Bjørn Lomborg’s new book Cool It

Bjørn Lomborg, a professor at Copenhagen Business School, is the most formidable critic of those who think that cutting climate-changing gases is the most important problem the world faces. He made his name with ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ and his new book continues his drive to get the world to see global warming as just one of the world’s important problems.

Lomborg believes climate change is happening, and that mankind’s activities are responsible. But he tells that we shouldn’t do much about global warming because the costs are very high and the benefits are limited and far-off. Like most books written by partisans in this impassioned debate, much of what he says can be questioned.

Nevertheless, this is an extremely valuable polemic: it stresses repeatedly that taking action to stop climate change may have very high short-term costs. If by clumsy attempts to hold down emissions we stunt the prospects for global economic growth, we may do more harm to the world’s poor than would be inflicted by climate change. It needs to be said time and time again that disease and malnutrition are killing far more people today than climate change. We are making progress diminishing the impact of these scourges. Despite what you sometimes read in the newspapers, world food supply and life expectancy are improving. Panic-stricken action on climate change must not be allowed to halt this progress. We need a rational assessment of whether it is best to spend money on slowing climate change or to whether we would achieve better effects from focusing resources elsewhere.

Bjørn Lomborg is an able debater with a passionate interest in his subject. But he overstates his case, focuses on only parts of the issue and avoids any discussion of a possible future acceleration of global warming. Even with these weaknesses Cool It needs to be part of the continuing debate on how to respond to the climate threat without crippling the poorest economies of the world.

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To an economist, the climate change issue can be reduced to a single question. Do the benefits of grappling with global warming exceed the likely costs? Cutting emissions growth may be expensive and if the benefits are small and a long way off, it simply may not be worth doing much about climate change. The global economy is growing rapidly and large numbers of people are being propelled out of deep poverty every year. The strains of this growth are showing in many ways – water shortages, desertification, deforestation, overuse of agricultural land, and climate change – but, nevertheless, a smaller percentage of the world’s population goes to bed hungry than at any time in recorded history.

We face extremely serious ecological problems but careless action to protect the planet risks causing huge harm to the world’s poor. It is an uncomfortable question for greens to answer, but why should the impoverished of today bear the price of halting global warming when the next generation will be much wealthier, and far better able to manage the effects of climate change?

The Lomborg argument
Lomborg’s logic is as follows:

• The cost of greenhouse gas pollution is very low.
• Controlling emissions growth so that it is substantially below the level that would otherwise occur is extremely expensive.
• If we spend money in order to temper emissions growth, then we cannot spend it on other worthwhile things, such as public health programmes in the third world. Also, if Kyoto-style agreements reduce the rate of world GNP growth, then we will be slowing the climb out of poverty.

The cost of pollution is low
Lomborg says that the cost of CO2 emissions is very low and gives a figure of $2 a tonne. Put another way, every tonne of global warming gases emitted to the atmosphere causes about $2 of damage. His figure suggests that the world’s total 2007 emissions have a cost of about $65bn. Very approximately, this is about 0.1% of global income. For the UK, its 600m tonnes or so of greenhouse gas pollutants have what economists call ‘external’ costs of about £10 per head, or even less than 0.1% of GNP.

But as a comparison, the cost of Katrina was almost certainly well above $150bn. So if Lomborg’s figure is right, the total damage caused by greenhouse gases around the world is less than one very severe extra hurricane every two and a half years. Or look at it in the UK context: the July 2007 floods cost perhaps £2bn, or over three times the 2007 damage figure for the UK’s CO2 output according to Lomborg’s formula. Many will find the figure of $2 per tonne deeply implausible.

Lomborg hasn’t arrived at this figure in a very scientific way. He asked a climate economist for his best guess, and based his entire book on this one figure. (Readers of the book will find this episode described on page 36 of the UK edition.) Many estimates are much higher. William Nordhaus of Yale, who has claimed to be the best respected economist working on the issue, suggests in a recent paper that the right tax to impose in 2007 on carbon emissions is about four times as much, rising sharply to about $55 per tonne of CO2 at the end of the century.

