Debunking Bjorn Lomborg: Part II
Lomborg misrepresents possible sea-level rise 27
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Posted 11:23 AM on 15 Sep 2007
by Joseph Romm -
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Joseph Romm is the editor of Climate Progress and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:45 am
15 Sep 2007
That it ignores most of the potential sea level rise inputs.
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Sam Wells Posted 12:54 pm
15 Sep 2007
Wish-casting is possibly the most ignominious of any way of thinking though: clearly, Bjorn wants things to turn out a certain way. This is against all scientific principle. However, it is about as bad at the people who predict catastrophic rises, so as to teach us some kind of perverted lesson.
Just remember, good science always follows some really horrible, bad science.
Onward through the fog
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:44 pm
15 Sep 2007
It's like trying to guess when we will have our next volcano erruption.
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JMG Posted 5:27 pm
15 Sep 2007
No, astrologers and shamans might not, but scientists do. They have no certainty but to equate that with "no knowledge" is just bunkum. Anyone who doesn't think we have any knowledge about the future would never drive a car, get in an elevator, or an airplane.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Steven T Posted 1:55 am
16 Sep 2007
Yes, science should privilege robust debate. But you can't have that if one side's position is grounded in flagrant hackery. The discussion becomes like the Mad Hatter's tea party. In the case of global warming, dumbing down the debate can be advantageous to vested interests because it slows societal responses. Of course, what's good for vested interests may be disastrous for future generations, particularly when time is of the essence.
What is a scientific hack? Someone who consistently plays fast and loose with facts, distorting them into tangled pretzels that raise eyebrows among peer-reviewed journals. Someone whose questionable rationalizations seem to go hand in hand with overly close ties (e.g., economic and/or social) to vested interests.
Sam, are you arguing that Lomborg is a credible scientist rather than a hack?
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:23 am
16 Sep 2007
The trick being that you should focus more attention on attack his argument than resorting to attacking him as a person.
Since it's usually rather easy to brush off ad hominem if you don't want to listen to it.
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:24 am
16 Sep 2007
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Nucbuddy Posted 3:31 am
16 Sep 2007
...Build dikes, move inland, seastead, or ocean-colonize.
Joseph Romm wrote in the original post: The first meter of sea-level rise would flood 17 percent of Bangladesh [...] reducing its rice-farming land by 50 percent.
Why would one farm on land, instead of produce in indoor-factories?
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Sam Wells Posted 4:05 am
16 Sep 2007
The last post seems to smack of the "Netherlands Paradigm" where we can geo-engineer our way out of global sea level rise by building dikes and other hard structures. OK, break out the maps and history books, the Netherlands is a very small coastal plain north of Belgium that has been around for centuries. That certainly isn't a model for the tens of thousands of miles of coastlines that would be impacted by a sea level rise of more than 5 feet - nevermind tropical cyclones and tsunamis on top of that.
But I actually moved to the coast to watch it. Sea level rise is NOT an issue now. Erosion and subsidence ARE. In general, most areas along the northern Gulf of Mexico are sinking faster than the sea is rising. Now that's a problem. /sam
Onward through the fog
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caniscandida Posted 4:48 am
16 Sep 2007
On the other hand, the kind of soundly reasoned speculation about the future which you refer to in your counter-assertion does not, I think, deserve to be called "knowledge." We do not "know" that the airplane or the elevator that we are about to board will carry us and not fall to the ground with us inside. But it is extremely reasonable and parsimonious to believe so, so much so that to believe otherwise would be either foolish or perverse. Still, to act with that kind of assurance, as (as you rightly say) we do all the time, is not equivalent to our "knowing" the future.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Nucbuddy Posted 4:59 am
16 Sep 2007
Yes, it is indeed interesting that very-poor people -- the poorness of whom is unequalled anywhere on Earth today -- were able to build effective sea-dikes using 12th-century technology, and that those same people and their descendents managed to thrive thusly below sea-level for circa 900 years.
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Sam Wells Posted 5:31 am
16 Sep 2007
As to "lowlandism," you might want to check on the history of the Netherlands - even Wikipedia has some rudimentary stuff. What happened was that North and South Holland used to have coastal sandy dunes, and the inland areas were elevated peat bogs. So way lack like you say, they locals drained the upland peat bogs. Over time, subsidence caused the land to sink by many meters, causing extensive flooding.
Therefore, the response was to fix an environmental disaster of epic proportions - not exactly a model for the US, I should say. So feudal lords and churches got together to create dikes, dams, bridges, locks, and all that good stuff you can even see in places today. While some of their tidal hydro power is truly impressive, and can protect certain shorelines from storm surges, the fact remains that it was predicated on a failed strategy to drain the bogs.
