5 ms·
That is a very week premise, which looks disguised as an attempt to sell one book by criticising another. You could equally apply that much scrutiny to any pub
by brc 16y ago
That is a very week premise, which looks disguised as an attempt to sell one book by criticising another. You could equally apply that much scrutiny to any public profile book or movie (anything by Michael Moore, for instance).
I'm sure Lomborg's book contains exaggerations and selective presentation of the truth - after all, it's a popular literature, not a scientific work. But the very same standards applied to other 'popular' works of Global Warming media, like 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' and 'An Inconvenient Truth' have also showed up outright lies, fabrications and distortion of the truth.
In other words, it's unlikely that anyone can print or make something in this genre without someone else finding all sorts of facts that are wrong. But the whole thing is down to interpretation.
Ultimately we should be judging these books and movies for ourselves, and realising that much of the material contains a kernel of truth, probably much embellished for the narrative.
- ugh 16y agoThat seems like intellectual laziness.
- anthonyb 16y agoIndeed. While it's true that most things will have errors, it depends on what those errors were, why they were made and who's pointing them out. For example, a lot of climate skeptics like to point out that models are wrong. But they tend to be wrong in both directions (eg. http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Arctic_models_obs.gif http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Arctic_models_obs.gif, where the sea ice loss is far more than worst-case prediction)
- jonhendry 16y ago"I'm sure Lomborg's book contains exaggerations and selective presentation of the truth - after all, it's a popular literature, not a scientific work." But that's all he publishes. Because he's not a scientist. You might want to ask yourself why he publishes in such low-end venues, rather than in more rigorous ways.