| Lomborg-errors |
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| How Lomborg won a debate in Politiken |
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| How Lomborg cheats General issues The Lomborg Story, page 12 |
The following is a review of one of the cases lodged to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty. The complaint was submitted to the committees in 2002 by Mette Hertz and Henrik Stiesdal (see more on the complaints in "The Lomborg Story"). It was formulated in Danish (the texts have been translated into English here by me).
The relevant episode took place in 2000 - 2001 when Lomborg
had a regular column in the Danish newspaper Politiken every third week. On 11th
November 2000, Lomborg wrote in his column that when the Danish media
reviewed a newly published EU report on the greenhouse effect, the
media had a one-sided focus on the negative effects, whereas the
positive effects of the greenhouse effect were neglected. Lomborg
writes how a newspaper ascribes climate change to man´s strongly
increasing emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
He takes exception to this and points out that "the emission of CO2
has been declining in both 1998 and 1999, and the total yearly emission
of greenhouse gases has declined since the 1980s by 25 percent." At
that time, in 2000, it was still possible for him to postulate that,
even though this postulate now, ten years later, appears completely
outdated (see here
on recent acceleration in CO2 emissions). Further,
Lomborg criticised that the media suggested a
connection between climate change and the recent floods in England due
to unprecedented heavy rainfall. He pointed out that a flood
catastrophe in England in 1953, when many people died, was much worse.
These
postulates
provoqued
Hertz
and Stiesdal to send a long letter of
criticism, which was printed in Politiken
on 9th December.
After this first objection to Lomborg´s postulates, a
lengthy polemic took place in Politiken´s columns as well as in
private communication between the parties.
Next, there is the issue of whether the emissions of greenhouse gases had really declined by 25 percent. The first question is: Where on earth does Lomborg´s information about a 25 % decline come from? He revealed that in his first reply to Hertz and Stiesdal: It is a scientific paper by James Hansen et al. from 1998 on "Climate forcings in the industrial era". This was impossible to guess in advance, but Lomborg sneered at his opponents for not having guessed this: "It is naturally OK to have no knowledge of relevant facts, but it appears strange when one uses one´s own lack of knowledge as an argument that my writing is below standard." Now, how can Lomborg use the paper by Hansen et al. to support his claim? Well, what he does is to use data on climate forcing (i.e. the effect of gases on the Earth´s heat balance). Although the summed total forcing of greenhouse gases is steadily rising, the rate at which it is rising has leveled off since about 1980. In units of Watt/m²/year, the yearly increase was 0.04 around 1980, but only 0.03 in some years during the 1990s. This trend was partially due to a leveling off of the rise in CO2 (that is, by then the increment in CO2 forcing was the same year after year, and not accelerating any more). And partially due to that the yearly rise in forcings from methane and chlorofluorocarbons was becoming smaller. From this Lomborg concludes that if the yearly increase is slightly less than before, then the total emissions into the atmosphere are also smaller than before. This line of reasoning may hold true for the chlorofluorocarbons which stay in the atmosphere for many years, once they are there, but not for other greenhouse gases, which are translocated and transformed in many ways. Hansen states explicitly in the paper that the leveling off of the increase rate in CO2 happens in spite of ever increasing manmade emissions, and that there is no explanation at present for this discrepancy - there are so many complicated processes involved that no obvious explanation is ready at hand. In spite of this, Lomborg goes directly against the text of the paper and postulates that emissions can be calculated from the data on forcings. At this point of time, the research leader from Denmark´s Climate Center, Eigil Kaas, gets involved. He read Lomborg´s postulates in the newspaper and took contact to Bjørn to correct his mistakes. He backed this up in a long series of emails where he went into details with the paper by Hansen et al. and asked politely why Lomborg does not simply use data for production of greenhouse gases. Lomborg, to his defense, claims that what he is speaking of is actually the "effective emissions", i.e. that part of the emisions which remain in the atmosphere and are not disposed of e.g. by absorption in the oceans. As soon as possible (i.e. three days after Christmas), Kaas sends another email in response and repeats that Lomborg´s indirect calculations of emissions from data on forcings are not valid, for instance because the equilibrium between concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the oceans depends on the temperature, which is not constant - and is also due to many other complications. Next, Lomborg has a short letter printed in the newspaper on 13th January. Here, he goes against Hertz and Stiesdal. And he adds: "As noticed by Eigil Kaas from Denmark´s Climate Center (private email) I must specify, however, that we are talking of effective emissions (minus uptake of greenhouse gases in oceans etc.) which may vary on a long term, and that only the most common greenhouse gases are included in the calculations." Reading this, Hertz and Stiesdal contacted Eigil Kaas and asked him if he had really said so. Kaas sent copies of his emails, and it was clear from these what Kaas had actually said. In one of the emails, Kaas had written to Lomborg: "With my understanding (which is somewhat limited concerning the carbon cycle) you cannot use the term effective emissions for that which you calculate." Conclusion: In the newspaper Lomborg writes that Kaas accepts the term `effective emissions´, which is directly opposite of the facts. Kaas had written to Lomborg, with emphasis, that he did not accept that term. Now Hertz and Stiesdal have