Rating: 
Summary: The truth hurts if it's your career on the line
Review: What an excellent book by a former "rabid" environmentalist, Mr. Lomborg. I think it is hard for people in the business itself (scientists, paid leaders of anti-property-rights groups, reporters, etc) to keep an open mind when their career path is on the line. Scientists are supposed to be unbiased in observation and experimentation, but that doesn't always happen. Examples: Recent Lynx-hair hoax in WA state, "cooling in Antartica happening despite global warming" (I quote straight from the news!), actual habitat of the NW spotted owl.Mr. Lomborg's book is very readable, and interesting enough to where I read it over a two-day weekend. It may be a subject for a different book, but I think the author should have spent more time on the motives of the folks who perpetuate myths and/or complete lies in order to a) have fun worrying people who don't have the time or brain-power to get into the details and b) keep the career very lucrative. However, he lays the facts out fairly cleary, and it would take many books to fully explain the science and politics behind the many different facets of environmental preservation.
Rating: 
Summary: missing the forest for the trees
Review: Most leading scientists in the fields analyzed by Lomborg think this book is seriously flawed. Libertarians and other anti-environmentalists love it. Lomborg's goal of "a neutral, impartial assessment of the facts" is impossible at the outset because he has thrown his lot in with Julian Simon and others who see no environmental problems, only Blue Skies for Unlimited Growth and Profits.
I sought out the book as soon as it was published, because the premise is a good one. I have read Lomborg, I have read the scathing critiques in Scientific American and on the World Wildlife Fund website, and I have read Lomborg's response to his critics on his own website. I give Lomborg credit for being tenacious and narrowly logical -- one star. He scores points in the "debate" on some particulars, and he is not cowed by the claims to authority of leading scientists in many fields -- another star. Check the book out of the library and read it yourself, alongside other sources of information -- it's a good exercise in critical thinking. In the end, though, I am convinced that Lomborg is missing the forest for the trees. He has provided ammunition to those who think the environmental movement is some sort of conspiracy against Mom, Apple Pie, and the Free Market. (I've never seen a logical explanation proposed for why anyone would want to be a "doomsayer" if they didn't believe the warnings were true...) The reason the environment has been cleaned up to the extent it has over the past 30 years or so is because of the environmental movement and the environmental regulations the movement has fought for, not because of benevolent corporations. Lomborg's one-sided "expose" can have only one consequence -- to aid and abet those who want to roll back our successful environmental efforts, unleash unlimited greed, and the environment be damned. If Lomborg is really neutral and impartial, then he has already started on his next massive book, "The Skeptical Economist," which will debunk the fallacious use of supply and demand curves to explain everything of value in the world. If Lomborg isn't going to write it, then someone else should.
Rating: 
Summary: Junk
Review: I read this book to see if it was as provocative as the reviews had said: Well, it was not. The only credit that I would give Lomborg is that of being very creative with numbers. I read a little background on him to test the credibility of his claims and he seems marginally trained (considering that he is a mathmatician and not a life or social scientist) for his assertions. The very things he critizes environmentalists about, such as sloppy source work and using skewed numbers, are what he seems most guilty of. I could complain about this book for a very long time: I will not. If you are environmentalist do not read this book: it will only make you mad. If you are not an environmentalist, at least read environmentally skeptical work that is credible. This book is not and there are enough valid skeptical works out there.
Rating: 
Summary: Gives New Meaning to Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
Review:
I rate this book a 5 for effort, a 3 for half-truths, and a 4 over-all. I am updating this review to note that my basic points were recently validated when the Danish committee for scientific integrity slammed this book for dishonesty. It is never-the-less a tour de force for Lomborg and his students (the latter appear to have done most of the tedious data gathering and basic analysis)--at its best, it provides a severe spanking for environmentalists who get careless with their data and their assertions. At its worst, it provides a semblance of cover for corporate carpet-baggers intent on liquidating what any child can understand is a closed system with limits.
