The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) is a new conservative (Christian) initiative from Jordan B Peterson and others. They recently kicked off with a sold out conference to which many parliamentarians were invited. Two speakers, well known in the climate debate, attended: Michael Schellenberg and Bjørn Lomborg. Here follows some comments and often used examples (deaths resp. wildfires) to why you simply can’t take anything Lomborg says for a fact without double checking his sources.

Danish Bjørn Lomborg runs the think tank Copehagen Consensus Center and he is arguably one of the most energetic climate debaters out there. His motto Climate change is real but it is not the end of the world, is a good selling point. And while it is true, he often downplays the risks in absurdum and supports his views with dubious statistics.

One should know that his views are based on that he thinks the most cost-effective goal to aim for year 2100 is 3.75°C (picture below is from his ”peer reviewed paper” published 2020).

In this clip from his ARC-talk, he claims that 500 000 people died ”each and every year ”during the 1920s due to climate related cuases.

It may be a ”Freudian slip” that his graph did not appear on the screen om stage as anything will do … But those who follow Lomborg cannot have missed it – he really knows how to hammer in messages (have a look at his Facebook account, don’t know how many times he posted this graph):

You will also find this in his ”peer reviewed paper” where he states:  ”… reducing global deaths from climate-related disaster from almost half a million people each year to less than 20,000 per year in the 2010s–a reduction of 96%.”

Many have bought this message, including our Swedish self-claimed libertarian, Henrik Jönsson (who, by the way, appearantly blocked me on Twitter …):

So, is it true? Did half a million people die every year in weather related causes in the 1920s? No.

The numbers are extremely influenced by single catastrophes. Lomborg has simply averaged the numbers from each decade and then pretends that these deaths tolls were occuring each and every year. It clearly did not:

The database (EM-DAT) that Lomborg took his data from, have information starting from year 1900, but he chose to start from 1920 (also true for his 2020-paper). Of course he is well aware of this, here’s a picture from his Facebook-account in 2015:

He then got the relevant question why he averaged over decades. He replied that it otherwise adds too much noise. But by averaging, he is actually erasing the obvious causations of the high numbers i.e., single disasterous events. It is a flat out lie that ”500 000 people died each and every year due to climate related causes”!

Also, a large number of these deaths can be explained by war, famine and other political actions that made the consequences of the weather disasters far worse. I have commented on some of these before (Swedish).

Do you think it’s a coincidence that he chose refering to deaths during the 1920s? Why not 1910s? Well, if he had, there would not be much of a difference from today’s figures and his talking point would vanish into thin air (below, rough numbers taken from World in data, earthquakes excluded – same source as Lomborg use EM-DAT):

He also got the question why the number was so low in the 1910s. He replied: ”It is a good question, and I’m not sure anyone has a convincing, single explanation. Then he gives the explanation (single events have a huge impact) but ”the 1910s look under-served” – without a shred of evidence. Why not claiming that the 1920s were ”over-served”?

This has caused so much stir that those managing the EM-DAT-database felt obliged to comment on the issue (2022 Disasters in numbers | PreventionWeb). They also pointed out how single events affects the trends dramatically. If the 50 biggest are removed the trend looks completely different:

They conclude: ”In summary, it is impossible to draw conclusions about the underlying causes of the century-long trend in disaster mortality based on EM-DAT numbers alone.”

I haven’t found any sensible person that protest against the fact that fewer people die today due to weather related causes than in the early 1900s. But the claim that deaths gone down by 96% simply doesn’t hold. It is neither a good argument for downplaying the risks with extreme weather events. Death is not the only endpoint.

Data source: EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain (2023) 

Does this matter? Deaths have gone down, what’s the big deal?

Well, this must be seen in the light that Lomborg repeatedly cherry picks and takes things out of context to suit his narrative (it’s not a big deal). Even though he is being told that figures can’t be used the way he does (from the scientists who prooduced the data), he keeps pushing them as hard facts. (See examples in 
Nature, 
Union of Concerned Scientists,
The Economic Journal,
International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health,
Scientific American,Debunking Lomborg,
the Climate-Change Skeptic (newsweek.com),
A critical review of Bjorn Lomborg’s ‘Cool It’ » Yale Climate Connections,
Climate cost study authors accuse Bjørn Lomborg of misinterpreting results | Graham Readfearn | The Guardian
RealClimate: Bjørn Lomborg, just a scientist with a different opinion?
… just to mention a few examples, you’ll find more on this blog (in Swedish though)).

