Schneider demonstrates his misunderstanding of research that contradicts his views when he dismisses Richard Lindzen's work on the iris effect by calling it a mere extrapolation from "a few years of data from a small part of one ocean." In a letter to Scientific American, Lindzen points out that the findings are applicable to the entire tropics. Lindzen also notes that, far from relying excessively on his findings, Lomborg devoted only a quarter of a page to his iris effect paper. "As our paper amply stresses (and as Lomborg acknowledges), there remain uncertainties in our work," he writes. Lindzen concludes that Schneider's critique of Lomborg "misrepresents both the book he is attacking and the science he is allegedly representing."
Schneider makes a number of surprising errors. He attacks Lomborg's analysis of the costs and benefits of trying to slow global warming by limiting the emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels. Schneider claims that forcing industries to cut back on fossil fuels "could actually reduce some emissions at below-zero costs." He bases this suggestion on engineering estimates that are notoriously overoptimistic. For example, in a 1995 study published in Into the 21st Century: Harmonizing Energy Policy, Environment, and Sustainable Economic Growth, 37 companies agreed to participate in a comprehensive energy audit that the engineers predicted would increase their electricity efficiency by 11.2 percent. A year later, the companies had realized only a 3.1 percent increase in electricity efficiency. Lomborg accepts that energy efficiency can be tightened up marginally, but he is correct that no one seriously believes that efficiency alone can replace the services provided by the energy that would be lost in cutting fossil fuel use by as much as 60 percent.
Perhaps even more misleading is Schneider's discussion of the Kyoto Protocol. Schneider dismisses Lomborg's analysis as a straw man argument. You decide.
Lomborg suggests this thought experiment: Extend to the end of the century Kyoto's provisions for cutting carbon dioxide emissions to around 5 percent below 1990 levels. Then examine the costs. Lomborg knows global warming activists actually intend to force the world to cut back global fossil fuel use by at least 50 percent below model projections. But by looking at what it would cost to implement the comparatively mild Kyoto, one gets a good sense of the magnitude of the problem.
Climatologists widely agree that implementing the Kyoto cuts would reduce the globe's average temperature by an undetectable 0.15 degree Celsius by 2100. Achieving that minimal climatological result could, according to some econometric models, cost as much as $1 trillion. As mentioned earlier, had the United States joined the Kyoto Protocol, overall costs would have been even higher, costing the U.S. $2.5 trillion over 10 years.
The mean estimate of the total cost for the entire world of doing nothing about global warming is around $5 trillion over the next century. In other words, if humanity simply allowed the pace of global warming to proceed, the median estimate is that it would cost $5 trillion to adapt to it. Estimates for different proposed cuts in fossil fuel use aimed at stabilizing the atmosphere at various average temperatures run between $8 trillion and $38 trillion over the next 100 years. Assuming the lower cost, this means it would cost the world $8 trillion to avoid $5 trillion in costs due to global warming.
Concession Stand
Scientific American's second review is by John P. Holdren, a longtime collaborator with Paul Ehrlich who teaches environmental policy at Harvard. His review boils down to a bait-and-switch strategy: He answers a question that has not been asked.
Holdren starts by claiming that Lomborg is "asking the wrong question" about energy. "The energy problem is not primarily a matter of depletion of resources in any global sense but rather of environmental impacts and sociopolitical risks," he claims. Holdren further asserts that "few if any environmentalists" believe "that the world is running out of energy." Earlier in his career, Holdren wasn't so sure. In his 1971 Sierra Club book, Energy: A Crisis in Power, Holdren declared that "it is fair to conclude that under almost any assumptions, the supplies of crude petroleum and natural gas are severely limited. The bulk of energy likely to flow from these sources may have been tapped within the lifetime of many of the present population." Oil and gas are not "energy," but they are the cheapest and most easily transportable sources for it. Nevertheless, Holdren now concedes that Lomborg is right: The world is not running out of energy.
But as Lomborg notes at the beginning of his chapter, some environmentalists are once again warning about impending oil shortages. Kenneth Deffeyes predicts that world oil production will peak between 2004 and 2008 and never rise again. Just two months prior to Holdren's review of Lomborg, Scientific American published a very favorable review of Hubbert's Peak under the title "The End of Oil." The reviewer asserted that "if nothing is done to reduce the increasing global thirst for oil energy prices will soar and economies will be plunged into recession as they desperately search for alternatives." Back in March 1998, Scientific American published "The End of Cheap Oil," which suggested a growing petroleum scarcity.
In his chapter, Lomborg analyzes current trends in coal, oil, and natural gas supplies and prices and explains how the transition to other energy sources is likely to take place over the next few decades. Holdren grudgingly commends Lomborg, declaring that he "has some generally sensible things to say about the large contributions that are possible from increased energy end-use efficiency and from renewable energy." Holdren claims Lomborg selectively quotes the literature on energy, yet he gives no counter-examples of what he thinks the proper literature is. Holdren also complains that Lomborg doesn't delve deeply enough into the politics of energy, particularly the fact that much of the world's oil reserves are in the volatile Middle East. But this is an unreasonable demand; Lomborg's chief goal is to dispel environmentalist misinformation about future resource availability.
The third attack reviewer is John Bongaarts, a vice president at the Population Council. Like Holdren, Bongaarts essentially concedes that Lomborg is right. Bongaarts notes that "people are living longer and healthier lives" and "women are bearing fewer children," among news highlighted by Lomborg. Bongaarts even admits that "environmentalists who predicted widespread famine and blamed rapid population growth for many of the world's environmental, economic, and social problems overstated their cases."
Bongaarts also concedes that "Lomborg correctly notes that poverty is the main cause of hunger and malnutrition" and that despite an increase in world population from 1 billion in 1800 to 6 billion today, "diets have improved. Lomborg and other technological optimists are probably correct in claiming that overall world food production can be increased substantially over the next few decades. Average current crop yields are still below the levels achieved in the most productive countries...."
Yet Bongaarts makes the unsupported claim that future increases in food supplies will cost more, even though food prices have been declining steadily for two centuries. The fact is that all leading agencies, such as the International Food Policy Research Institute, project lower food prices. Sadly, Bongaarts cannot resist deploying the inflammatory accusation from Paul and Anne Ehrlich that humanity is "turning the earth into a giant human feedlot." That is simply not true. Most global food agencies project that the area of the earth's surface devoted to agriculture may grow from 11 percent to 12 percent by 2030. Other analysts, such as agronomist Paul Waggoner, believe improvements in agricultural productivity may be so rapid that less area will be devoted to farming and more land will revert to nature.
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