And like Venice or New Orleans, it will continue sinking into the sandy mud. The sea level rises a few millimeters, it sinks by a centimeter. That is because much of the alluvial mud carried down by the rivers is thixotropic - meaning like catsup. /sam
Onward through the fog
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JMG Posted 5:52 am
16 Sep 2007
To me, predictions that you're willing to stake your life on (I will get in this [car, plane, elevator] because I predict that ...; I will eat this food because I predict that ...) are operationally indistinguishable from knowledge.
We can agree that all knowledge is tentative and subject to revision -- sometimes the elevators drop, the cars explode, the planes crash, and the food poisons you.
But to say that we have no knowledge of the future when discussing a book intended to sow deceit about that precise question seems to me to be going much too far. I'm sure there's a specialized sense of the word "knowledge" under which the statement holds, but I'm not buying it for use here.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:03 am
16 Sep 2007
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Nucbuddy Posted 6:35 am
16 Sep 2007
How lowlandism was predicated is irrelevant. Body-builders frequently commit the "failed strategy" of working their muscles with heavy weights. Their muscles, in turn, adapt to this "failed strategy" by growing bigger and stronger.
The facts -- relevant to Joseph Romm's question at the top of this page, "But how do you adapt to seas rising" -- remain that the Netherlands came to be below-sea-level, and that the local population -- despite being fantastically-poor and technologically-bankrupt in comparison to modern Bangladeshis and literally any other population currently-existing on the planet today -- successfully adapted.
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caniscandida Posted 7:17 am
16 Sep 2007
Moreover, one might think that as an engineer, you would want to understand the nature and function of all the tools at hand. And that includes words and concepts.
True, philosophy has little or no practicality. It would not be as much fun as it is, if it did.
Anyway, I entirely agree with what you are saying about Lomborg.
Also:
Is Nucbuddy being sarcastic when he refers to the "poorness" of the Netherlands? (N.B.: The usual noun associated with the adjective "poor" is "poverty.") The Dutch are nowadays just about the richest nation per capita in the world -- quite at the opposite extreme from Bangladesh. But already in the Middle Ages, the trading cities of the Low Countries, along with the great Italian cities, were the greatest centers of wealth in Western Europe. And it is extremely myopic to underestimate pre-industrial resourcefulness, and pre-industrial technologies.
Also:
Speaking of great Italian cities, Venice is fixing to become the biggest cultural catastrophe due to rising sealevel. There is a documentary from a few years ago about the destructive floods that periodically afflict Venice, and proposed options for saving it, which is shown every now and then on PBS in the Nova series. And in fact one proposal, installing dikes that lie on the sea floor at the entrances to the Lagoon, and which can be elevated to seal off the Lagoon during storms in the Adriatic, is in principle based on a pair of swinging dikes that seal off the harbor of Rotterdam when there is a storm in the North Sea.
But it seems there are problems with everything that has been proposed. My guess is that, what with sealevel rise due to global warming, which I do not think is explicitly referred to in the documentary, but which obviously makes Venice's peril all the more grave, the Italians are going to seal off the Lagoon permanently. But that will create an environmental problem of a different sort: The waters of the Lagoon will cease to drain as they always have, and the rich ecosystem will be destroyed.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Nucbuddy Posted 8:35 am
16 Sep 2007
...Probably not, since Nucbuddy nowhere in this thread referred to unqualified "poorness" of the Netherlands.
Caniscandida wrote: The Dutch are nowadays just about the richest nation per capita in the world
...It is interesting that the Dutch got that way while continuously-repelling the sea for 900 years.
Caniscandida wrote: quite at the opposite extreme from Bangladesh.
Is the present Netherlands richer than the Bangladesh of decades hence?
Caniscandida wrote: But already in the Middle Ages, the trading cities of the Low Countries, along with the great Italian cities, were the greatest centers of wealth in Western Europe.
Really? How much did AISI Type 316 structural steel and ASTM C150 Type I Portland cement cost? How about PVA structural concrete-reinforcing fibers and Xypex expansive concrete-waterproofing crystals? How about AutoCAD and desktop and laptop computers to run it on?
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JMG Posted 12:42 pm
16 Sep 2007
I always think of the Dutch when thinking about the resource curse. Holland is not particularly richly endowed with natural resources, so they became skilled mariners, explorers, and traders. So too Japan. Compare with the OPEC nations, who are scarred by a deep inequality and whose per capita wealth is already plummeting even before the oil runs out.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Steven T Posted 12:49 pm
16 Sep 2007
I understand the idea of not calling someone names. However, it seems to me that it is important to "out" Lomborg for his end runs around rigorous scientific process. To not do so on such a highly visible issue will contribute to the unraveling of the scientific community's intellectual integrity. If Lomborg can get away with it, then anyone else can. At any rate, pointing out that Lomborg's arguments have not stood up to the standard scrutiny the average person would expect of a scientist strikes me as a "nonpersonal" rebuttal if framed correctly. Indeed, Lomborg's writings can be used as a "teachable moment" for how science shoulud work.
