Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Who wants to see Saddam Hussien continute his bloody rule and watch as he attacks another country? Or kill more Kurds?

Who wants to watch as Lybia continues its nuclear program? Oh, they stopped their program......

Who wants Iran to continue to mistreat the female half of their population? Or watch Iran get a nuclear bomb and use it on Israel?

They will all watch and not do anything...but if we do something they will bicker, complain and hinder anything that we do.

What is stopping them from doing something?

Global rule sets cannot be enforced. Therefore back to an empire system?

Will the European Union be one of the empires, or will it disintegrate and join others? An interesting question, not least for the new European Council on Foreign Relations.

On Lomborg... In your mere consideration of his presentation you have now demonized yourself. :)

Seriously, your integrity is to be commended. Welcome to the skeptical fold. (Not to say that there shouldn't be a Manhattan Project for energy independence starting yesterday)

One of the most important facts of the current world is that the scramble of globalism has become an intense PR war. A PR war which a great many people in this country participate in without realization. Witness the comments coming from Al Quaeda that essentially mimic western progressive grievances. Or the constant stream of emotionally charged accusations against Israel, tweaking the hardwired "where there's smoke there's fire" rumors-must-be-true parts of our brains.

Maybe now you will see how the global PR effort against the United States applies to many other matters besides the environment.

See "Oil for Food" and "Iraq War"

Understand... KGB propaganda was a global effort... and very successful. We may have won the cold war, but as per the Bush model, we are way behind on the real war -- the PR war -- which Putin fights to this day.

Thankfully, Sarkozy may have broken the western bloc. Although, the efforts to disgrace him and take him down are proceeding apace. (See Wolfowitz, World Bank)

Good column on what there is in the world to be thinking about and working on other than climate change. However, I think the Nobel Academy conflated the issue by awarding both Mr. Gore and the IPCC and not explaining why--that is left for the community to realize on their own, apparently. I also think that the column written here does not explain enough of why you are pulling back from your commendation of Mr. Gore, and on what lines are your current thoughts.

I certainly second the recommendation of Cool It by Bjorn Lomborg as essential reading for anyone with interest in the climate debate. If I recall correctly Mr. Barnett's comment to me during a couple of posts on the topic a short while ago, it is "intellectually devastating" on the Kyoto Agreement. Lomborg also criticizes Mr. Gore's alarmist tendencies and use of hyperbole, while relying heavily on the IPCC reports and the Copenhagen Consensus for the facts of the issue. Lomborg's narrative essentially demonstrates how Gore raised the issue of climate change so long ago in public discourse, though polarized the issue in doing so, and was then followed by the IPCC with more moderate predictions (which are, indeed, peer reviewed ad infinitum) which bring some reality to the debate. The interplay of these two deserves a prize, Nobel or otherwise, but neither one would stand on its own as a Nobel recipient: The IPCC members are just doing their jobs as scientists, while Mr. Gore's alarmist rhetoric has brought peace to no one. I believe that it's the dialogue pushed forward by these two parties that earned their award, and not the actions or efforts of either in particular.

I read that there's a high school in the US Midwest that plans to show An Inconvenient Truth as a required part of their science curriculum. I think they should then also assign Cool It as required reading and an effective foil to the movie's extremist predictions. But I digress...

Finally, I think Cool It wasn't long enough anyway. Sure, there was a longer version published in the UK, but apparently it's really only longer in the number and length of notes and the collection of references. Basically, the US version of the book is edited down from that UK edition, and both are essentially distilled and updated from Mr. Lomborg's massive textbook The Skeptical Environmentalist, which approaches 600 pp.

Anyway, my point is that Mr. Lomborg (and you, Tom) could back up your points on the misdirection of concern and debate with some small additional effort to achieve far greater understanding among your readers. Your comments here are essential in putting your column in perspective, but not everyone who sees your column will know that. What I think they'll see is a non-sequitur, your neutral mention of Mr. Gore's prize award for his environmentalism and then your immediate shift to the GWOT and other issues of more immediate concern.

Here's Bjorn Lomborg's own take on the Nobel (full article here):

"This year's Nobel peace prize justly rewards the thousands of scientists of the United Nations climate change panel (the IPCC). These scientists are engaged in excellent, painstaking work that establishes exactly what the world should expect from climate change.

The other award winner, former US vice-president Al Gore, has spent much more time telling us what to fear. While the IPCC's estimates and conclusions are grounded in careful study, Gore doesn't seem to be similarly restrained."

Tom,
I very happy you were able to read "Cool It."
I'm disappointed it took you this look to appreciate it's approach.
After all, Lomborg wrote "The Sceptical Enviornmentalist" in Danish in 1998.

I also feel the scientists are running the risk of hurting the long term credibility of our scientific institutions. Many believe so strongly that immediate political action on global warming must be taken that they constantly emphasize worst case scenarios and exclude the normal caveats and doubts that all science has.

I live in a upper middle class suburb where many mothers are skipping vaccinations for their children because they fear autism and don't believe the FDA when it says vaccinations are safe.

There is real danger when scientists and public health officials resort to exaggerations and heated rhetoric. You might get your short term political result, but in the long term it hurts our society by twisting another institution into just another partisan group in the public's mind.