By the way, Nordhaus is not saying that $8 is the amount of damage that a tonne of CO2 causes; this number would be much bigger. Being an economist, he stresses that taxing the full cost of pollution would reduce the value of economic activity more than the benefit in reduced climate change. Nordhaus’s ‘optimal tax’ still sees huge damage from climate change. It’s just that it isn’t worth trying to stop it. Nordhaus’s work doesn’t hit the headlines, but it is considerably more rigorous than Lomborg’s writing.

Much of Lomborg’s new book is given over to showing that the $2 figure is reasonable. He examines the following topics in detail:

• a) Heat-related deaths
• b) Hurricanes
• c) Tornadoes
• d) The Gulf Stream
• e) Sea-level rise and glacial melt
• f) Malaria
• g) Agricultural productivity

• a) Heat-related deaths: Lomborg’s main thesis is that human beings are physiologically adaptable to higher temperatures. His evidence is largely derived from various European studies that show that in northern lands, higher than expected levels of mortality are associated with relatively low peaks in summer temperatures. In hot countries, ‘excess mortality’ only begins to rise at much higher temperatures. In northern Finland, for example, the death rate starts to rise when temperatures exceed a daily average of 15 degrees Celsius, compared to over 24 degrees in Athens. From this he concludes that we will not be killed by higher temperatures, we will get used to them.

This is probably correct in high latitudes. But Lomborg makes little attempt to assess the position in countries with higher existing temperatures, such as those in most of Africa and some parts of Asia. He also stresses that many heat-related deaths can be avoided by good air-conditioning. This may seem a somewhat tactless line of argument to the 25% of the world’s population without access to electricity.

Lomborg does not weigh in the scales the impact of human comfort or the particularly severe impact of increased temperatures on those obliged to work outdoors.

His conclusions are far too strong. Nevertheless we should all bear in mind that deaths in higher latitudes from winter cold are currently far greater than those from excess heat in summer. Climate change is cutting deaths in Scotland at the moment, not increasing them, and this will be true for several decades yet. As with many things, there is a considerable germ of truth in Lomborg’s polemic.

• b) Hurricanes: Lomborg seeks to show that hurricanes aren’t getting any more severe. He says that we take more notice of them because their economic effect is greater than in the past, but that once we adjust for the lower value of the stock of buildings in the first part of the last century, two hurricanes caused more damage than Katrina – Galveston in 1900 and Miami in 1926.

This is one of these many occasions when Lomborg destroys the strength of his comment by careless use of sources. He compares some carefully estimated costs of the Galveston and Miami storms with a guess made about Katrina in its immediate aftermath. More recent figures for the cost of Katrina are far higher. The Katrina-related expenditures of the Federal Budget alone are greater than Lomborg’s entire estimate. And when I checked his reference for the cost of the Miami 1926 hurricane, I found he had mistranscribed the figure. His number is substantially higher than is actually contained in the source he used.

More importantly, Lomborg does not properly address the real question, which is whether the warming of the Gulf of Mexico seas is likely to produce increases in the frequency or severity of hurricanes. He has simply gone for the easiest analysis – the economic damage to the US. He makes no substantial reference to the far more severe impact of hurricanes on poorer states around the rim of the Gulf. And when he does, he simply says that if these countries were richer they would be able to afford better protection. He doesn’t choose to discuss the fact that single hurricanes can delay development in a poor country by decades. The impact of Hurricane Mitch on Honduras in 1998 is a good example. The country has not yet fully recovered and if hurricane intensity is increasing, this will probably outweigh all progress in development. This is one of the reasons why aid agencies are increasingly passionate about climate change, suggesting it is already overwhelming the benign forces of economic growth, better food availability and improving health.