a case - they can state directly that Lomborg has lied about his correspondence with Kaas. So they have a letter published (12th February) where they write inter alia: "Lomborg has before his latest contribution 13.01 been informed that he is wrong, and what is wrong. EK [Eigil Kaas] has to us expressed his regret that because he was pressed for time, he has not had time to protest against Lomborg´s contribution. What makes this case interesting is that it both demonstrates Lomborg´s method and his lack of honesty when the defects of the method are disclosed." Provoqued by this, Lomborg phoned Hertz and Stiesdal and asked for documentation. Within two days, they faxed extensive documentation to him with data on greenhouse gas emissions, and two weeks later, Lomborg responded by fax: "Thanks for what you sent. With regard to your request for correction of errors, I will naturally correct them in Politiken, if there are any. Basically I disagree with your assessment of EK´s importance - if he is not right in his criticism of my method/data, then your criticism does not hold up." At the same time - as was later revealed - there was a very intensive correspondence between Lomborg and Kaas, because they planned to produce a joint article on what they agreed upon, and what they did not agree upon. Kaas provided extensive data sets suitable for calculations of total emissions of greenhouse gases, but when the calculations showed that the emissions had not been declining, Lomborg did not accept them. In one of the emails from mid February, Kaas wrote to Lomborg: `It is OK if you quote as follows: Even though the calculations are technically correct, EK points out that the method cannot be used to say anything about the manmade emissions of greenhouse gases´". However, Lomborg wrote something completely different in a P.S. to his regular column on 24th February. He wrote: "PS: Mette Hertz and Henrik Stiesdal questioned 12.2 my credibility, based on a statement by one researcher about one sentence. Unfortunately that researcher has now gone on vacation without having been able to provide documentation for his statement. Therefore I have not forgotten the reply, but regrettably I must postpone this until I get this documentation." When Kaas saw this printed in the newspaper, he got angry and wrote in private to Lomborg: "First I must say that after our long discussion some weeks ago I was somewhat offended by your exposing me in that way in the newspaper by saying that I had been unable to provide the necessary documentation. Actually we had come quite close to a result concerning the direct emissions and ended up concluding that these would rather be close to zero (plus - minus) than to a drop of 25%. This was based on figures that were much more complete than the documentation on which you yourself originally had based your own postulate of a 25% drop. So you shuffled onto me that you originally had incomplete data. I do not think that was fair. Remember that I actually wrote an email to you in which was said how you could refer to me." The end of the debate was a long article by Lomborg printed in Politiken on 7th April. This article is one large concentrated sneering at his opponents. There are sentences like: "It may seem surprising that H&S have not provided any better documentation for their central postulate." "H&S could have turned directly to me and got the reference without having to involve all the readers of Politiken." "Unfortunately, the figures that H&S use as their basis, are wrong." "The question about forests is surprisingly ignored by H&S, even though this is one of the very important sources to greenhouse gases." "The original point in my comment was that the media neglect or distort the information - and that understanding is decisive in this environmental debate. Might one maybe hope that H&S too would relate to this issue?" Hertz and Stiesdal wanted of course to have a reply to this article. That request was turned down by Politiken´s editors.
For
years,
Lomborg
has
had
a close relation to the editors of Politiken.
This is evident from this
article on Lomborg-errors. It is
remarkable
that there is never (neither in this case, nor in the many other cases)
a case where
Lomborg ends up as the loser; therefore it seems that he may
have had some influence on
what was printed, and what was not printed. He is allowed
to get the last
word, and when you have been
granted the last remark, you can there put a lot of unsubstantiated
accusations and derogations that the opponents have no opportunity to
oppose. 23th February 2002, interview with Lomborg in Ekstrabladet: "There are really many critics, but none of them have been able to point out concretely where I am not right. I can document everything, and up to now they have been able to point out only small trifling errors, which I have then immediately corrected." Article by
editor-in-chief Tøger Seidenfaden, Politiken 3rd February 2002:
"Therefore, what one should watch carefully when Lomborg and his books
are reviewed, is whether his data are disputed, or whether he has left
out results that would paint a completely different picture of reality.
. . In a full page article where many nasty things are said about
Lomborg, there is one (1) concrete example of how Lomborg manipulates
the figures. This is taken from Nature´s
review
[about
the
number of people starving in Africa, whether one
should present the absolute or the relative figures] . . . It seems
grotesque to call attention to this as an example of manipulation that
questions Lomborg´s credibility." Article by
editor-in-chief Tøger Seidenfaden, Politiken 3rd March 2002: "For a
long time the criticism was about that Lomborg´s facts and
figures simply were wrong. As most people gradually realized that he
uses the same generally acknowledged data series as all others in the
field, that criticism has been replaced by the postulate that he
manipulates and makes humbug by utilising the sources selectively, or
by simply misunderstanding them. Here, too, there is a shortage of
concrete examples, and it turns out every time that Lomborg had good
arguments to do as he did." Such
statements are only possible if relevant criticism of Lomborg´s
hundreds of errors is suppressed.
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