing lights and gates at rail-highway crossings $45,000
National 55 mile per hour speed limit $89,000
Annual mammography for women age 55-64 $110,000
Air bags (versus manual lap belts) $120,000
Seat belts for passengers in school buses $2,800,000
Strengthen buildings in earthquake-prone areas $18,000,000
Arsenic emission control at glass
manufacturing plants $51,000,000
Radiation emission standard for nuclear
power plants $180,000,000
Benzene emission control at rubber tire
manufacturing plants $20,000,000,000
Source: Harvard University Center for Risk Analysis
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Copyright 2002 SF Chronicle
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