At root, Lomborg is a disciple and blind follower of the paradigm best articulated by Julian Simon, who has himself been discredited here and there by well-educated environmentalists. Lomborg's professionalism and devotion to data are not questioned here--one either shares his paradigm or one does not. It merits comment that there are now several web sites, one of them in Denmark founded by his own colleagues, dedicated to exposing the flawed assumptions and analysis that went into this corporately attractive politically-biased treatise. This is indeed a brilliant and powerful book, just as a nuclear explosion is brilliant and powerful--and very destructive. However well-intentioned--and I do not question, even applaud, the author's intentions, what we have here is a rather scary combination of fragmentary analysis in depth, combined with a strong belief system that accepts as a starting point the concept that the earth is infinitely renewable and no matter what happens, that is a "natural" turn of events. ... Just as 9-11 was necessary before a paradigm shift in national security concepts could be achieved (now we know that individuals without weapons can turn our own civilian instruments against us in really damaging ways), I fear that a major environmental--perhaps even a terrorist-environmental event, such as exploding train cars full of chlorine, will be required before citizens as a whole experience the paradigm shift and understand that a) we live in the closed system and b) the burden of proof must be precautionary rather than exploitative. We are soiling our seed corn and the earth it grows in. Lomborg would have us believe that what we grow within such a paradigm is natural and good--no doubt he has an explanation for the dramatic drops in sperm counts around the world, the troubling increases in asthma across Canada and the East Coast and other nations reeling from antiquated coal-fueled power plants (most of them in the mid-West), and other documented demographic costs to uncontrolled liquidation of the earth. I will end with one very significant concession to Lomborg and his adherents: this book, compelling in isolation, makes it clear that nothing less than the full application of the distributed intelligence of the citizenry on a 24/7 basis, will be sufficient to monitor, evaluate, and comprehend the breadth and depth of our attacks on the earth. It is now clear to me that until we have a global web-based community of citizen observers able to enter data at the neighborhood level, using peer-to-peer computing power to analyze distributed data, that the citizens will continue to be at the mercy of corporate computers and political manipulation. I strongly recommend this book, and Czech's book, as companion volumes framing a much higher level of data and debate that is now beginning.
Rating:
Summary: The Touchstone of Science
Review: Science claims its legitimacy on different grounds from other modes of thought. Science requires prediction. This is an active argument in academia today. Social Science must predict whereas failure to predict relegates your work to the field of social opinion. In a liberal democracy we let anyone hold any opinion they want but to qualify as a scientific theory your opinion must be capable of being tested and eventually of passing the test. How then are we to judge environmentalism? Is it science? Or is it merely just feeling good about feeling bad? Professor Lomborg examines the predictions of environmentalists. The short answer is that every prediction that is specific enough to be tested has been shown to have been wrong. The most egregious examples are the many millenial doomsday predictions of Paul Erlich but there are many other examples. This book is NOT a book against the environment. It is a book about the opinions of some who claim to speak for the environment. Do they in fact hold scientific opinions? This book has met with strong opposition from some members of the environmentalist lobby. There is an unprecedented series of essays in the latest issue of Scientific American. All these essays have a strident tone of outrage. They are written in something like an inchoherent rage. Yet they only attack minor issues of error or emphasis in a very large book. They never come to grips with the clear fact that virtually all environment predictions of the past have been outrageously wrong. The issues raised in this book should no longer be controversial. All the evidence is in. Population and environment doomsday predictions have always been wrong and continue to be wrong in a very big way. The Scientific American critics of this book carp on minor issues (some say he has too many foot notes, other say it doesn't have enough). None of them are willing to recognize that Erlich, Borgstrom, the Club of Rome, and the Sierra Club have virtually never made a valid prediction and have made a long series of fantastic predictions that have failed. A few years ago there was a book and a theory called Cognitive Dissonance. It was a theory created to account for the observable fact that cults that predicted the end of the earth tended to experience new growth and energy after their predictions failed. The true believers redoubled their faith when on the apponted day the sky refused to fall. Another explanation for the bizarly tenacious faith of environmentalism is the "Watermelon" effect - green on the outside, red on the inside. Much present day environmentalism has inherited the hard leftists who have been left disenfranchised by the fall of international communism. For many of them the struggle is against property and ownership. They put on the mantle of protectors of environment so they can get in their licks against landlords and factory owners. They like to think that nature agrees with them that western capitalism is evil. Professor Lomborg doesn't spend much time with these kind of speculations as too motives. He just goes about nailing down the evidence with largely impartial scholarship. Thoughout his tone is very fair and neutral. He is not at all an anti-environmental extremist. Most of that group will find Lomborg's views on renewables to be too optimistic. Similarly Lomborg accepts anti-nuclear arguments without much protest. Danes have long been concerned with the environment. In all Lomborg is a Dane and is very much in that Scandinavian mold of moderation, fair mindedness and a friend of nature. He just wants some science too.
