Jinn of Quality and Risk

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[dive into mark] 

It is unbecoming and truly bizarre that Scientific American has chosen to attack Lomborg by opening eleven pages to four enviro-extremists who do not represent the scientific community:

• Stephen Schneider (global warming) — who gained popularity in the late 1960s with his claim that the world was about to enter another ice age; Schneider declared in 1989 that we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have;
• John Bongaarts (population) — who mostly parrots the long-ago discredited Paul Ehrlich;
• Thomas Lovejoy (biodiversity) — who announced in 1980 that 15-20% of all existing species would be extinct by the year 2000; and
• John Holdren (energy) — who (together with Ehrlich) bet in 1980 against Julian Simon, believing wrongly that a basket of natural resources would be more scarce and thus more expensive by 1990; today, Holdren is unaware that oil from tar sands is produced for $10 to $12 per barrel, much less than the $30 he uses in his pompous and contemptuous rebuttal.

 

Human life expectancy gains over the past 150 years have been nothing short of astonishing. Some researchers say that there's no limit in sight. For 160 years, the top life expectancy has regularly risen, by 2.5 years every decade; while Swedish women in 1840 could hope to average 45 years, today's Japanese women average 85 years. If nothing changes, top life expectancy is likely to be 100 years by 2060. [Science 2002:296]

Add medical progress and regenerative technology to the mix, and a 115–years life expectancy by 2060 is possible. It would merely take a doubling of the current rate of life extension; by 2172, life expectancy would be 170 years, close to two centuries. Some researchers hypothesize that there are humans alive today who will actually experience quasi-immortality — simply assuming that we succeed in quadrupling the rate of life extension in this century. Wow. Ommmmmm. 

In 1980, Science published an article titled "Resources, Population, Environment: An Oversupply of False Bad News." Written by Julian Simon, its summary was his manifesto: False bad news about population growth, natural resources, and the environment is published widely in the face of contrary evidence. For example, the world supply of arable land has actually been increasing, the scarcity of natural resources including food and energy has been decreasing, and basic measures of U.S. environmental quality show positive trends. The aggregate data show no long-run negative effect of population growth upon standard of living. Models that embody forces omitted in the past, especially the influence of population size upon productivity increase, suggest a long-run positive effect of additional people.

Letters to the editor poured into Science. Most were extremely critical. Paul Ehrlich, along with two energy and natural resource self-styled "experts," John Holdren and John Harte, charged Simon with various "errors about the economics of scarcity." So Simon challenged Ehrlich and company to walk the talk with a public offer to stake US$10,000 ... on my belief that the cost of non-government-controlled raw materials (including grain and oil) will not rise in the long run. Ehrlich, Holdren, and Harte jointly accepted; they picked five metals, chose 1990 as the target date, bragged — and lost.

All of the grim predictions made by Ehrlich et alia have been systematically proven false by the facts — concerning natural resources, massive starvation by 1975(!), and general scarcity. In 1990, for his having promoted greater public understanding of environmental problems, Ehrlich received a MacArthur Foundation "genius" award.

Today, a similar group of people is smearing Lomborg, who has essentially updated Simon's arguments with more recent statistical data.