IP: Sci-Am refutes 'The Skeptical Environmentalist'

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 13:31:12 -0800
> To: farber () dsl cis upenn edu
> From: Denise Caruso <caruso () hybridvigor org>
> Subject: Sci-Am refutes 'The Skeptical Environmentalist'
>
> Greetings,
>
> I got the latest Scientific American yesterday, and was extremely 
> impressed with a piece that's NOT the cover story, but IMHO should be 
> (instead of more hype-o-rama on human cloning).
>
> It's called "Misleading Math About the Earth," and it's a powerful 
> refutation of the book "The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real 
> State of the World", consisting of essays by four accomplished 
> environmental scientists.*
>
> The book's author, Danish statistician and political scientist Bjorn 
> Lomborg, as you may recall in the media blitz surrounding its publication, 
> concluded that everything is getting better, environmentally speaking.
>
> Many of us who heard this conclusion were gap-jawed with disbelief, 
> apparently for good reason.
>
> Sci-Am editor John Rennie says in the introduction to the article, "The 
> problem with Lomborg's conclusion is that the scientists themselves 
> disavow it ... His seemingly dispassionate outsider's view, they told us, 
> is often marred by an incomplete use of the data or a misunderstanding of 
> the underlying science."
>
> Which is kind of an understatement after you read the four essays.
>
> The book came from the social-science side of Cambridge University Press, 
> which apparently (and if true, kind of remarkably) did not have the 
> manuscript reviewed before publication by an interdisciplinary team that 
> included natural scientists.
>
> As Steven Schneider says in his essay's conclusion, "Unfortunately, angry 
> reviews such as this one will be the result. Worse still, many laypeople 
> and policymakers won't see the reviews and could well be tricked into 
> thinking thousands of citations and hundreds of pages constitute balanced 
> scholarship."
>
> In service of setting the record straight or at the very least providing 
> some balanced perspective on such a vital (not to mention politically 
> fraught) issue, the article is well worth the effort to go out and buy the 
> magazine if you don't subscribe (text isn't on the http://sciam.com website).
>
> Best,
> Denise
>
>
> * Steven Schneider of Stanford, a MacArthur Fellow and highly regarded 
> climate change biologist, editor of the interdisciplinary journal Climatic 
> Change and the "Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather"; John Holdren of 
> Harvard, professor of environmental science and environmental policy, and 
> member of the National Academy of Sciences; John Bongaarts, member of the 
> Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and former chair of the Panel on 
> Population Projections of the National Academy of Sciences, National 
> Research Council; and Thomas Lovejoy, biodiversity adviser to the 
> president of World Bank and senior adviser to the president of the United 
> Nations Foundation.
>
>
>
> --
> Denise Caruso
> Founder & Executive Director
> The Hybrid Vigor Institute
> +1 415.543.8113 vox/fax
> http://hybridvigor.org

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