Despite this, I haven’t seen him backing away from any figure or any statement. Never.

---

Fire in the hole

Wildfires – another thing that will never die in the climate debate. Let’s start with Michael Schellenberger’s claim in his ARC-talk: Nasa found that wildfires are burning far less areals now than before. And of course, it’s also one of Lomborg’s vivid talking points:

Well, it is true. IPCC even confirms it in their latest report. And the crux?

Schellenberg and Lomborg’s claim is misleading as it does not show what’s really going on. Most of the decline is namely in the grasslands in Africa due to changes in agricultural practices (fewer intentionally set fires for example), settlements et cetera. It has little to do with climate.

But wildfires are increasing in intensity, severity, size and duration, especially in the boreal zone. For example:

Of course, the issue is complex and I have not heard one scientist claiming that climate change is the only culprit here. Listen to scientists:
– interview with Stefan Doerr, professor of wildland fire science
– statement from Liz Hoy, NASA climate and wildfire expert
Thread on Twitter:

A short thread on why the @WSJOpinion & @BjornLomborg are so wrong to use global burnt area datasets to build a strawman argument.
1) Global burnt area according to 20+ year satellite records is going down, we know that.
[🧵🔥1/11]… pic.twitter.com/PPnihatWkm

— Dr Thomas Smith 🔥🌏 (@DrTELS) August 3, 2023

And there are other widely circulated arguments regarding wildfires. When burned area in the USA is discussed, the official version looks like this with an obvious increasing trend. :

But the data is starting with year 1983. Are they hiding information (as is widley claimed out there in the vastness of the internet)?

Lomborg is apparantly arguing in that direction. The picture below is again taken from his ”peer reviewed paper”. It shows area burned each year in the USA from 1926 to now (small staples) as well as estimated decadal data back to 1900. He states:

”Thus, if anything, while climate change might be increasing burn risks, it does so from a very modest level, compared to historical data.”

.

Lomborg did include a little footnote though, which starts: ”Some have tried to contend that this early burn data should not be used, because they may be less fact-checked” – with a link to Carbon Brief. They interviewed Randy Eardley at the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), who compiles the fire data, and he claims that the data from early years are unreliable and should not be compared with later data as is. This was also stated on the NIFC website at the time when Lomborg took the data for his article:

”The National Interagency Coordination Center at NIFC compiles annual wildland fire statistics for federal and state agencies. This information is provided through Situation Reports, which have been in use for several decades. Prior to 1983, sources of these figures are not known, or cannot be confirmed, and were not derived from the current situation reporting process. As a result the figures prior to 1983 should not be compared to later data.”

NIFC has now removed the all data before 1983 from their website. Unsurprisingly, this led to conspiracy accusations.

Lomborg did obviously not care about these warnings. In his article-footnote he argues against Randy Eardley and insists that Eardly’s argument is an opinion which is unsupported by data. According to Lomborg, data has been reported (which is true) and can, and should, therefore be used as is.

But it is not only an opinion from NIFC. Here’s a paper describing why one should use the numbers with caution:

• Karen C. Short, Sources and implications of bias and uncertainty in a century of US wildfire activity data, International Journal of Wildland Fire 2015 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/WF14190

There have been many institutions involved in the reporting and no standard routines existed. Double reporting of areals is very likely (examples given in article). Policies have changed dramatically during this time. There was also an enormous change in the areas included in the reporting over time, intentional fires was included in the data back then, but this is not longer the case.

”Millions of hectares of intentional burning in the south-eastern US are included as part of the annual estimates of wildfire activity on unprotected lands for several early decades of the USFS annual summary reports. It is inappropriate to compare, for example, the early total area burned estimates, which factor in ‘prescribed fire’, with the statistics in later USFS reports, which omit it”

And so on.

Lomborg continues and claims that other respected scientists have used the figures as is before him. Probably true, but when I checked one of his references:

• Littell, J.S., McKenzie, D., Peterson, D.L. and Westerling, A.L. (2009), Climate and wildfire area burned in western U.S. ecoprovinces, 1916–2003. Ecological Applications, 19: 1003-1021. https://doi.org/10.1890/07-1183.1

It showed that they did not use the figures as is! They tried to adjust for the known reporting biases and published the following graph (actually from Politifact, who used data from the paper):

Litell et al also called for caution: ”The results presented here are based on a fire area database that has no verification early in the 20th century. The observations are summarized in agency reports and must therefore be considered estimates.”

