010803 The sceptical environmentalist ct

January 8, 2003

The sceptical environmentalist

BJORN Lomborg used to be a left-wing Greenpeace member, very concerned about the environment. One day he read an analysis of the environment that challenged his beliefs. Since his work was in statistics at the University of Aarhus in Denmark, he was well placed to investigate. To his shock the deeper he looked into firmly held beliefs, the more falsities, exaggerations and poor statistics he found. The result of his researches is his book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, which has caused a furore since its publication in 1999. The subtitle of the book is Measuring the True State of the World. An ambitious target, even in 515 pages. Lomborg gives an astonishing portrayal of the current and future state of the world, discussing topics such as population, food and hunger, health, energy use, pollution and the environment. He analyses why organisations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature and Greenpeace make outrageous claims, and why the world media give such prominence to bad news instead of good news. He is particularly bothered by statements that are not based on facts but on previous statements by someone else, without the source of the evidence ever getting quoted. He shows authors how it should be done, by using 2 930 footnotes and 66 pages of sources, so that anyone can check his own claims. Everybody has heard about the huge extinction of species going on today. We are told that the figure is 40 000 species a year, or 109 a day, by people such as Al Gore, Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson and Paul Erlich.

Lomborg is very concerned about losing species but doubts the truth of these figures. Following the trail of the source of the figures quoted reveal that they are all based on a speech by Norman Myers, who actually said: "Let us suppose that as a consequence of man's activities in the last quarter of this century, this results in the elimination of one million species - a far from unlikely prospect." Divide one million by 25 years and suddenly we have a new statistic to be quoted from then on as supposedly known fact. Lomborg quotes from two real research studies on species elimination, which gave a far lower loss of perhaps 0,7% in the next 50 years. How big is the deforestation of the Amazon? You may be surprised to hear that the total destruction in all the years man has been there is only 14%. Compare this with the loss of over 90% of forest in England. Acid rain is often heard about. Lomborg quotes an official U.S. study that spent half a billion dollars over 10 years to report that "there is no case of forest decline in which acidic deposition is known to be the predominant cause". Some species of trees actually prefer acid rain conditions. The damage reports we heard so much about were a combination of ageing forests, local chimney smoke or normal tree diseases. Acid rain does cause some damage to organisms living in lakes, and is not a problem to be ignored, but neither is it one to get very depressed about.

In similar vein, Lomborg shows that worries about "toxins" and pollutants are not valid. These have been falsely supposed to cause cancer and asthma. The causes of asthma are still not known but pollution has been ruled out. A likely possibility is the hygiene hypothesis, where our modern clean way of life causes our immune systems to react oddly. The reason for the apparent rise in cancer cases in recent years is mainly due to people no longer dying young of infections, heart attacks, etc. Cancers from our surroundings actually come from bad diet (35%), smoking (30%), infections (10%), sexual activity, which includes multiple sex partners and childbirth (7%), and alcohol (3%). Food additives cause less than one percent or even prevent up to five percent of cancers. The problem of global warming is a better founded concern. The author considers it a complicated topic, confused by exaggerated figures. For example, a range of projected future models of the world show a temperature rise in a century of between two and six degrees, but the higher figure is usually used in media stories. Interestingly, it seems probable that half of the global warming expected has already happened. The rise in sea levels is not mainly due to the melting of the icecaps, but to the simple expansion of the sea water getting warmer. Lomborg considers that drastically reducing warming is not cost-effective. For example, for less than the cost of the whole world adopting the "Kyoto Protocols" on reducing emissions, every inhabitant of the earth could be given clean water, which would give a much better return on money spent.
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