Port Guns Fire!

Well, well, well - here comes a "rapid response team" to debunk Lomborg.

  This is getting ridiculous.  Claim number 1, about sea level rises claims the following:

"Bjorn’s claim that the IPCC report says that global sea levels are not likely to rise more than about 20 inches by 2100 is incorrect. You have to remember that the sea level projections in the 2007 IPCC report had a big asterisk by them. The report was very clear that the 20 inch projection was probably too low because it did not account for the kinds of dynamic changes in the glaciers and ice sheets that we see today. In fact, the IPCC report was careful to say that they could not place any upper bound on the amount of sea level rise that is likely over the next century."

   Taking this in reverse order, the "no upper bound" seems to be the standard hedging one gets when any responsible scientist is asked to project.  Much more importantly, the projections that Lomborg "misrepresents" are "5 to 95% ranges".  Second of all (by the way, if you follow the link - where's the asterisk?) you don't see any guff about "probably too low"; they include the uncertainties by way of fleshing it out.  You can look at it here, as well; again, where's the flipping asterisk.  As regards glaciers, they are indeed taken into account; they say that it could add an extra 0.1 m to 0.2 m to the level, if it happens, but that they can't predict it. They say, quote "Understanding of these effects is too limited to assess their likelihood or to give a best estimate. "  So, where did this "probably?" come from.

  Now, what does it say about uncertainties?  That the carbon cycle feedback is unknown, which is why it's not included.  So, Wovon man nicht weiss, davon muss man schweigen.  Sage advice.

  Taking the rest of this, it all happens to be, how do I phrase it? Bollocks on stilts.  Take Robock who is deciding to say that the IPCC has been superseded.  Fine, publish your criticism of it, and get a new report together.  The whole point of the IPCC is that it is supposed to collect the gold-standard of evidence.

  The rest is all matters of opinion and interpretation. We can skip this easily, but there is one gem that I have to cite - namely the idea that Lomborg is "lying" by not including these latest models.  They have all appeared in the last five years since Cool It was published.  So Lomborg was literally using the most up-to-date distillation of science available, and he is supposed to be "cherrypicking".

Liveblogging Lomborg part 10

p. 15

Claim 1: 298 extra people die each year from heat in Helsinki, 1,655 people die from cold.  In Athens, it's 1376 versus 7852, respectively.
Source of claim: Heat related mortality in warm and cold regions of Europe: observational study
Status of claim: Semi-accurate in the first case (see table 1).  It depends how you measure the population of Helsinki, as Helsinki, Helsinki metropolitcan area, or Great Helsinkinki (see Wikipedia entry here ).  And to make matters worse, populations change.  However, the various estimates see-saw around his figure.  Athens is a bit easier; he lists the population of Athens at 3.1 million, so they both check out (Athen's population has grown a bit since then).

Claim 2: The heat wave of August 2003 killed 3,500 in Paris, 15,000 in all France, 7,000 in Germany, 8,000 in Spain and Italy and 2,000 in the UK; total is over 35,000.
Source of Claim: Mortality in 13 French Cities During the August 2003 Heat Wav, 
Record Heat Wave in Europe Takes 35,000 Lives: Far Greater Losses May Lie Ahead
Status of Claim: Accurate (he rounds up occasionally), but he irritatingly sources that second claim to a website and not a scientific journal.  However, it's one of the Green websites and it therefore seems unlikely to low ball the figures.

Overall conclusion: The fundamental thing that Lomborg is right about is that cold kills more people than warmth.

Liveblogging Lomborg part 7

p 13

Claim 1: temperatures will continue to increase, more over land, and more in the high northern latitudes.
Source of Claim: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 10, Executive summary
Status of Claim: Accurate

Claim 2: Temperatures would increase most in the north, with ~9F (5C) in Siberia, and ~5 (2.7C) in Africa.
Source of Claim: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 10,
Status of Claim:  Weird.  This is something that Lomborg does elsewhere.  He references to "figure 10.3.6", which doesn't exist.  However, his predictions are born out elsewhere (see for example,  fig 10.8). See the section 10.3.2 for an extensive background).

