Skeptical about skeptics about skeptics
If you haven't read "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by now, what are you waiting for? Don't you care about the environment? (For more information on TSE read this R21 post.) Actually, The Skeptical Environmentalist is a "scam," a "polemic," a "waste of time," and something serious people should "distance" themselves from. This according to the prominent environmentalists who have reason to be upset with, or, more accurately, embarrassed by, TSE's author Bjorn Lomborg. Their criticism can be found in this "skeptical look at The Skeptical Environmentalist" in Grist Magazine.
But of course, one should be skeptical of skepticism of The Skeptical Environmentalist when it comes from the folks that Lomborg critiques (and quite effectively so). It is no wonder that these prominent environmentalists, whose very raison d'etre is in a sense challenged by Lomborg, attack him personally but it is embarrassing (again) for them. According to James Glassman:
...calm is not the word for [Lomborg's] critics. They have gone berserk. Nasty, bitchy, hysterical, paranoid--those are apt adjectives to describe the response to the book. The Economist, which, despite its own green leanings, lavishly praised Lomborg’s book when it came out, last week reported that “Mr. Lomborg is being called a liar, a fraud and worse. People are refusing to share a platform with him. He turns up in Oxford to talk about this book, and the author (it is claimed) of a forthcoming study on climate change throws a pie in his face.”
Glassman defends Lomborg against this onslaught (and it should be noted that Lomborg defends himself as well at www.lomborg.org) and references a fellow author also coming to Lomborg's defense:
In a letter to Scientific American, Matt Ridley, author of Genome, writes, “By the end of the four articles I was astonished to find that none of the critics had laid a glove on Lomborg. They . . . found only a few trivial misquotations and ellipses--mostly by distorting the point Lomborg was making.” What Lomborg had revealed, said Ridley, was “a narrow but lucrative industry of environmental fund-raising that has a vested interest in claims of alarmism.” Ridley continues, “Lomborg is as green as anybody else. But he recognizes that claims of universal environmental deterioration have not only been proved wrong often, but are a counsel of despair that distracts us from the many ways in which economic progress can produce environmental improvement as well.”I have no doubt that Lomborg has errors in his 500 page book and probably gets stuff wrong. "The press," with its passion for over-simplification, has helped create a misimpression of TSE by making Lomborg out to be a one-dimensional Alfred E. Neuman (What - Me worry?) character. (Grist's tactic is particularly obvious: they run cartoons of Lomborg throughout their "skeptical look" with speech bubbles coming out of Lomborg making simplistic claims.)
However, Lomborg is much more balanced than the straw man the press has helped the environmentalists create. But it is true that he is basically making counter-arguments to the "litany," as he calls it, perpetrated by the environmentalists, rather than exploring all sides in great depth (thank goodness, or the book would be 5,000 pages.) But it is an important (not an unimportant as all these folks claim) addition to the discussion and the vitriol and hatred with which Lomborg is attacked says more about the people attacking him than Lomborg himself.
Chris Alden
Christopher J. Alden is Chairman & CEO of Six Apart Ltd., the world's leading blogging company. Six Apart acquired Rojo Networks, Inc., creator of an innovative RSS feed reading service, where Mr. Alden was co-founder and CEO. Before Rojo, he was CEO of Red Herring Communications, Inc., publisher of Red Herring magazine -- described by the Wall Street Journal as the "bible of Silicon Valley" - which he helped launch out of his house in 1993. Prior to that he founded Computer Guides, a consultancy.
More info...
3 Comments
Typical reaction of the "sky is falling" eco Left. Absent compelling logic or scientific proof (witness the NYTimes' specious piece on Alaskan "global warming," they resort to name calling and ad hominem attacks, tactics that go a long way to further discredit them and erode their already suffering integrity.
Actually, the scientific case against Lomborg's book is fairly compelling. The only "ad hominem attacks" and "name-calling" that I can see comes from the pro-business right who accuse enviromental scientists of being a "the bureaucracy" and of possessing a vested interest in preserving "an industry."
Incidentally, why do rightists love to silence their opposition by accusing them of making ad hominem atttacks--usually when a progressive remarks on the ideological basis of the rightists arguments--but resort to that tactic so often themselves"?
If those are the only attacks that you can see then you aren't opening your eyes. Lomborg has been subjected to savage personal attacks. I don't think reasonable people can dispute this. Also, your comments about pro-business rights accusations requires two points of explanation: 1) do you deny that environmental special interest groups exaggerate and have exaggerated consistently over time environmental dangers to justify their own existence? 2) you continue to use "pro-business" as a pejorative. Please explain to me, as editorial director of Red Herring, how pro-business is a negative in your view? You seem to be suggesting that you are "anti-business" and that is very interesting.
To your last point, of course ad hominem attacks are used frequently in political maneuvering and discourse, but you can't seriously be suggesting that the right has used them to better effect than the left? The left, through the gigantic movement of "political correctness" has elevated ad hominem attacks to a broad movement. They have managed to position all opposition to their positions as morally flawed, not just ideologically misguided. This is obvious to anyone who has attended a university lecture or an NAACP conference or read The Nation. The left have transformed ad hominem from a tactic to the principle—and it is nearly the only principle the left has remaining, since the repudiation of socialism.