Lomborg is a champion cherry-picker when he isn’t just getting his facts wrong, as I argued in Part I. He has a deceptively misleading — and outright erroneous — discussion of sea level rise projections in Cool It. Let’s start with a few all-too-typical howlers:
Antarctica is generally soaking up more water than Greenland is shedding, as the IPCC predicts. The IPCC estimates that the very worst additional increase to be expected from Greenland could be 8 inches over the century, but this is possible only in a model where CO2 levels rise two to four times more than expected by 2100 (p. 64).
No, no, and no. First, as was widely reported back in 2006–and thus well known to Lomborg while writing Cool It–the first-ever gravity survey of the entire Antarctic ice sheet by NASA and German scientists using a satellite launched in 2002 found “Antarctica’s ice sheet decreased by 152 (plus or minus 80) cubic kilometers of ice annually between April 2002 and August 2005.” That’s as much water as the U.S. consumes in three months.
Second, the IPCC clearly states “models [of sea level rise] used to date do not include uncertainties in climate-carbon cycle feedbacks nor do they include the full effect of changes in ice sheet flow.” Indeed, the IPCC goes out of its way to make clear that its projections exclude “future rapid dynamical changes in ice flow”–changes we are already seeing in both Greenland and Antarctica (subs. req’d). So the “very worst additional increase” possible from Greenland is much more than 8 inches. The IPCC explicitly says “larger values cannot be excluded.”
And this “very worst additional increase” does not require “CO2 levels rise two to four times more than expected by 2100.” It applies to the standard range of IPCC scenarios — and as I have written, since 2000, carbon dioxide emissions have grown faster than any IPCC model had projected.
This all goes beyond cherry-picking and sloppiness — it is outright deception. And Cool It has much more intellectually dishonesty.
For instance, Lomborg can’t get enough of the IPCC for sea level rise:
In its 2007 report, the UN estimates that sea levels will rise about a foot over the rest of the century…. sea-level increase by 2050 will be about 5 inches (pp. 60-61).
Thanks to this modest sea-level rise, and the possibility that developing countries will have the money in the future to protect their land with levees, he concludes, “a rich Bangladesh will lose only 0.000034 percent of its present dry-land area” (p. 48). No worries, mate!
Most of the time, however, Lomborg doesn’t buy the U.N. consensus at all. For instance, one of his central arguments is that global warming will save millions of lives: “heat deaths will not outweigh avoided cold deaths, not in 2050, 2100, or even 2200″ (p. 39). Yet after reviewing all of the literature, not just the handful of studies that Lomborg cherry-picks, the IPCC states with “high confidence”:
Studies in temperate areas ["mainly in industrialized countries"] have shown that climate change is projected to bring some benefits, such as fewer deaths from cold exposure. Overall it is expected that these benefits will be outweighed by the negative health effects of rising temperatures worldwide, especially in developing countries.
Snap! It is intellectually dishonest to devote several pages to cherry-picking studies that disagree with the IPCC consensus on net health effects because you don’t like its scientific conclusion, while then devoting several pages to hiding behind [a misstatement of] the U.N. consensus on sea level rise because you know a lot reasonable people think the U.N. wildly underestimated the upper end of the range and you want to attack Al Gore for worrying about 20-foot sea level rise.
On this blog, I have tried to be clear what I believe with my earlier three-part series: Since sea level, arctic ice, and most other climate change indicators have been changing faster than most IPCC models projected and since the IPCC neglects key amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks, the IPCC reports almost certainly underestimate future climate impacts. This is similar to a point just made in Science.
Lomborg, however, doesn’t just cherry pick — he misrepresents what the IPCC said and he misstates the facts about the ice sheets and his (or at least Denmark’s) beloved Greenland. One sentence is especially garbled:
Even with the most extreme estimates of Greenland melting over a couple of years (sic!), a sea-level rise would take one thousand years.
I cannot figure out what Lomborg was trying to say. Is he saying it would take 1000 years for Greenland to melt and raise sea levels 7 meters? That is an estimate based on models that don’t include the kind of rapid ice sheet dynamics that are already occurring.