Claim 3: We will see a marked decrease in frost days everywhere.
Source of Claim: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Chapter 10, Executive summary
Status of claim: accurate

Liveblogging Lomborg part 6

p 12

Claim 1: Global Warming increases cold temperatures much more than warm temperatures.
Source of Claim 1: Global observed changes in daily climate extremes of temperature and precipitation
Status of Claim:  Accurate ("the decreases in extreme minimum temperatures are greater than the increases in extreme maximum temperature").  See also graph on page 8.

Second Source:  Observed Variability and Trends in Extreme Climate Events: A Brief Review
Status of Claim: Accurate ("There has been an increase in the global mean temperature of about
0.6°C since the start of the twentieth century (Nichollset al. 1996), and that this increase is associated with a stronger warming in daily minimum temperatures than maximums"), p. 419

Third Source: Maximum and minimum temperature trends for the globe: An update through 2004
Status of Claim: Accurate ("minimum temperature increased more rapidly than maximum temperature"), though this source also says that that's been changing recently, from 1979-2004 (well, for a given value of recently).

Claim 2: Winter temperatures have been increasing most in colder regions

Source of Claim: Observed warming in cold anticyclone
Status of Claim: Accurate ("On a seasonally weighted basis, a relatively small area (12.8%) contributed
over half of the annual warming, and in the winter 26% of the area accounts for 78% of the warming.  Our analysis demonstrates that this warming is almost exclusively confined to the dry, cold, anticyclones of Siberia and northwestern North America")

  Notes: that last one goes on to say "This lack of correspondence between model results and observations causes one to question the ability of at least some GCMs to reproduce critical features of the climate in the middle- and high-latitude land regions in winter. These mischaracterizations will likely contribute to systematic errors in the forecasts of future warming".  Correct.  Computer models on their own mean nothing.


Claim 3: The United States, northern and central Europe, China, Australia and New Zealand have experienced fewer frost days.
Source of Claim:  Observed Variability and Trends in Extreme Climate Events: A Brief Review
Status of Claim: Accurate (see table on page 419)

Claim 4: Only Australia and New Zealand have seen an increase in their maximum temperatures
Source of Claim: Changes in Climate Extremes Over the Australian Region and New Zealand During the Twentieth Century
Status of Claim: False.  The paper does indeed show what Lomborg says about Australia and New Zealand - that their maximums have been going up - but it does not compare that with trends elsewhere.  Perhaps this is correct when correlated with something else, but if so, he should have spelt it out.

  Notes: Oh you are joking.  Here Lomborg has gotten confused; the important and relevant data can be found in the section he references next Observed Variability and Trends in Extreme Climate Events: A Brief Review.  See the table in question.  This also justifies his claim on no change in maximum temperatures in the US & a decrease in China.

Claim 5: In the Central England Temperature series, there has been a clear reduction in the number of cold days, but no increase in hot days.
Source of claim: The Changing Incidence of Extremes in Worldwide and Central England Temperatures to the End of the Twentieth Century
Status of Claim:  Accurate (see figure 8a, amongst others).


Overall comments: What's weird is that this is all data that supports the claims that the excitable ones get upset about - yet when they attack Lomborg they weirdly leave it all out. Cherrypicking?  Oh, perish the thought...

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.

Liveblogging Lomborg part 4

Page 10.  New Chapter "It's getting hotter: the short story"

Claim 1:  C02 makes up  60% of the heat-trapping gases & in 2100, it is expected top constitute anywhere from 60% of total forcing in the IPCC A2 scenario to 97% in B2

Source of Claim: IPCC, Climate Change 2001: WGI: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmnetal panel on climate change, page 403
Status of Claim: Accurate (mostly; I get 67% & 94% respectively, but I didn't include the negative forcing, so this seems pretty accurate).


Claim 2: The basic greenhouse effect is good, and, in the absence of the natural effect, the world would be -59F colder.

Source of claim: IPCC, Climate Change 2001: WG1: The Scientific Basis. Contribution of Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental panel on climate change, p 89
Status of Claim: Accurate (convert 33C to Farenheit)

Liveblogging Lomborg part 2

Continuing on page 6.

Claim 1:  That only four bears were observed drowned offshore the day after an abrupt windstorm.