Rating:
Summary: The Skeptical Environmentalist
Review: The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg is a superb extension of the work pioneered by Julian Simon. The writing is solid and the book is comprehensive. Lomborg systematically covers a vast array of issues on human welfare, pollution, population growth, economic growth, energy, chemical fears, biodiversity, etc. He effectively refutes many of the popular environmental myths of today. What is particularly effective and devastating is that Lomborg does not fall in the data confrontation trap. Much of the data used by the environmental industry does not measure that what it is claimed to measure. For example Global Warming Theory is based on the hypothesis that an increase use of carbon-based fuels will increase the "greenhouse effect" - the amount of the sun's energy that is absorbed by the atmosphere once it is reflect off the earth. This increase in absorbed energy will cause the atmosphere to warm, which in turn will cause the globe to warm further. The only way to directly prove Global Warming Theory is to measure changes in atmospheric temperatures over time with an increase use of carbon based fuels. Since 1979 this has been done using satellites. These provide the only systematic, comprehensive global temperature measurements in existence. However, the environmental industry dismisses atmospheric temperature measurements. Instead to "prove" Global Warming Theory the environmental industry uses surface temperature measurements that are not systematic, a far from comprehensive, and are bias. The environmental industry ignores satellite data because, since measurements began, temperatures have not significantly changed, thus they refute Global Warming Theory. If Lomborg had refuted the data used by the environmental industry, the industry would drown him out by the sheer volume of the cacophony it creates. Instead, he brilliantly accepts their data and shows how the environmental industry selects, twists, and distorts the data to reach its conclusions. Lomborg analyses the entire data sets and shows that contrary conclusions follow. No doubt Lomborg will be attacked as being supported by greedy corporations and capitalists. This time honored attack has a certain perverse logic. Why else would Lomborg be willing to incur the wrath of his colleagues were he not an instrument of greedy corporations and capitalists? Four centuries ago a brilliant scientist was bitterly and repeatedly attacked by almost the entire scientific community of the day because he skewered its pet theories with careful, systematic measurement and experimentation. The best argument his attackers could muster was: Why else would Galileo incur the wrath of his colleagues by advocating the heliocentric solar system were he not an instrument of the devil? The Skeptical Environmentalist is an important book and a "must read" for those who are tired of being deceived - provided, of course, they are not afraid to read the devil.
Rating:
Summary: Skeptical about Skepticism
Review: No one book is going to be the last word on the environment and this one requires a considerable background in the science and politics of the environment in order to be remotely useful. As someone who has been active in the environmental arena for many years, I have often been embarrassed at my own side and appalled at the other. Too often emotion has driven out fact and reason, with ideological cant substituting for a well thought out conservation ethic. This book, with its apparently objective use of atatistics would seem to shed some useful light on the debate. Alas, it is not so. 1. The problem with the use of statistics is with the primary selection process. Flawed primary data, even if properly manipulated, will still result in a flawed final product. This problem runs throughout the book. A good example of this is his section on forests. If one checks both the text and the footnotes one discovers that Lomborg uses the UN's FAO data on "forests and woodlands" His selection of this category as a measure of forest gain or loss is, in the end, arbitrary and one he doesn't even attempt to justify. The definition for this category is politically not scientifically determined. It allows for 20% canopy coverage in developed countries but only 10% coverage in lesser developed countries. Since forests (both tropical and temperate) are often a sea of green (80 - 100% canopy coverage) the potential for understating forest loss is obvious. The loss of every acre of old growth forest could be offset by the planting of pulp and Christmas tree farms. The FAO number is biased against native forests from the start and allows the transition from forest to savanna to go unobserved. Timber as a commody may be fungible however forests from a conservation standpoint need to be considered by type. Again, the loss of old growth conifers in the Pacific Nortwest isn't offset by plantation pines in Georgia. One would never learn this by reading this book. Similar problems are evident in the sections on energy and extinction. His reference to the most extreme application of the Wildlands Project (forceably shifting the U.S. population to produce large uninhabited areas, closed to humans) makes one wonder how deep his research was. No mainstream environmental group advocates this - it's a real fringe position and the context in which he mentions it creates a deceptive impression and constitutes a real rookie error. 2. As a general rule I'm wary of books or articles that start out with some version of "I once believed this but now I know better" not because one shouldn't be open to changing ones mind but because both sides in a debate usually commit the same types of errors and the "zeal of the new convert" syndrome that usually comes with the above statement often results in the exchange of one set of errors for another. Contrasting Paul Ehrlich with Julian Simon is an example of this. Mr. Lomborg fails to consider another (and to me, better) possibility: That both hold/held flawed positions; Ehrlich's projections on population were irresponsible and reflected a lack of understanding of economics. Simon didn't understand ecology and was indifferent to the effects of population growth on the natural world. Another possible problem is overstatement. Much has been made of the author as a member of Greenpeace and a leftist. However, was Lomborg on the high seas, riding the Zodiacs as a member of Greenpeace, or was his "membership" confined to a mere monitary contribution with a vague sense of environmental commitment? We aren't told. Likewise a close reading of the book makes it hard to believe that he is a confirmed "man of the left" even though the promos constantly refer to him as such - there is just too much blind reliance on markets as a solution to energy issues. While Lomborg is correct in calling attention to the many problems some environmentalists have created by exageration and imprecision, his methodology merely creates a new set of the same problems.
