Lomborg-errors

Lomborg´s reaction to Lomborg-errors
  
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Apparently, Lomborg has never in public debate commented on the Lomborg-errors web site or on the allegations made here. However, on his own web site, www.Lomborg.com, he has a FAQ page with the following text:

Q: Hasn't Kaare Fog produced a copious list of how wrong Lomborg is?

A: It is true that Fog has been very productive in his claims (http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/), and has been so since the publication of Lomborg's book in 1998 in Danish. However, Lomborg has answered Fog many times in publications, most clearly when Fog edited a book with arguments against Lomborg in 1999. Lomborg published a web-book of 180 pages painstakingly going through each argument in Fog's book, pointing out its unproductive errors and misunderstandings, Lomborg likewise replied to each and every of the first batch of claims from Fog to the DCSD, pointing out how they were incorrect and/or misleading. However, with limited time, Lomborg cannot reply to every new claim from Fog. Moreover, it would seem reasonable that Fog would have used his best counterarguments first, and clearly these have not stood up. Web book: Godhedens pris

Comment:
Even these eight lines of text are full of errors. Unfortunately, Lomborg refers to texts that are in Danish, and so most readers are unable to check the postulates.
   Here are some facts: Lomborg has not answered Fog many times, but people who support Lomborg have entered into discussion sometimes.
   The book with arguments against Lomborg in 1999 was not just written by Fog, but by 18 persons, of which Fog was one.
    The 180 page reply to that book was written by Bjørn Lomborg and Ulrik Larsen in 1999. They wrote it in just three weeks, heavily pressed for time. There is no useful point-by-point rebuttal or any useful corrections of misunderstandings in their text. Rather, it is in many places meaningless or illogical, which may be excused by the time pressure when it was written. See the example below for details.
    It is true that Lomborg replied to each and every of the first batch of claims to the DCSD - this was part of the process, and Lomborg had to reply. But whether Lomborg managed to demonstrate that the claims were incorrect and/or misleading is open to discussion. Everyone can judge for himself by reading the translation of the documents on the documents page.
    The first counterarguments used during the DCSD complaint case were hardly the best arguments - I wrote the first complaint very hastily, whereas Lomborg-errors is the result of careful scrutiny. There have been allegations that the first arguments have not stood up, but these allegations have been refuted (see references to debate in Journal of Information Ethics here). These first arguments are still upheld on Lomborg-errors, and seem to hold.

Example from the reply book by Lomborg and Larsen (1999):
The link to the web book is given above. The title, "Godhedens pris", means "The cost of  goodness". It consists of replies to each of 22 chapters written by 18 authors in a book countering Lomborg´s first Danish book. On his pages 76-81, Lomborg rebuts a text called "Some figures about the world´s forests" by Kåre Fog. But out of these five pages, more than 50 % are made up of lengthy quotes, so relatively little text presents new arguments. This is representative for all 180 pages of the web book.

In my original text, I criticize Lomborg´s postulate that only about 20 % of the original global forest area has been cleared, because data from WRI and FAO indicate that somewhere about 50 % has disappeared. Lomborg then postulates that the data from WRI are unreliable, indicating a much too large loss (67%), and that these unreliable data have been taken from the World Conservation Monitoring Center (WCMC). This is all nonsense. The data have not been taken from the WCMC and do not indicate 67 % (see my second letter to the UVVU, subject: forests, "breach 3", here). Lomborg postulates that the figures cited by me (which were the correct figures) should have been some other figures, which do not actually exist anywhere, and he then criticizes me for having not cited those non-exisitng figures, and further says that if I had cited them, they would have been wrong. So, in essence, my "misunderstanding" is that I do not cite the wrong figures which he would have liked me to have cited. In this way, the whole text is so mad that it cannot been taken seriously, and it has not been. It must have been written in a very late hour .
The sad thing is that most of the "rebuttal" is of the same kind, or even more illogical than in this example. It is simply nonsense, but written in such a style that those readers who do not understand it (i.e. 99.99 % of all readers) believe that it is a serious criticism. Very few points have been detected up to now where Lomborg actually points out an item that has been unrightfylly criticised by his 18 Danish opponents.

This example is maybe illuminating to those who do not understand the very negative attitude that I and many other experts have towards Lomborg.  It is very unpleasant to be criticised for having said something that you have not said, and at the same time to be denounced for having misunderstood everything, because you allegedly have said that which you did not say. Especially during the first years of his public appearance, this was Lomborg´s style again and again.