Source of Claim: Potential effects of diminished sea ice on open-water swimming, mortality, and distribution of polar bears during fall in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea.
Status of Claim: Accurate.
Further notes: This is one of those claims that's a little suspicious, since there is too much unknown.  First of all, the poster states that there may have been more drowned (well possible), but that's a matter of interpretation.  Lomborg should probably have included it.  Also, the question is - are there any other studies that have shown more drowned bears?  I'm currently trying to find observations of them, but they are a little difficult to come by.  E.g. Observations of mortality associated with extended open-water swimming by polar bears in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea, mentions the same four bears (nothing unusual in recycling data between posters and papers, btw) but no others.  Some further points of interest is that, over the period of seven years (1987-2003), the survey noted only 658 polar bears.  During that time no dead or floating polar bears were seen, and more importantly they say "To our knowledge, we report here the first observations of polar bears floating dead offshore and presumed drowned while making apparent long-distance movements in open water".  Of course, I don't envy the poor bastard who has to go out there and look for a polar bear carcass in that wasteland, and it should be noted that there was a peak of swimming bears in 2004 (I don't know if that's a trend or a fluke).


Claim 2:  The Hudson bay polar bear population has declined by 17 percent, from 1,200 to 950 in 2004, but has increased from 500 in 1981 to present day levels;

Source of Claim: LONG-TERM TRENDS IN THE POPULATION ECOLOGY OF POLAR BEARS IN WESTERN HUDSON BAY IN RELATION TO CLIMATIC CHANGE
Status of Claim:  Accurate, see table 6 on page 302.

Claim 3: 300 to 500 bears are shot each year, with 49 shot on average on the west coast of Hudson bay.

Source of Claim: Polar bears: proceedings of the 13th working meeting of the IUCN/SSC polar bear specialist group, Nuuk, Greenland.  See the table on page 22 (granted this depends on what you mean by  the polar bear population.
Status of Claim:  Inaccurate - Lomborg understates the numbers being shot (though he is right about the numbers shot each year on the west coast of Hudson bay).  In total, 741 polar bears are shot each year.  Granted, this depends on what population you are looking at.  If you are considering only the arctic one, Lomborg may be right (depending on how you define "arctic").

Claim 4: Dissapearing ice will make it harder for polar bears to continue their traditional foraging patterns.  They are more likely to take up a brown-bear lifestyle & hybridize from them.

Source of Claim: Arctic climate impact assessment, page 509
Status of Claim: Accurate - Lomborg accurately quotes them, and I agree that it is a little exasperating to have to listen to "threats of hybridization" given some of the threats that are going on in the world today.


Overall conclusion: Lomborg is solidly in the science here.  His general picture is supported by the data.

Liveblogging Lomborg preamble

Okay, here goes my attempt to fact-check every page of Cool It and link to the primary sources along with a comment whether or not it supports what he says.  I am restricting myself to the following:

1.  I am not going to comment on anything that is opinion or interpretation; I am restricting myself to whether or not Lomborg has accurately quoted and honestly interpreted the data in question. 

2.  I am not interested in checking his citations of the media, or economics, or anything other than his citations of 'hard science'.

  My edition of Cool It is the First Vintage Books Edition, 2008.

Well, hah.

I've lost count of the number of fools - Ackerman, Goodstein, the entire "ScienceBlogs" crew - who have stamped their feet and said "There's no such thing as a 'business as usual' scenario in the IPCC!  Lomborg is lying!  WAAAH!"

   Well, today in Nature, Lomborg appears to be vindicated.  I'm homing in on this paragraph.

The USGS studies relied on general circulation model (GCM)-projected losses of Arctic sea ice based on the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A1B ‘business as usual’ greenhouse gas emissions scenario.

  Well, ha-ha.  The A1B scenario that Lomborg calls "business-as-usual".

Another good review

It's fascinating how, when one turns to the actual scientific literature, one finds reviews of Lomborg's work that may be very critical, but are not flat out dishonest (unlike the mainstream media that certain people seem to prefer...).

  This is a very good example of how to write an honest review:

Undeniably, we would see more immediate tangible benefits from preventing mass starvation than by cutting atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. And from a moral standpoint, it is more compelling to alleviate immediate suffering than potential future suffering. But there is also a moral imperative to avoid the more wide-reaching and irreversible consequences of global warming. As Sir Nicholas Stern pointed out in his report on the economics of climate change, "what we do in the next 10 or 20 years can have a profound effect on the climate in the second half of this century and in the next".

That both acknowledges Lomborg's point, does not try to imply the worst possible motivations, and is still critical.  A good example of how to write.  

Cool It trailer

Finally some sense from someone who can think.