While I don’t consider it an extreme estimate based on my interviews with leading climate scientists, NASA’s James Hansen has repeatedly pointed out that in past times of rapid warming, sea levels have risen one meter ever 20 years, and could rise several meters within a century – the same prediction Gore makes, which Lomborg ridicules. Of course, Lomborg has not a single reference to the work of America’s top climate scientist.
I would also note that if we are considering adaptation, the rate sea levels are changing is as important as the absolute jump in sea levels by 2100. An important Science article from early this year used empirical data from last century to project that sea levels could be up to 5 feet higher in 2100 and rising 6 inches a decade! The author notes “all that such a rise would require is that the linear relation of the rate of sea-level rise and temperature, which was found to be valid in the 20th century, remains valid in the 21st century.”
But how do you adapt to seas rising 6 inches a decade? Even if you are a hypothetical rich Bangladesh rather than an actually poor Bangladesh? The first meter of sea level rise would flood 17% of Bangladesh, displacing tens of millions of people, and reducing its rice-farming land by 50 percent. It would inundate over 13,000 square miles of this country.
Even if the chances of this catastrophic outcome were 5% — rather than, say, 50%, as suggested by the work of Hansen and others — it would be enough to warrant strong action today. But Lomborg simply refuses to consider plausible worst-case scenarios, even probable bad-case scenarios, which is his biggest flaw, as we will see in Part III.
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I recently attended a lecture at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography that dealt with glacier/sea-level connection. The Scripps researchers’ own projection of sea-level rise this century, based upon current trends, is about 0.5 meters. But the scientist (Dr. Shad O’Neel) who gave the lecture said that they considered it to be an *underestimate* of the most likely sea-level rise (how *much* of an underestimate they thought it might be, he didn’t say.).
O’Neel also said that the IPCC’s sea-level rise estimates were far too conservative, failing to take into account glacier melt/breakup. (He did not directly speculate as to the likelihood of a *multi-meter* rise in the next century, but my impression is that he considered that to be highly unlikely). Nonetheless, a 0.5-1 meter rise over the next century would be very expensive for the first-world and a disaster for some parts of the third-world.
O’Neel also said that smaller glaciers will likely contribute more to sea-level rise than the giant ice-sheets will for most of the next century.
But should global-warming get to the point that the big ice-sheets are significantly impacted, then we (as in future generations of “we”) will be in big trouble.
THX Joe for compiling the facts to counter Lomborg’s claims. His material is so compellingly laid out — I get that “chill” feeling when I read it. Thinking, “oh no, could I have missed something THIS big? Maybe I don’t need to keep working on this issue.” Your well-researched and quick responses help me get re-grounded and keep me well-informed when folks quote him when I give talks and trainings.
Drew Jones, Sustainability Institute
What astounds me is that we stare myopically at what this or that model project,s while ignoring empirical data from the geologic record.
As Hansen, Joe and others have pointed out, past warmings of the magnitude expected from the current anthropogenic warming have resulted in mulit-meter increases in sea-leval rise, often in a very short time.
Models can be useful, but so can geologic history. And given that our model based forecasts have consistently understated both the rate and magnitude of warming, it’s time to consign the Lomborg’s of the world to the intellectual scrap heep reserved for sophists, professional icoconclasts, and researchers for hire and to start dealing with the reality that GW is coming, it’s coming soon and it’s likely to be a bad thing.
Dear John,
As Monty Python might have said:
“Well spoken, Bruce!”
While I am very much in disagreement with Lomborg, I think the main reasons he is wrong are rather subtle and interesting.
The sea level thing can be laid at the feet of the latest IPCC report, which badly underrepresents the risk.
With all due respect and appreciation for your efforts in general, I haven’t seen any reason to accuse Lomborg of intellectual dishonesty, and frankly I see such accusations as counterproductive.
More here:
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/ 2007/ 09/ taking-lomborg-seriously.html
Michael:
While I agree with you that “managing the earth” is the core problem we face, I take issue with your contention that Lomborg is being intellectually honest in this book.