• c) Tornadoes: Lomborg says that US tornadoes are not increasing in severity or frequency. He may well be right, though 2007 has seen the first category 5 tornado for several years. The strange thing is that few climate scientists ever expected tornadoes to increase in intensity in the US. They are associated with thunderstorms and if the central US is getting drier, which is a probable feature of global warming, we can expect fewer of them. It may be more important that Canada saw its first ever category 5 tornado this year, not inconsistent with climate scientists noting the general northern drift of typical weather events in the North American continent.
• d) The Gulf Stream: we sometimes see frightening stories that suggest a complete shutting down of the Gulf Stream. Lomborg correctly points out that few scientists think that this is likely, even if Greenland melts entirely. But in attacking the news media for only running frightening stories on this issue, and not carrying the more moderate views of most scientists, he ignores the importance of even a marginally slowing Gulf Stream on reducing the amount of heat transported out of the southern Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf Stream carries huge volumes of energy out of the hurricane generating zone and across to temperate northern Europe. It is at least worth discussing whether Lomborg’s confidence in his hurricane predictions would be as great if the great ocean conveyor belt slowed.
• e) Sea-level rise: here Lomborg is at his most controversial. He focuses on just one IPCC number for the mean expected rise in sea level this century. All his analysis uses this figure. He ignores the fact that the IPCC states that this number does not fully include the impact of faster than expected glacial melt. The IPCC knows that the faster ice loss is happening; it just cannot yet be confident about its speed. So it omits any figure at all. Lomborg does not mention this.

He goes on to show that rather than cut emissions the world may well benefit from paying low-lying states to improve their flood protection. To do this, he has conveniently invented a new world order and an institution with the authority to invest in Bangladesh flood protection. In a world that cannot even agree on sharing the Kyoto burden, this seems a piece of sunny optimism and little more.

• f) Malaria: some scientists say that malarial range will increase as a result of climate change. Lomborg says that we simply need to invest in prevention because it will be more productive. Of course he is right. Malaria is largely preventable. He has a sharp point: malaria nets or careful use of DDT would do far more good for the tropical poor than a hundred Kyotos. But he is wrong to focus so much on malaria. Increasing temperatures may well cause a substantial rise in a large number of tropical diseases, and these will affect both rich and poor. Malaria is totemic: a spread into Europe would seem like a flow of the disorder of Africa into the calm of prosperous democracies. This is why the rich countries are frightened and Lomborg is correct to point this out. However, it is not the only insect-borne disease and we can reasonably expect climate change to bring other dreadful tropical illnesses into the temperate zone. This is not mentioned.
• g) Agricultural productivity. In northern Europe, greater fertilisation from increased CO2 and from higher temperatures will generally increase agricultural productivity for some decades (though a Scottish agromonist I spoke to last week disputed my simplistic conclusion). But elsewhere in the world the pattern is different. Lomborg compiles evidence to show that food production will only be marginally impacted for some years to come. This is a complex subject and there is substantial support for the view that the current growth in food production will not be much affected by climate change. But this broadly optimisitic view is difficult to reconcile with the current declines in cereal production because of drought in countries such as Australia. Once again, this is ignored, perhaps in the interests of simplifying the story.

In all of these discussions, Lomborg allows very little doubt about the conclusion he reaches. He has complete faith that the temperature increase this century is going to be no more than 2.4 degrees. He assumes that the scientists he approves of are correct in their optimism. He has almost unquestioning faith that the climate system is fully understood by climatologists – a claim that none of them would make in a hundred years.

As I said above, he has looked at seven impacts from global warming in detail. On several, he makes some very good points about unwarranted hysteria. On others he is much less persuasive, omitting most science or not properly dealing with the full issue.

What has he missed out? He doesn’t cover the following issues in any substantive way:

• a) Changing world weather patterns: nowhere does Lomborg look at the cost of drought, flood and heatwaves outside the richest parts of the world. Where is the analysis of desert growth? On this topic he should have read and extensively quoted Mark Lynas’s book Six Degrees, published six months before his own. Lynas looks, for example, at the impact of small changes in temperature and precipitation on parts of the US Great Plains, showing how vulnerable they are to desertification. Lomborg couldn’t be expected to include this fact, but 2007 is almost certainly the worst year in modern history for weather-related disasters around the world, of which the terrible West African floods are the most ignored example. Lomborg’s work is far too biased towards discussing the relatively benign impact of climate change on northern Europe.
• b) Forest die-back: compared even to Lomborg’s complacency on the melting of Greenland’s glaciers, his treatment of the Amazon is surprising. The rainforest isn’t even mentioned. But if there is one thing we know for certain, a drier, hotter Amazon basin is potentially catastrophic for the globe. If the Amazon turns into savannah, as is perfectly possible, we will see changed air circulation patterns across large parts of the world. If temperatures do rise 2 degrees above 20th-century levels, we should be deeply worried that this will happen.
• c) Methane: as with the Amazon, the word methane is not mentioned in the book’s index and I do not believe it actually occurs in the text. Any 228-page general discussion of global warming that does not mention methane eruptions from tundra and deep oceans is simply not covering the topic properly. Like Amazon rainforest death, methane eruptions could change the climate significantly within a matter of years. (Methane is a far worse greenhouse gas than CO2.) It has to be seen as a risk but Lomborg doe not include any analysis of the possible catastrophe arising from increased methane emissions from land and sea.
• d) Biodiversity: nowhere is it mentioned that climate change is going to cause a rapid mass extinction. Some people don’t care. Others mind enormously. Lomborg should have recognised that species loss is a side effect of global warming, though not one conventionally captured by the calculations of economists.

