A collection of Lomborgisms
Note: Here are some of the errors in Bjørn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist. This list is by no means compete, it includes just the most obvious ones, and ones that do not require a lengthy analysis. (Please do not write that these are the only errors in the book, because that is simply not true.) And yes, some of these errors are minor, or probably caused by problems in translation. But they show a continuing low regard for facts. Update: THE LOMBORG-ERRORS WEB SITE by Kåre Fog has a much more eztensive list of errors.
Page xix: "I'm an old left-wing Greenpeace member." Lomborg is misrepresenting himself, when he wrote the book he had not been a Greenpeace member for over a decade.
Page 8: "Isaac Asimov, worrying about more hurricanes from global warming (something we will look into in Part V) cites some seemingly worrying statistics." The book Lomborg cites was written by Asimov and Frederik Pohl, not just Asimov. And Lomborg badly distorts what the authors wrote, see Stormy weather.
Page 9: "The only scarce good is money with which to solve problems." This is simply absurd. As E. O. Wilson (page 23) points out "For every person in the world to reach present U. S. levels of consumption with existing technology would require four more planet Earths."
Page 9: "We all hear about pesticides getting into the groundwater. Since pesticides can cause cancer, we have a problem. Thus, they must be banned." Lomborg is constructing a strawman, I don't know of any major environmental group that wants to ban all pesticides.
Page 28: "from a time when we all worried about global cooling." This is one of the most common "brownlash" claims, but it simply is not true.
Page 29: "Perhaps the most famous set of predictions came from the 1972 global best-seller Limits to Growth, that claimed we would run out of most resources. Indeed, gold was predicted to run out in 1981, silver and mercury in 1985, and zinc 1n 1990." The authors used four sets of numbers to show what would happen under different circumstances. None of these numbers was intended to be a prediction. See A limitless myth
Page 33: "only when we get sufficiently rich can we afford the relative luxury of caring about the environment." Poor people suffer from the worst effects of environmental deterioration: air pollution, water pollution and loss of ecosystem services.
Page 49: "In more densely populated areas, the most serious infectious diseases such as malaria and sleeping sickness become less of a problem the closer the buildings are together, because less space is left for the swampy areas where mosquitoes and flies can breed." Mosquitoes don't need swampy areas to breed, all they need is standing water. Such human made "habitats" as discarded cans and tires make excellent breeding grounds. See Mosquito: A Natural History of our Most Persistent and Deadly Foe, by Andrew Spielman, Sc. D., and Michael D'Antonio, Hyperion, 2001.
Page 62: "Since prices reflect the scarcity of a product, foodstuffs have actually become less scarce during this century despite the fact that the population has more than tripled and demand increased by even more" Prices reflect a lot of things: subsidies, tariffs and taxes, processing and transportation costs, cartels and other industry manipulation, and people's ability to pay. Food prices in particular are often heavily subsidized.
Page 94: "When we nevertheless sees (sic) that the global average [grain production per person] declines, it is because there are more and more people in the developing countries. When more and more people produce about 200 kg [of grain per year], and a constant number of people in the industrialized world produce 650 kg, the global average will have to fall." Lomborg's statement assumes that every person is a producer of grain. But even in undeveloped countries the majority of people are not farmers.
Page 116, on the 1997 fires in Indonesia: "The official Indonesian estimate was about 165-219,00 hectares Later, satellite-aided counting has indicated that upwards of 1.3 million hectares of forests and timber areas may have burnt." At least one of these statistics must be off by a wide margin. Some reviewers have claimed that both are questionable, see for example Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees by Emily Matthews
Page 121: "Along with numerous other resources, Limits to Growth showed us that we would run out of oil before 1992. . . But 1992 saw the publication of Beyond the Limits, the revised edition of Limits to Growth. Here, once again, we were told that our resources would soon run out. Perhaps the first edition had been somewhat mistaken in the exact prediction of the year of resource exhaustion, but now we would soon see the problems cropping up. Beyond the Limits predicts once again that we will run out of oil (2031 and gas (2050)." Limits to Growth made no such prediction, and Beyond the Limits was a sequel, not a "revised edition". (It even says it is the sequel on the front cover.) And once again the authors give a number of examples, in the case of natural gas they give five examples (page 73). If one of these is a prediction what are the other four?
