The first is Bjorn Lomborg -- the author of the new book, “The Skeptical Environmentalist.” The second is Stephen Schneider -- his critic, among others.

Lomborg is a Danish socialist, an associate professor of statistics in the University of Aarhus’ Political Science Department, and a former Greenpeace member. The World Economic Forum dubbed him “Global Leader for Tomorrow” in November 2001.

The seeds that would later germinate into the “The Skeptical Environmentalist” were first planted when, on a trip to America, Lomborg caught an article in “Wired” magazine about the late free-market economist Julian Simon, who has been famous for debunking environmental scare stories all his life. Upon reading Simon’s views, Lomborg scoffed at them as typical American capitalist rhetoric.

When he returned to Denmark, Lomborg decided to give a fun little assignment for his class. He told his students to look up as many environmental statistics as they could, to prove Simon wrong. Lomborg and his pupils figured this would be easy.

However, much to their own shock, Lomborg and his class discovered that Simon was right in almost all of his claims.

That’s when Lomborg was first inspired to write “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” which sets the record straight on environmental doom. His book, once the #67 bestseller on Amazon.com, provides 2,930 footnotes that refute, among many other claims, that global warming will necessarily destroy mankind and that food resources are running out.

Needless to say, this outraged the environmental orthodoxy. Lomborg has been harassed, with one protestor throwing a pie in his face.

More seriously, “Scientific American” magazine’s January 2002 issue used up eleven of its own pages to try to discredit Lomborg. In a section entitled “Science Defends Itself Against ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist,’” four scientists wrote articles savagely attacking Lomborg. One of them was Stephen Schneider –- a professor of environmental biology and Global Change at Stanford University.

But is Schneider really qualified to give an objective assessment of Lomborg’s work?

In the October 1987 “Discover” magazine, author Jonathan Schnell quoted Schneider as saying:

“[We] are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we'd like to see the world a better place. ... To do that we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination. ... So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. ... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”

In other words, making the “world a better place” is so important to Schneider, that he tells other scientists to exaggerate their findings and obfuscate them. It’s not good enough for scientists to be as honest as they can, but to sacrifice some honesty for “being effective.”

When it comes to environmental crusading, Schneider isn’t alone in that ethic.

In the summer 1990 “Gannett Center Journal,” in an article discussing news coverage of ecology, CNN producer Tera Ryan wrote, “The ‘balanced’ report, in some cases, may no longer be most effective, or even the most informative. Indeed, it can be debilitating. Can we afford for our audience to come to its own conclusions? I think not.”

What’s going on here?

Scientists and journalists have a right to state opinions and serve social causes, just like everyone else. But, when expressing their views, they should be honest and say that they are providing philosophic judgments along with their facts, as ABC News reporter John Stossel did from the start. (He, unlike Schneider, believes in being up front about this.)

But Ryan is advising her colleagues to present their political advocacy as pure objective reporting. Is that news?

And Schneider actually says that scientists must fudge their information and not even show any doubt about it. Are these not breaches of journalistic and scientific ethics, on the parts of Ryan and Schneider, respectively?

Indeed, ecological reporting has unfortunately become propaganda for environmentalism.

To link to Part 2, click here http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?b6f71617-c4f9-49b5-9a54-d2d0bc303b24

Stuart K. Hayashi is the president of the Reason Club of Honolulu and an undergraduate in Entrepreneurial Studies at Hawaii Pacific University, though his opinions do not necessarily reflect that of either institution. He can be reached at radical_individualist@hotmail.com (If you would like to continue seeing Stuart Hayashi's editorials on this site, please let Hawaii Reporter know at info@hawaiireporter.com)

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