But Lomborg will likely never change, if there are available figures that fits the picture Lomborg wants to paint, he will use them even though the expertise says it it cannot be used in that way. For instance, take a look at the text under the figre 12 above:

”(Reynolds and Pierson 1941, Table 4) indicates that fire consumed even more of the US forests in the 19th century.”

Well, it’s a paper about saw timber resources in the US between 1630-1930 and here’s table 4:

Note the unit ”billion board feet”. Yes, American units are ridiculous (sorry, but it is true 😉 ) but this is a volume whereas acre/hectare (as used above) is area. Really don’t know how Lomborg did when he compared them…

---

Right after this Lomborg presents another creative graph:

Fig. 13. Million homes in high wildfire risk zones from 1940–2050. Data from 1940–2010 is from (Strader 2018, 557) and covers homes in medium to very high fire risk zones in the entire Western US. Data for 2010–2050 comes from (Mann et al., 2014, 447) and is a BAU growth projection of homes in California within very high fire hazard severity zone. Notice the different scales for Western US on the left and California on the right.

He realy puts two completly different things (Entire Western US vs only California) in the same line! Incredible.

---

I could go on, but I think Brian C. O’Neill (earth system scientist ) summarized it very well in his review of Lomborg’s book Cool It!:

”Think of it this way: Bjorn Lomborg is like the Oliver Stone of climate change. He has written a book that sets out to support a certain point of view, and, unless you are an expert, you will never know which facts are correct and appropriately used and which are not. You might not be aware that large (and crucial) chunks of the story are skipped altogether. But like a Stone movie, it is a well-told tale and raises some questions that are worth thinking about.”

Thus, of course Lomborg sometimes lifts justified criticism and facts, but you never know what could be trusted or not, and skepticism should be mandated. Unfortunately, some editorial boards seems to have given up on even slightest editorial work. Just as an example, almost exactly one year ago Lomborg wrote an op-ed in one of Swedens’s biggest newspaper SvD. Apart for the things described above he also wrote:

”Ten years ago, environmentalists loudly proclaimed that Australia’s magnificent Great Barrier Reef was on the verge of extinction, as a result of climate change bleaching.”

The link under ”loudly” goes to … tada … a scientific paper. He calls the scientists behind an almost 30 year-long scientific surveillance program for being loud-voiced environmentalists! Please, read the abstract yourself, it does not say what Lomborg claims it does.

Anything goes.

And speaking of patronizing environmentalists: I know this post is already way too long, but I will add a comment on Schellenbergs ARC-speech as well:

---

Of course, heckling of Greta Thunberg is included. ”We can all go vegan to save the planet,” he says, pauses and grins at the audience.

A little later, Schellenberg takes on the role of amateur psychologist and gives Thunberg a diagnosis. Not the Asperger we all know of, but Cluster B histrionic personality disorder.

”It used to be called hysterical, but it was considered sexist…”

That is, he says, the diagnosis of a narcissistic person who constantly seeks attention, has difficulty controlling emotions, has strong opinions but no facts to back them up, and is easily influenced by others.

Yes, you, Michael Schellenberg, that’s a description that probably fits better with several tone-setting gentlemen at the ARC conference than with Greta Thunberg.

This is true slander (is it even legal?) but not especially surprising (even though the conference called for more ”Christianity” in our lifes… Go figure). It’s a well documented fact that right-wing groups and right wing media has targetted Greta Thunberg for a long time.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Of course, not only Greta, the entire climate movement must be ridiculed as is customary. Schellenberg wants to lead in proof that their engagment is just a substitute for losing their Christian faith. Because when you have done that, you inevitably end up believing in anything. If we don’t have a god to believe in, we will invent one.

And who are the new gods? There are apparently three big ones: climate change, race and gender. Hello, culture war!

”With the climate, you get a new external authority” [he refers to the UN and the IPCC] and the scientists are the new priests. He notes:

”I wish it wasn’t so stupid… but it’s just Greta Thunberg with a really bad religion.”

I also wish it wasn’t this stupid.

He obviously means that there is nothing in what countless researchers say.

Sorry, but I just can’t take people like this seriously.

---

Sorry Swedish readers (if you came this far) – you’ve likely read this before if you follow the blog (was bored and started to write a post and like always I couldn’t stop 🙂 ). But then again, everyone writing about the climate debate will end up repeating himself as there are few new arguments introduced…