Page 123: "At the same time Figure 66 demonstrates that we have more [oil] reserves than ever before. This is truly astounding. Common sense would tell us that if we have 35 years' consumption left in 1955, then we should have 34 years' supply left the year after." The only thing that is truly astounding is that anyone could make such an argument. Although Lomborg does not say so, it is the known reserves that are going up. The total reserves, which are what really matter, have to be going down. (Lomborg addresses the problems of using known reserves on page 125, but apparently only thinks it is a problem if used by the "doomsters".)
Page 137: "And the best-seller Limits to Growth from 1972 picked up on the old worry, claming that we would run out of most resources. Gold would run out in 1981, silver and mercury in 1985, and zinc in 1990. But, of course, this hasn't happened yet." But, of course, no such predictions were made.
Throughout chapter 12 Lomborg notes that the rates of use for various resources are increasing, but then gives estimates of years of reserves based on constant use.
Page 157: "As an Israeli Defense Forces analyst pointed out: 'Why go tot war over water? For the price of one week's fighting, you could build five desalination plants. No loss of life, no international pressure, and a reliable supply you don't have to defend in hostile territory.'" The major cost of desalination is not building the plants, but operating them, which takes huge amounts of energy.
Page 207: "Then the total landfill waste of the US over the entire century would take up just a square 14 miles on each side. . . . Surprisingly, we will only need a slightly larger area - it will still fit within a square, less than 18 miles on each side." Lomborg tries to make the problem sound less problematic by using these odd statistics (math abuse). An area 14 miles on each side is 196 square miles, almost twice the size of Washington DC. An area 18 miles on each side is 324 square miles, about one fifth the size of Rhode Island.
Page 231: "A very few pesticides such as arsenic, benzene and chromium have been confirmed as carcinogenic in humans, but then naturally these have also been regulated and banned." Benzene is not a pesticide, this was pointed by Allan Astrup Jensen back in 1998 in response to earlier writing by Lomborg. And pesticides are a minor use for and chromium, now largely restricted to wood preservatives.
Page 233: "Arsenic has been used as a weedkiller and is a naturally occurring mineral. " As Allan Astrup Jensen pointed out some time ago, arsenic is not a weedkiller. And arsenic, while found in many minerals, is an element. (Some compounds of arsenic, none of them naturally occurring minerals, have been used in weedkillers.)
Page 233: "Aflatoxin is the most carcinogenic pesticide known to man. It occurs naturally in a fungus that infects, among other things, peanuts, grain and maize." Allan Astrup Jensen pointed out that aflatoxin is not a pesticide almost three years before The Skeptical Environmentalist: was published. And maize is a type of grain.
Page 245: "In 1989, the US had its most spectacular example yet of pesticide worries versus risk facts, when 60 minutes had the nation worrying about the apple pesticide Alar." Alar is a growth regulator, not a pesticide. And it was not used just on apples.
Page 251: "Because the birds on these islands had developed without much competition they were extremely easy to catch and were therefore frequently hunted to extinction." No, they were easy to catch because they developed without predators, not competitors.
Page 274: "For this reason among others the ozone story is often quoted as a successful application of the principle of caution and of environmental awareness in general. However, it is worth pointing out that the implementation of the CFC ban was strictly profitable. It was actually relatively cheap to find substitutes for CFC (e.g. in refrigerators and spray cans) and at the same time the advantages were clear cut." At the time we were told that ozone depletion was a scam and that banning CFCs would be the end of refrigeration, if not the end of the world. For one of the more extreme takes on the subject see Behind the Freon Frenzy.
Page 344: "As Iain Cubitt, chief executive of Axis Genetic in Oxford, pointed out, everyone know (sic) that lectins are toxic." Some lectins are toxic, others are harmless. The lectin in this case, used by Dr Arpad Pusztai, is one of the harmless ones.
References
Wilson, E.O., The Future of Life, Alfred A Knopf, 2002
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Written by Jim Norton
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