Scott: Tom has been citing Lomborg for years and, in fact, with Tom's own work on the NewRuleSets.Project with Cantor Fitzgerald, predated the Copenhagen Consensus with very similar work...

jim: good point though i think the scientific community has already hurt its credibility, ie, it's past the risk. and this isn't the only issue, either...

the postmodern critique pointed out the limits of rational inquiry some time ago. science in general has seemed fairly oblivious to this critique, for good and ill.

now we are seeing the politicization of science without attendant awareness that subjectivity is involved. the scientific 'consensus' is simply presented as 'fact'.

I think Dr. Barnett's conclusions might make sense if the climate change discussion was taking place in a vacuum between the Mr. Gore and Mr. Lomborg. But that is the farthest thing from the present reality.

You need to understand that the IPCC and even Mr. Lomborg are operating in a rational middle ground where there is a reasonable range of scientific debate. The IPCC are doing the hard work. And Mr. Lomborg, and economist, is less and less refuting climate change and in many ways is promoting a more serious very long term plan to deal with it.

But what you are forgetting, and this is where Mr. Gore comes in, is that the corporate interests opposed to any action on climate change had the upper had until recently. Mr. Gore is being acknowledged because we might not be currently considering the IPCC's work had it not been for his parallel campaign.

You can't just move the goalposts and pretend that Mr. Gore has not played an important role in keeping the discussion about climate change alive against countervailing forces.

Christopher: you have a very high opinion of your understanding of this debate and of your understanding of what Tom knows and thinks: 'You need to understand', 'what you are forgetting', 'You can't just move the goalposts and pretend'.

Tom never said Gore didn't play an important role. in fact, he has been complimentary of Gore.

in this case, Tom's expressing concern about Gore's alarmism, which has often been criticized by the scientific community, including those who are worried about global warming.

so if you disagree with that critique, by all means, fire away (civilly).

why make Tom's view on this a strawman ('farthest thing from the present reality')?

All I can say is that I've got a lot of comments here from people unfamiliar with my background and my work and thus we get a lot of fill-in-the-blanks analysis.

I brought the IPCC's chairman Pachauri to my NewRuleSet wargame on the future of the environment in Asia (held at World Trade Center 1 in June 2001), and the main text I used to explore the environment in general was Lomborg's "Skeptical Environmentalist." Back then, global warming was an obscure topic discussed by few.

No, of course, all are free to lecture . . .

There is much that I admire about Gore. However, I do think that his tendencies towards exaggeration and over-simplification feed into a segment of the environmentalist movement that I call "eco-reactionary" (I don't think that Gore himself is one of these, only that he gives them aid and comfort). These people are fundamentally opposed to globalization because they do not think that the Earth can sustain economic development on such a scale. Accordingly, they want to go "back to nature" and a "simpler time." In practical terms, this leads to a kind of "boat is full" mentality whereby the people of the New Core (China, India, Brazil) are told to eschew economic development and go back to leading happier, simpler lives in an undeveloped paradise, and the people of the Gap are told not to even embark on the path to development in the first place -- all the while, the purveyors of such ideas can get into their hybrids and get together for dinner at Spago in order to congratulate themselves for being so righteous.

the fact of the matter is,there are four factions in the US right now:
1) the nationalist conservative like Pat Bucanon.2) internationlist conservative like Henry Kissanger.3) internationlist libral like David Rockefler,Brzezinski. 4) Neo conservative and Israel lobby,like Henry
Jackson.Bush's admins stinks and the message is loud and clear;
anybody who associated with Bush perviously,like Spain(going along
with Iraq war) in fact he had a meeting with Bush in crowford, texas
before the war, and advised him to wait till it passes through the UN,
but Bush said "it is like the chineese's torture" and i can't wait.or Tony Blair in englan,Smith in Australia,Harper in Canada,they are all
finished due to assocaition with Bush, and now the new victim is Sarkozy in France.there is a good article by Pat Bucanon titled "who
started the second cold war".and also the 1st cold war which started
by Geroge Kanon. there are those Fox News viewers,in fact 50% of
them,who still think,there was weapon of mass destruction in Iraq,and that Sadam had relationship with ben laden(goes to show you the extend of the posion of Hoper Merduich on the public).there
is also a good article by Mark Danner titled "The president at peace with himself",regarding how Bush perhaps like Ahmadinejad,has complete confidence in his believes in changing the world the way he
wants,and that he has no doubts whatsoever to the point that makes himblind of what is acutally is going on in the world,and that is
where people all over the world from Europe,China,middle east,Russia have fear about.

I have to say, I think that Dr. Barnett puts too much faith in Lomborg. His methodology is extremely suspect, and it's pretty obvious that a lot of references in The Skeptical Environmentalist were cherry-picked. My albeit limited interaction with people in the climate science community leaves me with the impression that Lomborg isn't taken all that seriously, mostly due to his methodological weaknesses.

BTW, if you're looking for a great science blog to add to your perusal, RealClimate is great.

i have to say, Dan, i think you're wrong. Lomborg agrees with the IPCC, and so does Tom. they don't dispute climate change. they dispute the response.

"in this case, Tom's expressing concern about Gore's alarmism, which has often been criticized by the scientific community, including those who are worried about global warming."

I apologize if you thought me uncivil -- it was not intended. My point was that "Gore's alarmism" was politically countering quite a lot of alarming talk saying that climate change was a hoax. And much of that was far more shrill than Mr. Gore. I don't mind criticism of alarmism. I just think that criticism without acknowledging what that alarmism is countering is unfair. I too would criticize Mr. Gore, if his alarmism was opposing only fair-minded scientists and economists in the middle.