Talk:Bjorn Lomborg

Having read Lomborg's rebuttal of the Scientific American article (http://www.greenspirit.com/lomborg/ScientificAmericanBjornLomborgAnswer.pdf) I must say I'm swayed by a lot of what he says about his opponents, even if I don't agree with his conclusions.

The original Scientific American article seemed to be filled with as much, if not more, disinformation, than Lomborg's original book. Clearly if people are going to review a book with the intention of destroying it on the grounds of its scientific dishonesty they would do well to make sure they have a firm scientific footing for their complaints. This they seemed to have failed to achieve and it does nothing for Scientific American's own reputation that they didn't manage this issue in a more scientific fashion themselves.

The current status of this is the fact that the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation has said that the findings of Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty were "dissatisfactory", "deserving criticism" and "emotional". The original complaints to the Committee were heavily based on the original Scientific American articles and as such seem to confirm that criticism of Lomborg is still based on emotion and doesn't concentrate enough on the facts that are available, in abundance, for anybody to quote.

In my opinion it is Scientific American and the work they published that more properly desrves a place in the annals of disinformation than Lomborg's work. They seem to have taken an approach not entirely dissimiliar to the medieval church's persecution of Galileo. "Doesn't matter if he's right or wrong, but he's challenging the established order. Burn the Heretic!"

Or would that cause too much global warming?

--

For some reason I'm having trouble to get the link http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11762486^7583,00.html to work properly in the SourceWatch reference

as in


 * Bjorn Lomborg, "Let's first tackle hunger and disease", The Australian, December 23, 2004.

If i copy the link into my browser it opens the right page OK but just won't work in the D reference. I suspect the problem may be with how the ^ is being read.

Any thoughts?--Bob Burton 17:10, 22 Dec 2004 (EST)

Guys, when you write articles, please refrain from ad hominem attacks (unfortunately the Lomborg article contains several. Also, why not at least try to be somewhat objective and factual? Is Lomborg (and others you don't agree with) really so scary that you have to apply the "He's challenging the established order. Burn the Heretic!" approach (as did SA)?

Regards, /Johan --- Johan, I reverted your changes because the bulk of them really didn't deserve to be taken seriously, were speculative, inaccurate, unreferenced or off the topic of the page (such as the Schneider jibe). With a couple - such as Lomborg's comment on book income and the preamble to Lomborgs pleas for assistance in responding to the criticims in SA I think you had a fair point so have amended accordingly. --Bob Burton 04:47, 30 Dec 2004 (EST)

--- Bob, your changes are miniscule, and doesn't change the article into anything like a reasonable presentation of Lomborg and his work.

Perhaps you should edit the article and, as you write above, remove everything that is:"speculative, inaccurate, unreferenced or off the topic"?

Do you accept the challenge?

Regards, /Johan ---

I deleted the comment ("Actually they found Lomborg was free of wrong doing") referring to the Ministry criticisms of the original DCSD ruling. The cited article doesn't state that.--Bob Burton 04:30, 11 Jan 2005 (EST)

Lomborg's current status
It is true, that here in Denmark there has been a very mixed response to the complaints about Lomborg's previous work. The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation is far from a neutral judge though. The conservative Danish government created an Environmental Assessment Institute for Lomborg and his message about "value for environmental money", and a number of reports have come out of this institute (Denmark also went to war in Iraq with Bush, and has invited the US to use Greenland as part of a 'star wars' NMD system.) Lomborg has now left the institute, after the reports from the governmental institution received heavy critique as well (by an international panel of experts asked by the ministry to review those reports too). And Lomborg is now even out of academia, as he just quit his university position within statistics and wants to live as a freelancer in the US giving lectures and offering his consultancy on such 'ridiculous' attempts as fighting the global warming. Best regards, /Henning

 Copenhagen Concesus: Error in calculating the rate of discounting 

In "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (Cambridge University Press, 2001). the following lines can be found, p. 314 in respect of selecting the rate of discount and the Kyoto Protokol.

"We expect that in 2035 the average American will be twice as rich as she is now . . . Both these arguments indicate that it is probably reasonable to have a discount rate of at least 4-6 percent."

A doubling in 35 years does not equivalate a rate of increase of 4-6 percent per year, but only 2.0 percent per year.

Bjørn Lomborg and Copenhagen Concensus have based their conclusions on a rate of discounting of 5% and not 2%.It is possible that several conclusions in TSE and Copenhagen Concensus might be reversed since they are based on a simple error of calculation.

Please refer to (http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/) for more information.

--Kfl 14:52, 1 November 2006 (EST)

Bjørn Lomborg and CEI
In 2003 Bjørn Lomborg received The Julian Simon Award from CEI. Bjørn Lomborg and CEI in close contact, CEI, Sceinceblog Julian Simon Award and Bjørn Lomborg

--Kfl 14:40, 1 November 2006 (EST)

Bjørn Lomborg and the neoconservative third part organisations
For me it is obvious, that BL is linked to the neoconservative third part organisations like The Competitive Interprise Institute(CEI). This could be documentet by a reference statistics i.e. who is qouting BL in a positive way.

As an example: count the number of times BL is quotet by CEI in a positive way. It is a big job to do so. I hope someone will do this.

--Kfl 07:55, 4 November 2006 (EST)

Smear
Apparently, "Bob Burton" uses this wiki as a platform for promoting his anti-Lomborg agenda. If Source Watch watch is more about smears, like this article, than information, then it's a useless scam. Lbjack 19:12, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

lomborg and friel
Ive read the Howard Friel article which forms cite 22, its very interesting. The paragraph which cites it implies by the use of "" that the words "This is hardly smart: it's insanity" are lomborg's, they aren't they are Friel's. I am going to remove the last " therefore.

Hengist, I think the solution is to clarify (as I didn't, sorry, but will now do) that the entire passage - except miniquote from BL - is Friel's writing. Anna Haynes 21:23, 7 March 2011 (UTC)