My thoughts:
Bjørn Lomborg is trained in political science and officially teaches as a statistician, but has been studying the costs and benefits of climate change mitigation for a decade now. It seems rather silly to me to reject anything he has to say because he is “just an economist”, or “just a political scientist”. Who is more qualified to speak on cost–benefit analyses of climate change mitigation and adaptation, a just-graduated Ph.D in atmospheric hydrodynamics, an eminent physicist from USCB, or an economist/political scientist who has been studying the costs of climate change mitigation since the late 1990s? (The answer, of course, is “unknown”, since you should not reject or accept someone’s viewpoint based solely on a line on their resume. Any of those three could have intelligent or idiotic things to say.)
Prof. Lewis is right to be steamed about the way the investigations into the leaked CRU emails went. All five investigations basically sidestepped the real questions and wrote off some clearly irresponsible behaviour as just heated discussion or normal internal conversation. Ross McKitrick wrote a good summary, available here: http://rossmckitrick.weebly.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/rmck_climategate.pdf. I know, it’s McKitrick, so many people won’t even consider it worth reading, but just read his list of the five main concerns arising from the leaked emails (at the bottom of page 4). I think you’ll find them quite reasonable. And then read any of the five investigations and see if you think those concerns were addressed.
At the same time, for Prof. Lewis to call the predictions of climate change a “scam” (wait, sorry, it’s not just a “scam” it’s “the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist”) is to go way beyond any real-world evidence, even if you read the entire body of the leaked CRU emails (or even, as is more common, a carefully-chosen subset of them, curated by Watts or Montford or one of the other skeptic bloggers). I am more skeptical of catastrophic climate change than many of my colleagues, but my concerns are not that it’s a scam or that the scientists involved are just looking to keep that sweet, sweet grant money flowing; my concerns are mainly with data transparency/openness, and external (adversarial) auditing of code, especially for the GCMs.
Climate prediction is subject to large uncertainties, both inherently and due to our limited knowledge. However, the potential downside is very, very big, and due to the way our brains think about risk and prioritize the short term over the long, our political system seems to be unable to properly respond to the problem. Can you blame the APS and other such organizations for erring on the side of caution in their statements? Now, with that said, reducing our emissions of CO2 will be far from easy, which has been Lomborg’s point all along. “The Skeptical Environmentalist” has got to be the single most-criticized book ever by people who haven’t read it. Lomborg never “denied” climate change, he just said that if we’re thinking about spending five trillion dollars reducing CO2 emissions, maybe we should do a cost–benefit analysis of CO2 mitigation vs. feeding the third world, or finding a cure for AIDS, or working on making sure everybody has access to clean water instead.
But again, for Prof. Lewis to outright call it a “scam” is to impugn the integrity of a very large number of scientists at many independent institutions. Are there a lot of people out there who are scared of a 7° C temperature change, and so downplay the uncertainties more than they should? Almost certainly. There are at least a few careers that the leaked emails should have ended, had the inquiries done their job properly. Yes, maybe it would be good if we could all simmer down a bit and think about a technological response instead of just a knee-jerk “shut down industrial civilization to reduce CO2!”. But sending out public resignation letters saying “The Climategate letters prove it’s a scam!” is unscientific and irresponsible of Prof. Lewis, and maybe the APS is better off without him.
Regards,
Geoff Olynyk
From: cdn-nucl-l-admin@mailman1.cis.mcmaster.ca [mailto:cdn-nucl-l-admin@mailman1.cis.mcmaster.ca] On Behalf Of Jerry Cuttler
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2010 11:10 AM
To: 'Canadian Nuclear Discussion List'
Subject: [cdn-nucl-l] Hal Lewis' resignation from American Physical Society---climate change "incontrovertible"
Yes I heard about this reversal.
Is Lomborg a renowed physics scientist?
I thought he's a political "scientist" and statistics expert.
Academic career
Lomborg spent a year as an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, earned an M.A. degree in political science at the University of Aarhus in 1991, and a Ph.D. degree in political science at the University of Copenhagen in 1994.
He lectured in statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus as an assistant professor (1994–1996) and associate professor (1997–2005). He left the university in February 2005 and in May of that year became an Adjunct Professor at Copenhagen Business School.
Early in his career his professional areas of interest lay in the simulation of strategies in collective action dilemmas, simulation of party behavior in proportional voting systems, and the use of surveys in public administration. In 1996, Lomborg's paper, "Nucleus and Shield: Evolution of Social Structure in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma", was published in the academic journal, American Sociological Review.[5]
Later Lomborg's interests shifted to the use of statistics in the environmental arena. His most famous book in this area is The Skeptical Environmentalist, whose English translation was published as a work in environmental economics by Cambridge University Press in 2001. He later edited Global Crises, Global Solutions, which presented the first conclusions of the Copenhagen Consensus, published in 2004 by the Cambridge University Press. In 2007, he authored a book entitled Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, October 09, 2010 9:40 AM
Subject: RE: [cdn-nucl-l] Hal Lewis' resignation from American Physical Society---climate change "incontrovertible"
Why didn’t you post this piece of news – another noted anti-climate-change scientist reversing his stance - when it came out, Jerry?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100831/sc_yblog_upshot/noted-anti-global-warming-scientist-reverses-course
All the best,
Adam
(Proud APS member)
-----------------
Noted anti-global-warming scientist reverses course
By Brett Michael Dykes
Tue Aug 31, 2:17 pm ET
With scientific data piling up showing that the world has reached its hottest-ever point in recorded history, global-warming skeptics are facing a high-profile defection from their ranks. Bjorn Lomborg, author of the influential tract "The Skeptical Environmentalist," has reversed course on the urgency of global warming, and is now calling for action on "a challenge humanity must confront."
Lomborg, a Danish academic, had previously downplayed the risk of acute climate change. A former member of Greenpeace, he was a vocal critic of the Kyoto Protocol -- a global U.N. treaty to cut carbon emissions that the United States refused to ratify -- as well as numerous other environmental causes.
"The Skeptical Environmentalist," published in 2001, argued that many key preoccupations of the environmental movement, including pollution control and biodiversity, were either overblown as threats or amenable to relatively simple technological fixes. Lomborg argued that the governments spending billions to curb carbon emissions would be better off diverting those resources to initiatives such as AIDS research, anti-malaria programs and other kinds of humanitarian aid.
Lomborg's essential argument was: Yes, global warming is real and human behavior is the main reason for it, but the world has far more important things to worry about.
Oh, how times have changed.
In a book to be published this year, Lomborg calls global warming "undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today" and calls for the world's governments to invest tens of billions of dollars annually to fight climate change.
Lomborg's former foes in the environmental movement are so far unimpressed by news of his conversion. Calling him a "shrewd self-promoter," Grist.org's Jonathan Hiskes marveled at Lomborg's ability to "play the media" in simply "adopting a position already held by millions of sensible people." And Friends of the Earth climate campaigner Mike Childs told the U.K. Guardian, "It appears that the self-styled skeptical environmentalist is beginning to become less skeptical as he enters middle age."