Lomborg has a history of selectively using of facts and statistics to make points that are counterfactual. Remember his first book, the Skeptical Environmentalist? In an unprecedented move, the editors of Scientific American printed an editorial calling him on his sophstry. After three months of debates on the pages of Scientific American — in which Lomborg was given as much space to rebut as he wanted, his entire book lay in tatters, exposed as the intelluctual junk it was.
When an author makes the same kinds of mistakes over and over again, he is either dumb (in which case we should pay him no mind) or dishonest (in which case we should pay him no mind).
John,
I think you underestimate the importance of culture gaps.
I haven’t seen any compelling evidence to believe that Lomborg is addressing the problem either dishonestly or incompetently in the terms that he thinks are appropriate. I shave seen the Scientific American editorial and thought it inappropriate as well.
During the Eemian, about 125,000 years ago, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere spiked from about 270 ppm to about 290 ppm and back down again in about 300–600 years. This cuased a later spike in temperature to about 2 degrees Celcius warmer than today (maybe only one degree by now). This caused a sea stand rise of about 5 meters above today’s. The graphic for temperature, carbon dioxide (and dust) is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Image:Vostok-ice-core-petit.png
Michael:
I guess I believe this debate should be conducted under the rules of Bacon’s New Organon —
Under the scientific method, we are obligated to assess all facts, and then using those facts, assemble a hypothesis and test that hypothesis against new facts as they emerge. It is this method that has helped humans come as close to truths as possible.
Lomborg starts with a hypothesis (based largely on neoclassical economic canon) and SELECTS facts to support it.
There is certainly a cultural divide between these epistemological approaches — one dominated the dark ages, the other has held sway since the enlightenment.
So, I don’t underestimate cultural differences — I just believe they are scintilatingly irrelevant to arriving at truths about global warming.
And further, as I stated, Lomborg seems to be a smart fellow (most Sophists are) and I don’t believe a smart fellow compiles a history of selective fact gathering aimed at a common perspective by accident.
I hate to be tendentious, but ask an intelligent well-intentioned Israeli and an intelligent well-intentioned Palestinian about the history of the middle east. You will find very different facts even though both individuals may consider themselves openminded, and neither is intellectually dishonest. This is what I mean by cultural context.
Lomborg’s selection may be skewed or yours may be, or both. In fact I am inclined to believe that Lomborg is in fact a bit skewed. That doesn’t make him intellectually dishonest.
Also his facts are not nearly as skewed as I see made out. So far I haven’t seen him say anything that is unsupportable, and in fact everything he says is, as far as I know, compatible with WG1, and with the opinion of some of the more conservative climate science professionals I am personally acquainted with and who have no problems with the WG1 reports. It’s more his reasoning and his conclusions that are skewed.
It’s a missed opportunity to challenge Lomborg on the climatology, when it is the fundamental economic axioms that need to be called into question. The real difference between Lomborg and Stern is about how to treat long time scales economically, not about how fast sea level is rising. This is a real substantive diference on the matters on which they are expert, and on this matter Lomborg is closer to the economic field’s consensus.
If the Hansen scenarios don’t play out and sea level rise is hundreds of years in the future, we will still be as morally wrong to commit our distand descendants to it as we would be if it were the very next generation we were messing up. Conventional economics cannot process that thought, so either the thought is wrong or economics is wrong. This is what we should be talking about when we talk about Lomborg.
He would only be intellectually dishonest if he knew he were cherry picking and misrepresenting the facts. He is extremely familiar with the entire global warming literature, so his decision to ignore most of it is, in my book, intellectually dishonest.
If Lomborg were right about the impacts of global warming, he would be (mostly) right about the economics. But I will get around to critiquing his economic analysis.
Michael:
Two points — even without the discounting issue, Lomborg’s economics are wrong. See RFFs paper, “An Even Sterner Report.”
As to whether there’s any evidence that Lomborg is being dishonest, I echo Joe’s response above.
There are two options with regard to Lomborg’s research.
One is that by sheer happenstance, his research turned up only facts and forecasts that supported his contention that global warming is not as big a deal as folks are saying. Highly unlikely.
Option two is that he did comprehensive research but used only those studies and those sections of studies which suport his perspective. Much more likely and fundamentally dishonest.
