Articles by Grist staff

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.

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.

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.

Zed, last of his species, in "There's One Bjorn Every Minute"