Rating:
Summary: Skeptical about The Skeptical Environmentalist
Review: The book is badly flawed. It is selective, ignoring, for example, undeniable coral reef degradation, which is caused by a mix of human (e.g., pollution run off, dynamite and cyanide fishing, anchor damage) and natural (e.g., El Nino) causes. It contains self-contradictions, perhaps due to different students doing the research for different chapters (e.g., page 96 "The population is growing more and more slowly" whereas page 46 [Fig. 11] shows population growth on the steepest part of the population versus date curve. ... I wish I could rate it zero stars.
Rating:
Summary: Neither skeptical nor environmentalist!
Review: What is one to make of "The Skeptical Environmentalist?" Is it true, as the author claims, that pretty much EVERYTHING is getting better in the world (although "not necessarily good"), and that the whole environmental "litany," as he calls it, is a bunch of marketing/fund-raising propaganda? Is it true, as Lomborg claims, for instance, that (to take just a few): 1) the world overpopulation "problem," if it ever WAS a problem, is basically solved at this point; 2) that income inequality is lessening and human welfare is improving basically everywhere and in every way (although, Lomborg admits, not as fast as he would like); 3) that global warming is not much of a problem, and certainly not one worth wrecking our economy over; 4) that the rainforest is not being destroyed (well, at least not rapidly); 5) that species are not going extinct at a rate even close to what environmentalists claim; 6) that we're not "running out of energy" (or other resources); and 7) that the only reason people are so "scared" about these so-called "problems" is that environmental groups constantly (and cynically) pound away with their exaggerated "Litany" of doom, which the media loves to pass along as its "horror story of the week") because this type of news apparently attracts readers/viewers?My take on "The Skeptical Environmentalist?" Interestingly, for the first few chapters, I found the book to be refreshing, honest, and "skeptical," if not especially profound or original. But as chapter after chapter went by, and I realized that the author was just making the SAME EXACT ARGUMENT ("don't worry, things are basically not so bad and they're getting better fast!") over and over again in the SAME EXACT WAY (go through the "Litany" point by point and argue the exact opposite), I started to get increasingly suspicious -- not to mention increasingly bored! Especially since each chapter tackles a highly complex topic (i.e., petroleum geology, demography, global climate modeling, forestry, hydrology, chemistry, agriculture, developmental economics), each one of which would seem to require a lifetime of study to master. Here's an example. On the issue of biodiversity, an extremely complex subject, "The Skeptical Environmentalist" argues that the rate of species extinction has been wildly exaggerated. Now, this certainly MAY (in theory) be the case, but how can Professor Lomborg KNOW this with such certainty? I mean, scientists who specialize in this subject don't even have a clue how MANY species there are, let alone how many have disappeared and are currently endangered. And by the way, if there are 20 members of a species left in zoos, and perhaps a few more in the wild, does that mean that they're still not "extinct," and is that supposed to be a good thing?!?. Having personally visited rainforests in places like Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Peru, all I can say is that I saw with my own eyes how much pressure (from logging, mineral exploitation, agriculture, pollution, and population pressures) is being exerted on these amazing places (and their inhabitants). Are these places really threatened? Do we want to protect these places for future generations or not? Do they have intrinsic, not just economic, value? "The Skeptical Environmentalist" would seem to imply that the answer is "no" to each of these questions. In sum, I believe that "The Skeptical Environmentalist" is neither truly "skeptical" nor "environmentalist." And despite the thousands of footnotes and convoluted statistics, this book does NOT do what it claims to do, namely present the "real state of the world," just the "state of the world according to Professor Bjorn Lomborg."
Rating:
Summary: Pointing the Environmental Movement in the Right Direction
Review: Finally, we have a reasoned expression on the critical components of the dangers we face in our environment. Not just a broad series of "the sky is falling", "death and distruction are upon us" pronouncements from the self serving radical environmental movement, in this book we receive a rational view of what is really wrong with the environment, and a guide to a reasonable allocation of scarce resouces to change the things we can and should. The book further lets us see the methods that have worked in the past and how many aspects of the environment are changing for the better either on their own, or in response to our continuing efforts. It is a tribute to the depth and accuracy of the material provided that the arguments from the "movement" against the book are ad hominem arguments pointed at the person of Mr. Lomborg, not his analysis and conclusions.Thank you Mr. Lomborg.
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