Top Danish Environmentalist Rejects Fraud Charges
[Here is the Scientific American link to the reviews mentioned sciam.com
By Elinor Schang
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A top Danish environmentalist rejected charges of "scientific dishonesty" Thursday after a prestigious scientific committee criticized him for playing down the threat of global warming (news - web sites).
Bjorn Lomborg, head of Denmark's independent environmental institute, said a verdict this week by the Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty, or DCSD, was undocumented and biased.
A former Greenpeace member and environmental maverick, Lomborg has challenged the scientific community by saying that the dangers of global warming have been exaggerated.
In his controversial book "The Skeptical Environmentalist," published in August by Cambridge University Press, the 38-year-old statistician said forests are hardly declining, few animals have become extinct lately, and rivers and oceans are becoming cleaner.
The DCSD ruled that the book -- which enraged local environmentalists and invited international criticism -- was based on half-truths and poor research.
"Objectively speaking, the publication of the work under consideration is deemed to fall within the concept of scientific dishonesty," it said in the ruling this week.
Lomborg dismissed the verdict. "The committee entirely takes as its basis the four reviews in Scientific American, which is fine if they also listened to what I have to say," he told Reuters. The reviews appeared last year.
Most of the book's contentions contradict the conclusions of a host of prominent scientists, who were astonished the book had even been published.
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen told the daily Politiken he was considering an investigation of Lomborg's institute, the Copenhagen-based European Environmental Agency,. |