In fact, it is evident from the nature of studies Lomborg cites that he was reasonably comprehensive in his review of the literature, but selective in how he used it.
Ergo, he was dishonest.
Finally, your metaphor about the Isreali and Palestinean suggests you have missunderstood my point about how science works. History, politics
religion and other such issues are inherently maleable. Science, on the other hand, is composed of observed phenomena that can be tested and verified (or refuted). Bacon laid out the requirements of scientific inquiry in his New Organon — one of the rules is that all data must be used and assessed in formulating a hypothesis or in attempting to refute one.
This isn’t a cultural issue in the way you describe it. it’s not a “on the one hand, this; on the other that” — I refer you to C.P. Snow’s essay on this exact topic.
As long as we’re being tendentious, in my earlier comment about the Scientific American editorial, you stated you thought it was unfair … but what discredited Lomborg were the many articles by scientists themselves which effectively and unequivocably discredited Lomborg, not the opinion piece published by the editors.
A minor niggle. What do you mean by the statement: “That’s as much water as the U.S. consumes in three months”? Water isn’t consumed like oil, so it is unclear what “consumption” means, and irrelevant anyway.
Consumed = used.
Who’s dishonest? Does the IPCC tell anyone that the “2000 plus” scientists are never acutally asked if they agree or not when their names are included in the numbers? Does the IPCC ever stand up and tell us all that in fact many of those involved in the IPCC process have no scientific training? Many of the buffoons involved with the IPCC and its climate reports have to be some of the most dishonest people to ever walk the face of the earth. So I ask you once again, Who is dishonest?
If there is truly a problem that man can actually affect, why isn’t the process transparent? No we have the likes of Al Gore telling us not to look at the dust in the corners. Why does the IPCC and its affiliates strong arm anyone who disagrees. The mockery of the concept of peer review is totally ridiculous. Those who make the report are responsible for choosing those that will do the peer review. Then if those that did the choosing don’t like what was said by the reviewers they simply ignore it. Just how inbred a process do we need to have for you to open your eyes and see that what is being sold to you is deception on a huge scale.
In my humble opinion the IPCC needs to be held accountable for its actions. The whole process needs to be audited and cleaned up. It needs to have an independent review process, not selected by those in the system.
If scientists, such as Dr. Paul Reiter, are bringing valid questions contending the assertions made by this bunch of clowns. Then “scientists” need to address the issues and stop with the BS ad hominem attacks. If it is a good question, it doesn’t matter if it is a child who has raised the point, it needs to be addressed.
PS. And those doing the review need to have full disclosure of all the raw data used in the calculations.
Hell hath no fury like an environmentalist scorned.
One would assume Bangladeshi politicians are going crazy thinking of an ominous future when the sea would engulf Bangladesh. But NO… they are too busy making money — err stealing money from foreign aid and in return allowing foreign multinational companies take natural resources out of the country paying only 6% of the international market value.
A Bangladeshi scientist had warned that Bangladesh would be submerged decades ago… but nobody paid attention. Nobody bothered even after scientists from around the world raised the alarm.
RQ
Barry is one of many with an idealogical perspective who seem not to know how the IPCC reports are created, nor how peer review actually works. To say that, “many of those involved in the IPCC process have no scientific training,” is a gross misrepresentation. Yes, there are, eg, many secretaries who are involved, but the question is how much they determine the outcome, a point that Barry chooses not to address. The fact is that the scientific content is almost completely determined by experts. To the extent it is not, it is because a representative removes some statement, and Barry should know that very little of this was done and that the conclusions were typically weakened by such changes.
Peer review, like democracy, is not perfect, but it has served science very, very well. There is no area of human activity that is more successful than science, and peer review is an essential and critical component of that success. If Barry has a better idea, let’s hear it, but please let it show an understanding of how science actually works.
Are we really supposed to pay attention to Paul Reiter, a medical entomologist, regarding climate change? According to Reiter, “Science proceeds by observation, hypothesis and experiment.” Sounds reasonable to the public. Also sounds like a grade-school formulation of the scientific method. Sigh.