Bjorn Lomborg's critics have ignored 95% of his book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist."

Bjorn Lomborg is author of the book "The Skeptical Environmentalist." Since the book was published in the United States last year, a lot of people have been very critical of Lomborg and his book. That's fine. Healthy debate and disagreement over important issues is essential to the preservation of a free, open, democratic society.

Some of Lomborg's critics have politely raised legitimate disagreements about some of Lomborg's statements, such as on Lomborg's statements about global warming, the amount of public land that's covered in forest, and the size of wild fish populations. However, even these polite and civil critics have ignored the vast majority of Lomborg's book.

However, many of Lomborg's critics have resorted to personal attacks on Lomborg, calling him a "liar" and a "fraud" and a "charlatain," and saying that he has "no credentials." These personal attacks against Lomborg suggest to me that Lomborg must have struck a nerve somewhere.

I suppose that anyone who dares to give statistics and facts to prove that the doomsayer predictions from the 1960s and 1970s by Paul Ehrlich, Lester Brown, the Club of Rome, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and others, is bound to strike a nerve somewhere.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claims about increased food production in China, India, Latin America, the developing world in general, and the world as a whole.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that, for hundreds of years, the number of calories available, per person, has been getting higher and higher.

Lombrog's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that, for hundreds of years, food production has been growing faster than population.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that there is no relationship between high population density and famine.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's debunking of the doomsayer predictions of Paul Ehrlich, Lester Brown, the Club of Rome, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, and the other doomsayers of the 1960s and 1970s.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that Africa has a low population density, and Lomborg's claim that Africa is very rich in many valuable natural resources, and Lomborg's claim that Africa has many large tracts of fertile land that are sitting idle, unplanted, with no crops being grown.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that the real cause of African famine is Marxist economic policies, such as collective ownership of farmland, and government price controls on the price of food.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that private farmland is far, far more productive than collective farmland.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that government price caps on the price of food discourage farmers from growing food.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lombrog's claim that China's switch from collective farming to private farming in the late 1970s caused a tremendous increase in food production.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that rich countries do a much better job of protecting the environment than poor countries.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that on privately owned timberland, the greedy landowner is concerned about the future resale value of his land, and so the landowner usually plants more trees than he cuts down.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that on private fish farms, fish populations keep getting bigger and bigger.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that in the rich capitalist countries with a first world standard of living, the air and water have been getting cleaner.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that whenever a poor country adopts strong protections of private property rights, free market pricing, and free trade, and holds on to these policies, the country experiences tremendous increases in its standard of living.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that government price caps on the price of water keep the price artificially low, and that this artificaly low price encourages people to waste water, and that this artifically low price prevents many water suppliers from being able to afford desalination plants.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claims that, adjusted for inflation, the long term price trend for food, energy, oil, iron, copper, and aluminum have all shown a continuing price decline, over centuries, and that this price decline means that known supplies of these things are becoming more abundant.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that, over the past years and decades and centuries, we have been switching from old energy sources that are less efficient, less abundant, and less affordable, to newer sources of energy that are more efficent, more abundant, and more affordable.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that the doomsayers who predicted global cooling and an ice age 30 years ago were wrong.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that the 1970s doomsayers who predicted the extinction of one million species by the year 2000 were wrong.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that once par capita GNP in a country reaches about $4,000, economic growth leads to cleaner air and cleaner water.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that in a free market, with private ownership of resources, and private distrubtution of resources, and free market pricing, where prices go up and own according to supply and demand, it's impossible to run out of a resource.

Lomborg's critics have been unable to disprove Lomborg's claim that the communist countries of Eastern Europe, which had no private property rights, became the worst polluted area that the world has ever had.

These personal attacks against Lomborg suggest to me that Lomborg must have struck a nerve somewhere.

When academics fall back on as hominem attacks, they are either out of intellectual
ammo, or vying for the favors of a love object.

In Lomborg's case, it's the former.
Hard for them to sink a tenured professor of statistics who has been a Greenpeace member
and still says that he is an environmentalist and a socialist.

Lomborg's interview on The Dennis Prager Show was really good. Lomborg is a smart
and tough guy.

What I especially liked was his pointing out that as time goes along, the oil companies
discover more and more oil and/or learn how to more efficiently extract and refine petroleum.
I think he said that in the 1920's the world had only 10 years worth of known researves
(at the 1920's consumption rate)...and that this number has continuously increased, such that
despite our prodigious consumption, we have something like 20-30 years of known reserves.

Makes me wonder where all the academics who (in the 1970's) said we'd be out of oil
before 2000.
Yes, I'm sure they are typing out similarly flawed predictions for publication and
hobbling down to the Faculty Club for a cocktail.
Tenured fools can afford to do that.
On our dollars.

If I'd known that the oil would last this long, I would have become a master auto mechanic...
it would certainly be more enjoyable to my present position in academia amongst
the sort of people that think Lomborg is a fraud.

The bottom line on "environmental science" is you have to look at the track record of the people involved. When I see eco-doomsters prefacing their predictions with a detailed mea culpa and a post mortem analysis on the failed Chicken Little predictions of the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties, I might grant them some shred of intellectual credibility. But I don't expect that to happen soon, and I'm not going to waste any more time on them in the interim. They are simply not credible.

bump. Anyone got a copy of this book they wish to sell? Otherwise I'll check out halfprice or ebay.

Nope, I'm holding on to mine. I tell you, I wish they had this book as part of the curriculum when I was in High School.

What gets me is the whole point of the book is not so much to bash contemporary environmentalists as it is to say "Let's do something practical- let's spend money on problems we can actually solve (like clean drinking water for everyone)". That is a perfectly reasonable suggestion and in a sane world it never would have caused such an uproar.

I think the enviro whackos just got their knickers in a twist when he referred to their standard rants as "The Litany" and then went on to try to demonstrate to the reader how the environmental debate ever got to the state it's in. He does a good job of it and the book is laid out logically, in clean, matter of fact prose and is a useful read- not just for pointing out some facts but as an exercise in critical thinking.

the Editor-Something-Or-Other's rebuttal to Lomborg's published rebuttal:

As in his book, Lomborg repeats that the Kyoto Protocol would postpone global warming for only six years. This is an empty, deceptive argument because the Kyoto Protocol isn’t meant to solve the problem by itself; it is a first step that establishes a framework for getting countries to cooperate on additional measures over time.

This is quite nearly too dense for words. Lomborg extrapolates the kyoto protocol as a worst-case scenario from the standpoint of environmental action and discusses the costs of that. For comparison, he states what little environmental impact it will have.

of COURSE kyoto wont be around 100 years from now--as the Editor-Something-Or-Other mentions the environmentalists intend even _stricter_ controls. But Lomborg's point about the costs remain valid, since they will only go UP as the environmental controls TIGHTEN. And if you believe in diminishing returns at all, the tradeoffs will become even worse.

Maybe, as you say, Lomborg was influenced by Paul Pilzer's book but it is my understanding that he set out to disprove Julian Simon's statistics.(My favorite Julian Simon book is "Hoodwinking the Nation.")

Simon's argument is simplicity itself--coal, oil and uranium are not resources until they are acted upon by the human intellect. So as population increased, prosperity could increase because more brains were available to work the problem. This works better in free economies than it does in Socialisms or Dictatorships because in free economies all brains are allowed access to the problem. Controlled economies always stagnate because only a few brains are allowed access to the problem. Couldn't be simpler.

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