In addition, I do not believe that you can win Lomborg in the court of public opinion if you focus on responding to him point by point. Even the middle brow (e.g., journalists and policy wonks) will not be able to follow the nuances of each side, so will tend to be at least partially swayed by who is more "charismatic" . . . and perhaps easier to understand. In other words, "hot talk" will tend to win, particularly if it is wrapped in the flag of faux scientific legitimacy.
I don't mean to suggest that there is only one way to respond to Lomborg. If you think a point by point rebuttal is useful, I wouldn't suggest that you stop. However, others need to explicitly and repeatedly call him on his underlying method of operation.
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eutopianow Posted 1:52 pm
16 Sep 2007
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justlou Posted 9:32 pm
16 Sep 2007
How can any nation get richer while coastal ecosystems, the nurseries of many ocean fisheries and the barriers against coastal erosion, are being inundated all around the world? There may be a few very high value areas protected at tremendous cost but 99.9999% of the coastal areas will become sacrificial landscapes preserved only in photographs and memories.
To believe that we are going to be able to adapt to rapid climate change by being more prosperous in the future is being dangerously delusional. These people have a cornucopian vision rising out their asses.
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Jones Posted 11:01 pm
16 Sep 2007
I urge everyone to go back over the coments--here or anywhere--and count the assumptions, the unsupported assertions, the clear preferences for various imagined environmental outcomes. For example: "99.9999% of the coastal areas will become sacrificial landscapes..."
We can't have debate without sloppy oversimplifications and implicit assumptions. But we should probably strive to. I think the best thing to do is what Joseph does: address the issues directly. Reading this post has helped me clarify an issue that is still a mass of confusing, disparate information to me, so I have reason to thank the Lomborg. And whatever his factual failings, I've always found his points about adaptation strategies and his economic rationales thought-provoking if not convincing.
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Delay And Deny Posted 3:03 am
17 Sep 2007
The Bailo Model, the only one created using post-20th century technology, predicts:
A lot more warming
Precipitous drops in sea levels
People having more fun due to better weather.
Meanwhile -- where are those "record hurricanes" again:
NHC sees no immediate Atlantic storm activity
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN17465221 ...
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tropical activity is no longer likely in the northwestern Caribbean or eastern Gulf of Mexico over the next couple of days, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said in a report Monday.
John Bailo
Sutext:
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Sam Wells Posted 3:07 am
17 Sep 2007
Think about the US, where perhaps 50% of the population lives within 50 miles of the coast (this might be old hat, but close). If second homes for the summer beach crowd is included, I bet the numbers would be even higher. So we're talking billions of dollars of real estate and property that over the next decades, will start slipping into the Atlantic, Gulf, and Pacific. Just five miles of a barrier island where I live is valued at nearly 5 billion dollars. The average height of our "sand spit" is approximately 5 feet (South Padre Island, TX).
Can you imagine that just going "poof," never mind Venice, Rotterdam, New Orleans, NYC, Miami, and elsewhere? I don't think one can build their way out of the problem except in very special cases, which means closing off bay systems - but surely not right on the ocean side. Yes, after the 1900 Hurricane that struck Galveston, the entire town was raised behind a 15-foot sea wall. Could this be done for an entire country? Is it worth it?
Or should we take that money and put it into reducing CO2, and let some of the property simply slip gracefully into the ocean?
I'm fresh out of answers, but some scientists say the sea-level rise process is already happening and we should be worried right now, and not put the discussion off for another ten years ...
sam
Onward through the fog
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Delay And Deny Posted 3:48 am
17 Sep 2007
Think about the US, where perhaps 50% of the population lives within 50 miles of the coast (this might be old hat, but close).
The good news is that most of them are Democrats.
John Bailo
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justlou Posted 4:14 am
17 Sep 2007
The point I was trying to make is that if global warming does happen more rapidly than predicted by models and vast coastal areas are threatened by extensive flooding, the vast majority of these will never be protected. Part of this would be due to an overall impoverishment of civilization accompanying global warming and resource depletion. Our capacity to protect and mitigate would be greatly reduced from our relatively prosperous state today.
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xchopp Posted 8:49 am
18 Sep 2007
"Dutch policymakers are figuring on a rise in sea level of around 30 inches in the coming century regardless of the ongoing scientific debate on the causes and likely impact of global warming." -- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20689966/
...from the people who brought you Edam cheese, windmills, and
-- more recently -- the Carver: http://www.flytheroad.com/
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