Liveblogging Lomborg part 5

Page 11
Claim: Natural processes only slowly remove CO2 from the atmosphere

Source of Claim: IPCC,Climate Change 2007: WGI: The Physical Science Basis, section 2.3.1.
Status of claim: Accurate (notes that carbon entering the cycle remains for centuries).

Claim: The developing world is now responsible for about 40 percent of the annual global carbon emissions.

Source of Claim: OECD Factbook, 2006 (unavailable, using 2010 version)
Status of Claim: About accurate; lists it at 45%

Claim: This will increase to about 75% by the end of the century

Source of Claim: OECD Factbook, 2006 (unavailable, using 2010 version)
Status of Claim: Not sure; the version I'm accessing lists it as 69% by 2030.
Notes: A number of other sources are listed, but they paint the same picture.  See here for example.  The implication is that OECD is equivalent to industrial sources; that's supported by the aforementioned link, amongst others.

Claim: In its 'standard' scenario, the IPCC predicts temperature will have risen by 4.7F by 2100.
Source of Claim: IPCC,Climate Change 2007: WGI: The Physical Science Basis, p762 (fig 10.4), also here, page 14.
Status of Claim: This is the most contentious of Lomborg's claims.  First of all, it's not quite accurate (I convert 2.8C to 5.04, using the means given in Wikipedia).  The main form argument, however, is about the use of the word 'standard'.  Now, the A1B is the scenario that Lomborg describes as standard, and it is described throughout the literature as the 'business-as-usual' scenario.  There's some contention if that means 'standard' or not; but reading the text, I think the book would have done just as well with using the phrase 'business-as-usual'.  Much more interestingly, if you look here, you see an older scenario, the IS92a referred to as 'standard', and in the linked document here, you'll see it being referred to also as the 'business-as-usual' scenario.

  Is this what he is accused of so often, 'cherrypicking'?  I don't think so.  If you look at the graphs, you see that the A1B scenario is the one with maximum overlap with the others.  That seems an odd form of 'cherrypicking'; not like Mr. "Conjure nineteen extra feet of water" Al Gore.  That leaves the question of the 5.04F as opposed to 4.7.  I think I can guess why.  If you convert 4.7F to Celsius, you get 2.6, i.e. the tick on the y-axis just below 2.8.  This looks suspiciously like a slightly misaligned ruler (check the secondary source with a rule and try it for yourself).


Overall status of claims:  Largely accurate.  The data, the IPCC data Lomborg quotes, backs up his claims - so far.