I’m Skeptical

Of course, EPN crafted this factoid to sound troubling. You’ll make rash decisions if a gun is pointed at you, won’t you? Words matter. This rhetoric is designed to get you to take action, specifically grabbing your credit card and giving money to continue the fight. “Crisis, real or not, is a commodity,” Tom Knudson wrote in his 2001 series, Environment, Inc., “And slogans and sound bites masquerade as scientific fact.”

I’m also skeptical because of the organizations that EPN is affiliated with, including Tzeporah Berman‘s ForestEthics–an organization that, according to writer Mark Leiren-Young, “works with and/or bullies businesses into better environmental practices.” ForestEthics and World Wildlife Fund use “gray sources” and that will lead me to be more skeptical of the purported facts quoted. Ms. Berman contributed her ‘expertise’ to Leonardo DiCaprio‘s climate-change documentary, The 11th Hour.

Image via Wikipedia

Ms. Berman told the film’s producers, “I think you need to look at the world’s resources and data showing that’s showing that 80 percent of the world’s intact forests are already gone…” To which I would have said, “show me the data,” but they said, “Who are you?”

She was hired for that as a consultant after piping up at a Bioneers‘ Conference in Marin, California, “I think,” she told the group who turned out to be the movie’s producers and directors, “you need to look at the world’s resources and data showing that’s showing that 80 percent of the world’s intact forests are already gone and there are only three countries left in the world with enough forests to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem services. And that’s Canada, Russia, and Brazil.” To which I would have said, “show me the data,” but they said, “Who are you?”

There are two parts to this: (1) Conversion of roughly half the earth’s forests and (2) Degradation of roughly 80% of our present forests. Let’s start with the conversion question.

Have roughly half the world’s forests been burned or cleared and converted to non-forest use?

Probably not. In his book “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” Bjørn Lomborg states that most authorities put the figure around 20 to 25 percent.

Of course, this is disputed by Emily Matthews, then with the World Resources Institute. Although she concedes, “Andrew Goudie [one of the authorities Lomborg cites], indeed gives a figure of 20 percent net loss in forest cover since pre-agricultural times. However, its author provides no reference or authority for this number.” Of course, neither does she state why this is incorrect. She does state, “Lomborg confusingly contrasts net loss of forest cover (that is, his figure of loss of natural forest offset by regrowth and new plantations) with loss of original forest (WWF‘s figure).”

Apparently, then, the contention is that one-half of the earth’s remaining forests have never, ever, been used for firewood, burned for plentiful game the following season, logged, or otherwise used for mankind’s purposes. I think the number is low because before humans developed agriculture, they used fire to change the forest’s composition to assure that young and tender new growth was there to attract game they could hunt.

Source: World Resources Institute

The terms do get slippery, don’t they? “Original forest” can mean pretty much whatever you want it to mean; it does not appear in the definitions of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The closest to what might be termed “Original” is the “Primary Forest” where the effects of humans no longer appear present. The FAO doesn’t fret about deep ecology or try to compare our current forests to forests before humans walked on two legs. They know we are in the Anthropocene Epoch. To the FAO deforestation and conversion mean the same thing: the change of use of the land (not the forest or its composition) to another land use or reducing tree canopy cover below 10 percent for a long time.

So, have half of the world’s forests been converted? That all depends on whose definitions you want to use. I would use Lomborg’s figure of 20-25 percent, since he uses FAO definitions and sources his number.

What do you say? Do you have any numbers to show that the earth has lost 1/2 of its forests?

Has human activity degraded almost 80 percent of what remains of the planet’s once vast forests?

I’ll get to that in the next post.

Definitions

• Deforestation (aka Conversion), “the conversion of forest to another land use or the long-term reduction of tree canopy cover below the 10% threshold.” (My emphasis)
• Degradation, “the long-term reduction of the overall potential supply of benefits from the forest, which includes wood, biodiversity and any other product or service.”

• Forest, “Forests are lands of more than 0.5 hectares, with a tree canopy cover of more than 10 percent, which are not primarily under agricultural or urban land use.”

Sources:

FAO Report, “ON DEFINITIONS OF FOREST AND FOREST CHANGE”
Lomborg, Bjørn.,The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World. Cambridge University Press. 2004 p.16

There are steps that we can take to reduce a footprint, carbon or otherwise:

• Move to a metropolitan area. Urban areas, due to their compactness, are more efficient.
• Eat less meat.
  
• Buy less packaged food. It’s healthier for you and needs less energy to produce.
• Use mass transit.
• Use less.
• Ride a bike or walk.
  

Now, those are things that are “other than cost.” Should cost be a consideration? Only if there isn’t enough money or the resources to do everything. Since money is a consideration, we need to determine where to get the best return on our investment.

For about a decade, the world’s greatest economists have gathered to generate the Copenhagen Consensus (of which Bjørn Lomborg is a part) in order to prioritize where to put money. Research and Development in low-carbon energy technologies to combat anthropogenic global warming (AGW) wound up at 14th on the list of the world’s ills to invest capital in.

Here’s Copenhagen Consensus’s top ten list of the world’s ills where we will get the most for our money:

1. Micronutrient supplements for children (vitamin A and zinc) (Challenge: Malnutrition)
2. The DOHA development agenda (Challenge: Trade)
3. Micronutrient fortification (iron and salt iodization) (Challenge: Malnutrition)
4. Expanded immunization coverage for children (Challenge: Diseases)
5. Biofortification (Challenge: Malnutrition)
6. Deworming and other nutrition programs at school (Challenge: Malnutrition & Education)
7. Lowering the price of schooling (Challenge: Education)
8. Increase and improve girls’ schooling (Challenge: Women)
9. Community-based nutrition promotion (Challenge: Malnutrition)
10. Provide support for women’s reproductive role (Challenge: Women)

You can see that concentrating on malnutrition and hunger,  freer trade, diseases, education and women’s issues will yield  greater benefits dollar for dollar. Attempting to mitigate AGW today ranks 30th on the Consensus list.

Download the results of the 2008 Copenhagen Consensus here.

Update from a Bjorn Lomborg Op-Ed in the April 24, 2009 New York Times:

Economic estimates … show that every dollar invested in quickly making low-carbon energy cheaper can do $16 worth of good. If the Kyoto agreement were fully obeyed through 2099, it would cut temperatures by only 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Each dollar would do only about 30 cents worth of good.

Rather than pledging to cut emissions and failing, let’s put our capital into getting wind and solar online.

Read an interview with Bjorn Lomborg: here.

Excerpt:

I think the main point of [The Skeptical Environmentalist book] was to challenge our notion that everything is going down the drain, and I don’t see any reason to revise that…I’m trying to recapture much of what the left stood for–when we believed in progress, when we believed that scientific understanding could lead us ahead and not just rely on tradition. … Unfortunately, I find that a fair amount of the left has turned towards a romanticized view of the world.

An African safari trip once confronted America’s new president with a question he could not answer: why the rich world prized elephants over African children. Today’s version of that question is: why will richer nations spend obscene amounts of money on climate change, achieving next to nothing in 100 years, when we could do so much good for mankind today for much less money?

Read the whole essay here.