Kalin1

Why do you seemingly resort to using Lomborg's book as a "climate” bible for only the gullible or ill-informed would refer to an author noted by scientists and economists for his monumental blunders? Furthermore, Lomborg is a statistician and has no training in the environmental sciences.

http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/

http://www.grist.org/article/lomborg-the-clever-persons-climate-change-skeptic

http://www.grist.org/article/risk-mismanagement

http://www.seib.org/climate-and-energy/Ackerman_CoolIt.pdf

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/06/AR2007090601979.html

Lomborg tells us that progress to date has been achieved through hard work, the market and reasonable regulations.

He also said in 2001: “We will not lose our forests; we will not run out or water. We have reduced atmospheric pollution in the cities of the developed world and have good reason to believe that this will also be achieved in the developing world. Our oceans have not been defiled, our rivers have become cleaner and support more life. ... Nor is waste a particularly big problem. .. ... And, finally, our chemical worries and fear of pesticides are misplaced and counterproductive.” Huh?

1. Forests: Brazil planted a record area of forest plantations in 2006 even as more than 13,000 square kilometers of natural forest in the Amazon were lost. Separately a report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) showed that Brazil accounted for 73% (31,000 square kilometres per year) of the deforestation of natural forests in South America (42,000 square kilometres per year) in 2000-2005.

2. Pollution: “The images show the temperature increase and increased pollution for every region in the UK. It is particularly striking to see the extent of temperature and pollution increases in the large cities which have such a detrimental effect on the quality of life in those locations".

http://news.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news-3/UK-record-heatwave-and-rising-pollution-observed-by-eyes-in-the-sky-3A-Images-reveal-hotspots-3825-1/

3. Rivers: “Authorities say an acid problem in the Murray's lower lakes and adjoining Coorong wetlands in South Australia is the worst seen anywhere in the world:”

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/29/2584861.htm

“THE Swan and Canning rivers are polluted with toxic levels of cancer-causing heavy metals, pesticides and hydrocarbons, a three-year sediment study has found:”

"The health of the Swan and Canning rivers has no chance of improving unless pollution entering the waterway is cut by almost half in the next seven years..."

Contd......

Dear, dear, Protagoras, at it again with the alarmists' (and Creationists') favourite sport: cherry-picking, selective use of data, and outright lies (witness the ads on this very site: "The forests are the earth's lungs". This has been known to be false since the 1970s, so why are green alarmists still peddling an outright lie?).

For instance, your boogedy-boogedy-scary! figures on the Amazon: It might be honest to acknowledge that 31,000 km2 represents just 0.4% of the Amazon? You also fail to mention that the 2000-2005 rate was a peak (excepting an unusual spike in 1995), and has been declining steadily since.

As I pointed out in this thread http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8902, when green groups quote figures on the Amazon, they could at least be honest enough to compare oranges with oranges.

Your quote on pollution is also in keeping, using a highly unusual instance to make a false, sweeping generalisation.

Similarly your quotes on rivers. The Murray is suffering from a lethal combination of severe drought and government mismanagement: Exactly how does this destroy Lomborg's assertions on global river health?

And why is Lomborg's training as a statistician a problem? He does just what a statistician is supposed to: Analyse the data. Unfortunately for the alarmists, the data turns out not to be too supportive of their claims.

As I've pointed out before (and you've notably failed to answer), neither Al Gore, Sting, Prince Charles are environmental scientists; Tim Flannery has no qualification in climatology. You don't seem to have a problem with them rabbitting on about the imminent threat to Mother Gaia? (I remember Tim banging on about Gaia theory in the late 70s; I thought it was rubbish, but just meaninglessly harmless dope talk).

I note that certain people and publications were very quick to try and rubbish Lomborg - but then threatened to sue him when he replied, point by point, to their claims. And this was after trying to pressure his publishers into submitting his as-yet-unpublished book, to a kangaroo court of the very people he'd most heavily criticised.

Inquisitions always were afraid of the truth getting out.

“And why is Lomborg's training as a statistician a problem?”

Poor old Clownfish who keeps feigning knowledge on the topic. Eh….Clownfish I threw in the “statistician” fish for the trolls to swallow and you took the bait. Lomborg is not a qualified statistician.

“The Murray is suffering from a lethal combination of severe drought and government mismanagement: Exactly how does this destroy Lomborg's assertions on global river health?. “

Well you see Clownfish if you weren’t a sausage banger, you would be able to digest the post more accurately since Lomborg declared way back in the late nineties, when his book was released in Denmark that :

“Progress to date has been achieved through hard work, the market and reasonable regulations.”

Murray River – "progress, regulations, market??" Ten years after Lomborg's fraudulent claims, the Murray's on life support. Catch on Clownfish? No I thought not.

Anyway Clownfish I have much better things to attend to on a Sunday than to read the honkings of retarded trolls. Meanwhile I note Kulin1’s claim:

“it's just that Lomborg's book and some of my other wider reading have made me realise that the evidence of this "emerging crisis" is much thinner”

Please supply me with references to your “wider reading” Kulin1. I look forward to reading them. I appear to be the only one providing any evidence here. However, I’m no skinflint and following are a few more links, including an article published in the respected journal “Nature,” which the more enlightened may find interesting:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v414/n6860/full/414149a0.html

http://www.mail-archive.com/sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg18693.html

"The EU Fleet and Chronic Hydrocarbon Contamination of the Oceans:"

http://oceana.org/fileadmin/oceana/uploads/europe/reports/marpol_eu_chr_hyd_eng.pdf

The contents of the article above (or its relevance to the topic) will be lost on you Clownfish I’m afraid but cheer up - even delusional, catatonic eco-vandals are entitled to express an opinion on the catastrophic consequences of A/hydrocarbon pollution.

Poor old Protagoras, you really are on the ropes, aren't you? It's easy enough to tell: once the spittle starts flying uncontrollably and you resort to schoolyard name-calling.

Er, I would suspect that someone who "is trained in the use of mathematics and statistics in the social sciences", and who lectures in statistics, could reasonably be called a statistician.

"The job of statistician is considered a profession ... most employment as a statistician requires a minimum of a masters degree in statistics or a related field." (which Lomborg has).

Your foaming at the mouth about the Murray river is as irrelevant as anything else you claim: Lomborg is talking about the state of the environment on a global scale. One isolated, local instance does not therefore disprove his claim.

No wonder you almost never answer a question directly: whenever you do, you're invariably caught out.

Clownfish: protag is not "on the ropes" - s/he is rather caught up and bound very tightly in them, all due to protag's own choice.

Not that I have any special animus for David Flint-style queens (or other varieties for that matter). It just seems particularly repugnant when they presume that their predilections grant them special privilege to so glibly taunt, condescend, pose and distract attention from serious issues, instead trying to make all politics and all economics nothing more than just another bunch of fashion statements for the society pages.

[for background psychodramatic insight, see: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8920#142411 ]

Protag: "I threw in the “statistician” fish for the trolls to swallow and you took the bait. Lomborg is not a qualified statistician."

In a world of uncertainty, it's comforting to know some things never change, like Protag's unending juvenility...

...and Peter McMahon writing paperweight pieces, and still somehow placing his finger firmly off the pulse.