Latest Articles
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Paine on the Ass
If you read yesterday’s special issue of Grist Magazine on Bjorn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist, you know that the experts largely disagree with Lomborg’s thesis that environmental problems are just hyperbolic hooey. So why does the mainstream media love him? Writing for TomPaine.com, Colin Woodard casts a critical eye at the glowing reviews in the […]
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Water, at Your Surface
A water shortage in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh, has grown so severe that authorities have called in the army to distribute drinking water to the city’s residents. The shortage is fueled by 6 percent annual population growth, mushrooming housing complexes, and severe pollution of the nearby Buriganga River. Riverside industries dump hundreds of […]
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Suddenly Sizzlin'
Global warming is typically thought of as a gradual process, but a report released this week by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences warns that greenhouse gases and other atmospheric pollutants could cause massive, sudden, and potentially disastrous climate shifts. The authors of the report relied on paleontological evidence, the historical record, and computer modeling […]
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Links related to The Skeptical Environmentalist
For those of you who still haven't gotten enough of the Lomborg controversy, look no further than your browser. We've compiled a collection of links to sites that praise the man, haze the man, and walk the middle ground.
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On Bjorn Lomborg's hidden agenda
Here is Denmark, that harmonious northern country known for its curiously vanilla accomplishments (comprehensive social welfare, pastry, Hans Christian Anderson), and here is its latest export, Bjorn Lomborg, come to announce the good news that we live in a fairy-tale world.
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On Bjorn Lomborg and energy
When it comes to the world's energy problems, Bjorn Lomborg's unbridled optimism is quite enough to ruin anyone's day.
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On Bjorn Lomborg and environmental hazards to human health
You know what they say about people who become statisticians? They lacked the personality to become accountants.
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On Bjorn Lomborg's use of statistics
Extraordinary claims demand an extraordinary level of documentation and supporting analysis, and warrant the healthy skepticism of those who would review or pronounce judgment on them. Bjorn Lomborg's new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, is missing the documentation and analysis, and the outpouring of media coverage the book has generated is missing the skepticism.
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On Bjorn Lomborg and deforestation
In The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg writes that "basically, the world's forests are not under threat." A charitable reader could attribute this flawed conclusion to errors of omission and ignorance; perhaps the author simply doesn't know the sources well enough to interpret them properly. Less charitably, one might reasonably conclude that Lomborg intentionally selects his data and citations to distort or even reverse the truth. His interpretations of data on global forest cover and Indonesian forest fires aptly illustrate both failings.
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On Bjorn Lomborg and population
Some years ago, well before many outside Denmark knew Bjorn Lomborg's name, a group of his fellow faculty members at the University of Aarhus took the unusual step of developing a website specifically to warn the scientific community and others about flaws in his work. Appalled by Lomborg's scientific pretensions and unfounded conclusions, these faculty members, including a former head of the Danish Academy of Sciences, actively disassociated themselves from him.
