<p>With regard to the Danish investigation, I looked carefully at this issue when I read Lomborg’s book. I was convinced that the substantive criticisms of Lomborg’s work were unsupported. I certainly don’t expect you to be convinced by my word. I’m willing to be convinced that my earlier conclusion was wrong although I won’t take Wikipedia’s word for it, given Wiki’s track record for reliability.</p>
<p>I appreciate that you have taken your time to read the Danish review, form an opinion on it, and share it here. I will agree that some people question the reliability of The Skeptical Environmentalist, especially since it’s a good thing to be skeptical anyway and particularly with a book that has skeptical in the title. That’s about as far as I can go on this issue. I think Lomborg has written a thought-provoking book that doesn’t ask the reader to accept its conclusions but gives the data and lets the reader decide. As always, I’m content to agree to disagree.</p>
<p>This document has quite a bit more useful information than Wikipedia’s account. The ministry was in fact highly critical of DCSD and its methodology. A short read, with numerous direct quotes from the Ministry’s actual ruling. The phrase “stinging rebuke” comes to mind.</p>
<p>It was shameful to see zealots who run the Scientific American (or Science, I forget which) running a smear campaign against anyone who didn’t fall for their crap. One of the reasons I don’t read any mainstream science journals any more…its hard to seperate the agenda from the facts.</p>
<p>Actually, Driver, your link is to a press release written by Lomborg. I haven’t read the entire 70 page Ministry report (I don’t know if it’s available in English) but I did read the 7 page summary. I find Lomborg’s selective quotes from it, and overall characterization of its findings to, if anything, cause me to be even more skeptical of the man than I was before. </p>
<p>To me, the weirdest part of the whole mess is that Denmark has a government commission which assesses scientific integrity. And then, as best I can tell, doesn’t do anything about it besides issuing findings. And then has another agency which overlooks the first agency. Lomborg himself was a political appointee to some Danish environmental office for a while. This whole flap seems to be located at the intersection of science and politics - which is one ugly neighborhood.</p>
<p>Iloveagoodbrew: Thanks for clearing up any question as to your lack of interest in mainstream science.</p>
Yet Al Gore, a career politician, is a perfectly objective source. Truly incredible.</p>
<p>Speaking of intersection of science and politics…it is the only way that global warming lives. Scientists point out there is a problem. Government gives them money. Scientists say they are working on a solution and/or proposes a solution. Government gives them more money…etc etc. Global warming is pure politics.</p>
<p>Sounds like a personal problem to me, that he’s not believable to you even when he gets it mostly right. The difference between Gore and “dozens of scientists” is that Gore can capture the attention of the public in a way that very few scientists can. Off the top of my head, the only names that could attempt to do that are Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, and Stephen Hawking…and two of them are dead, though I understand how someone could inadvertantly slip a former vice president into the same category.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, it’s old stuff for those of us who have been reading the science pages for the past 15 years. But most people haven’t. </p>
<p>
Well, other than your theory of explictly shooting the messenger, the universe of reflexive Gore haters exists mainly in an echo chamber and isn’t nearly so large as you might suspect.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Setting the agenda when your’e second fiddle is difficult unless you’re blessed to be Dick Cheney with an often-accommodating sock puppet. </p>
<p>After seeing the D and I were talking about what formal role would be best for Gore. She suggested Sec/Interior. I think something with some real power might have to be created for him. Frankly, these days I’d rather see him in a focused role dealing with the environment than as president. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I foresee that you will have the opportunity to accomplish this last on multiple occasions in the coming decades.</p>
<p>====</p>
<p>ILGB, thattaboy: if the scientists come up with something you don’t like, define it as crap and tune it out. Join the queue behind the “creation science” folks and the Flat Earthers. Funny that the international science community, which doesn’t get a dime from government funding, all reaches the same conclusion. As do University of Red State scientists reach the same conclusions as Scientists from Blue State U. You’re an amazing if faint echo of Spiro Agnew’s rant about “pointy-headed intellectuals.” [Or was that George Wallace?]</p>
<p>===</p>
<p>Driver, your citations are pitiful, nibbling around the edges of symptoms. How about going for the jackpot, something that addresses the issue of global warming itself and major symptoms such as the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps and the thawing of the permafrost in Alaska & Siberia.</p>
<p>My citations in 233 dealt with Greenland, Antarctica, and the supposed Hurricane problem. All current, by scientists, peer-reviewed, and in real journals. Pitiful? Eh. You describe sitting in a theater, shivering at the latest alarmism from Al Gore, as your Johnny Depp-style mustache drips with butter from a gallon bucket of popcorn. You decide.
The best such synthesis to date has been cited–Lomborg. Put side by side with “Earth in the Balance” or “Inconvenient” there’s really no comparison.
Yea, all the people who laughed at global cooling, nuclear winter, eugenics are regretting doing so now…</p>
<p>
Ok maybe I should change tactics and resort to ‘omg! funded by Exxon!! lol!!’ to discredit ‘science’ I think is bad. You do realize that you, not me have a lot in common with creationists.</p>
<p>
Yea ok…are you talking about the IPCC? If thats a science community, then I don’t know what science means.</p>
<p>There are thousands, if not tens of thousands of scientists who do not believe in antropogenic global warming. Your point is duly invalidated.</p>
TheDad, sorry, I missed this bit of ludicrousness before. Where are all those members of the international science community getting their funding, if not from governments? Thanks.</p>
<p>Today’s news (concluded not by Al Gore, but in a study by the NSF):</p>
<p>Earth hottest it’s been in 2,000 years</p>
<p>By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer Fri Jun 23, 7:45 AM ET</p>
<p>WASHINGTON - The Earth is running a slight fever from greenhouse gases, after enjoying relatively stable temperatures for 2,000 years. The National Academy of Sciences, after reconstructing global average surface temperatures for the past two millennia, said Thursday the data are “additional supporting evidence … that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.”</p>
<p>Other new research showed that global warming produced about half of the extra hurricane-fueled warmth in the North Atlantic in 2005, and natural cycles were a minor factor, according to Kevin Trenberth and Dennis Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a research lab sponsored by the National Science Foundation and universities.</p>
<p>Driver, I see…it’s a conspiracy of <em>all</em> governments. Btw, while fighting your last ditch battle, you might want to get even your House Republican colleagues in line.</p>
<p>I give global warming another…5 or so years. Then it will be something new again. What do environmentalists have in store for us next?
DDT hysteria? Check
Overpopulation? Check
Running out of food/resource? Check
Global cooling? Check
Peak oil? Check
Species extinction? Check
Nuclear winter? Check
Global warming? Check
-------------? A million bucks to whoever guesses the next ‘catastrophe that threatens our planet’</p>
<p>You’re right, iloveagoodbrew: there’s nothing wrong with anything, ever. We don’t need to do anything to make the world a better place for our kids because…anything which is inconvenient must be untrue. [/sarcasm] </p>
<p>You do realize that you’re simply repeating a tactic perfected by the tobacco industry to delay regulation, don’t you? And that the primary purveyor of that particular brand of know-nothingism is in fact a graduate of the tobacco industry disinformation campaign of the early 1990s?</p>
<p>Time to fire up the Suburban filled with my 6.5 kids and drive 30 miles to the soccer game! Might even light me a ciggie in the car, because I don’t believe what they say about second hand smoke! Those kids will be fine!</p>