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By Juliette Jowit (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-10-18 07:13

One of the most controversial voices in the global warming debate believes too much emphasis is put on extinction fears for ecology's poster animals.

The global warming skeptic Bjorn Lomborg, has sparked fresh debate about the dangers of increasing temperatures with new claims that polar bears are not on the brink of collapse and are more threatened by hunting than by climate change.

In a new book called Cool It, Lomborg says many of the predicted effects of climate change - from melting icecaps to drought and flood - are "vastly exaggerated and emotional claims that are simply not founded in data".

Based on this "hype", international leaders are spending too much time and money trying to cut carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming, rather than spending cash on policies that would help humans and the environment more effectively - such as stopping the hunting of polar bears, he argues.

His book comes at a highly charged time for the climate change debate. Last week a British High Court judge, Mr Justice Barton, ruled that Al Gore's Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth was guilty of "alarmism and exaggeration" in making several claims about the impacts of climate change, including the plight of polar bears.

Claims in the film that the animals were drowning because they were being forced to swim greater distances due to disappearing ice were unfounded, the judge said.

The judge did go on to say there was good support for the four main hypotheses of Gore's film: that climate change is mainly caused by human-created emissions, that global temperatures are rising and are likely to continue to rise, that unchecked climate change will cause serious damage, and that governments and individuals could reduce its impact. Last Friday, Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his environmental work.

Lomborg's analysis has in turn been attacked by international polar bear experts saying that he has used out-of-date statistics to make his case and play down the plight of the world's biggest carnivores.

Lomborg made his name with an earlier book The Skeptical Environmentalist, which claimed fears about man-made climate change were overstated, and followed this up with Global Crises, Global Solutions, in which economists assessed the best ways of spending $50b to improve people's lives, and put tackling global warming low on the list. Environment groups were outraged, but Time magazine listed him in the 100 most influential people in the world.

In his latest book Lomborg turns to the impacts of climate change, and says the story of the polar bears "encapsulates the problems with many of the other scares - once you take a look at the supporting data the narrative falls apart".

He claims that in this case many fears about polar bears being driven to extinction as global warming melts the ice floes they depend on to hunt and wean their cubs can be traced back to research published in 2001 by the Polar Bear Specialist Group of the World Conservation Union, the IUCN. It looked at 20 populations of polar bears in the Arctic, a total of about 25,000 bears.

That report, says Lomborg, found only two bear populations that were in decline, and two were showing an increase in numbers. It said the declining populations were in areas where temperatures were getting colder, and the flourishing populations in areas where temperatures were rising.

Other research referred to in the book shows that since the 1960s global polar bear numbers have increased from 5,000.

More specifically, Lomborg challenges frequently repeated claims that the population of polar bears on the western coast of Canada's Hudson Bay fell from 1,200 in 1987 to 950 in 2004. The research actually goes back to 1981, when there were only 500 bears in that area, since when, he says, numbers have "soared".

And, based on these figures, Lomborg calculates that legal hunting of 49 bears a year accounts for most of the recent decline in Hudson Bay, rather than climate change.

Finally, Lomborg says even though it is "likely disappearing ice will make it harder for polar bears to continue their traditional foraging patterns", many can turn to the lifestyles of brown bears, "from which they are evolved".

"They (polar bears) may eventually decline, though dramatic declines seem unlikely," he concludes. He tries to explode other "myths" too: it is too soon to say that Greenland's ice is melting fast and the threats of catastrophic sea level rise, extreme weather, drought and flooding have all been over- hyped, he says.

Last week Lomborg was accused of the same misuse of statistics which he levels at other scientists, environmental groups and the media.

Andrew Derocher, chairman of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group, said Lomborg's book was based on outdated statistics because the group had published an updated report in 2006, which showed that of 19 populations five were declining, five were stable and two were increasing; and for the remaining six there was not enough data to judge.

Derocher said data from before the 1980s was considered "very questionable", that hunting was considered a "minor concern in some populations", and that the decision by the IUCN to classify polar bears as "vulnerable" was based on the unanimous advice of his committee of 20 members from the five "polar bear nations" in the Arctic.

Lomborg argues that international efforts to reduce greenhouse gases are too slow and expensive to solve the problems that climate change will bring. Instead money should be spent protecting threatened communities, tackling other threats, and investing in zero-carbon technology to reduce long-term emissions, he said.

This is less controversial. But for many scientists it is not a question of either reducing greenhouse gases or adapting to climate change, but doing both.

The Guardian

(China Daily 10/18/2007 page11)