In summary, Lomborg’s figure of $2 per tonne of CO2 seems frighteningly low. By focusing on the smaller direct impacts on the rich worlds of Europe and North America, he has made climate change seem a managerial problem that the world can easily deal with. Very few people share his optimism. A book that doesn’t even consider the possibility of runaway climate change should not attract as much attention as Lomborg’s text.

The costs of cutting emissions
Lomborg says that complying with Kyoto has huge costs and will only cut emissions by a few percent. Importantly, he repeatedly shows that Kyoto will simply delay warming by a few months or years. Kyoto, with all its inefficiencies and inequities, is an easy target, but the political world saw it as a first step towards long-term restraint on emissions. Lomborg portrays it as an expensive and half-baked final step in emissions control.

He has a point. World emissions growth is still rapid. Countries like the UK that preach climate virtue have not succeeded in stopping growth in emissions. If Kyoto was as costly as he says (about 10 times the damage caused by greenhouse gases) the treaty would look a very bad bargain.

When Lomborg was assessing the value of the damage caused by CO2, he went for a low figure that few agree with. It is the same with the countervailing cost of emissions control. He has taken some high numbers and has repeated them many times in his book. Mere repetition doesn’t make them any more persuasive. Nowhere does he suggest that one of the many strengths of modern capitalism is its phenomenal ability to adapt and change. Make carbon expensive and business will rapidly find ways of emitting less, and at less cost than we might first think. Environmental legislation in the past has almost always been far less costly than business has claimed.

In Lomborg’s view, people need to look at the respective costs and benefits of emissions control. When they do so, they will see that climate change is too expensive to stop. But, interestingly, Lomborg does not go on to say that we should simply ignore global warming even though this would be the logical corollary of his stance. No, he actually suggests that governments should engage in large amounts of public sector R+D to find lower carbon ways of keeping the economy going.

Somehow I get the impression that Bjørn Lomborg recognises that future climate change may be terrifying and uncontrollable. His book may suggest that we can ignore climate change, but some part of Lomborg’s mind sees the dangers from complacency.

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An appendix on Lomborg’s research methods
Like most effective polemicists, Lomborg creates a simple argument that supports a point of view. Scientists writing about climate change tend to hedge their conclusions with caution. Indeed the IPCC ascribes probability levels to its main conclusions. Bjørn Lomborg scorns such tentativeness. He turns the IPCC’s most carefully written sentences into unambiguous certainties. He uses huge volumes of evidence, but much of it is sourced from a small number of scientists and economists. He does not choose to reflect the diversity and uncertainty of the views of experts.

This is understandable: Lomborg wants to communicate with a general audience intolerant of ambiguity. And most people writing on climate change are guilty of commenting only on sources that they broadly agree with.

What is not forgivable is the laxity of Lomborg’s methods for assembling this book. He breaches the standard conventions of academic work. For example, I have noticed instances when he takes whole sentences and large parts of paragraphs from other people’s work and has pasted them into his text. (He provides a reference to an endnote, but hasn’t told us that he is directly quoting other people’s research.) According to Oxford University’s code on discipline, this is plagiarism and could be the subject of a disciplinary inquiry in an undergraduate essay. I have only checked a very small fraction of his references, but I have also seen two important instances of him adjusting a research finding to make it slightly more compatible with his own conclusions. Bjørn Lomborg doesn’t need to do this and it really weakens what is otherwise an extremely worthwhile but deeply mistaken book.