Challenging the Goliath of Environmentalism

February 22, 2002 8:57 AM

Challenging the Goliath of Environmentalism This piece is a brief chronicle of the (mis)adventures of a "green" whose only sin is optimism. Are the environmentalists too doomsday-ish for their own good? Is technology the problem, or part of the solution? Link via The Daily Grail.
posted by yesster (8 comments total)

Now that's a good opinion article! It seems like every time an environmentalist lambasts this guy, he sells more books and gets in more magazine articles. He is the Eminem of science. Will the real environmentalist please stand up?
posted by Zbobo at 9:20 AM on February 22, 2002

There's a banner ad for Shell at the top of the article. "Share your expertise. Get involved."
posted by ceiriog at 9:27 AM on February 22, 2002

The first Earth Day was in 1969, I was a high school freshman and I remember all the buzz over the doomsday forecasts put forth by Paul Ehrlich and others. The world was going to run out of food in 1975! As if the constant threat of thermonuclear war wasn't enough...

Regardless of who has the right numbers, there's no question that the environmental movement, as a whole, has lost credibility from the constant predictions of doom. I don't doubt that this has proven to be the best way to generate publicity and money, but after surviving several projected mass extinctions and environmental holocausts, you tend to get a bit skeptical.
posted by groundhog at 9:28 AM on February 22, 2002

Regardless of who has the right numbers, there's no question that the environmental movement, as a whole, has lost credibility from the constant predictions of doom. I don't doubt that this has proven to be the best way to generate publicity and money, but after surviving several projected mass extinctions and environmental holocausts, you tend to get a bit skeptical.

But what do you do with that loss of credibility? Do you now say "Screw the environment!”? Lombard's work at best points out some flaws and some dumb assumptions in some research. He got an irrational response from some researchers as well. Does that mean that all environmental research is bad or flawed? Not in my opinion.

Lombard's review is a really just listing of flawed work that he could find. It is by no means a balanced meta-analytic review of all environmental research that shows "Hey everything is okay..The greens were wrong". It is a pre-selected collection of research chosen to support the books thesis. Even with that bias several of his own examples end up with conclusions that things are getting worse just not as quickly as predicted or not in the anticipated area (renewable versus non-renewable resources for example) so he really only differs in degree rather than direction from his former green companions.

Arts & Letters daily has a bunch of links about this controversy - right column about 1/5 down the page
posted by srboisvert at 10:16 AM on February 22, 2002

As a Dane I have been following the Lomborg-case from the beginning - when his book (The true state of the world - in Danish) caused a riot in the Danish media.

If you are to believe the three most recognized scientific magazines: Nature, Science and Scientific American, Bjørn Lomborg lacks a basic understanding of the environment.

They all agree that Bjørn Lomborgs scientific observations are based on biased information and that he draws the wrong conclusions on that basis.

This site, although I do not care for the general tone of it, presents some interesting articles.
posted by FidelDonson at 10:38 AM on February 22, 2002

Oops...Lomborg not Lombard. And I was so pleased with myself for spell checking! liylilkjy <-- keys pressed by repeated whacking of my head on the keyboard.
posted by srboisvert at 10:47 AM on February 22, 2002

Lomborg's responses to some critics can be found here. The Scientific American rebuttal makes clear how pathetic the enviro-establishment's arguments are. They admit the truth of all his major points, pick apart small flaws, and somehow consider him refuted. About all we can take away from the criticisms is that the religion of environmentalism does not tolerate dissent.

(You can find some good related links here.)
posted by mw at 11:15 AM on February 22, 2002

What we have is stats prof in a Poli Sci deptartment who wrote about the enivornment in an academic fashion, but never had his findings go through the same sort of peer review they typically do. He never published a paper on any environmental issue to any scientific peer reviewed journal. When academics and scientists did end up reviewing the work they unaminously called his work a fraud.

Call me skeptical of the skeptical environmetnalist.
posted by raaka at 3:22 PM on February 22, 2002