Reviews for Motherhood

The average rating for Motherhood based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-07-20 00:00:00 Jeff Beerman Danish Professor Bjorn Lomborg was an active member of Greenpeace when he came across an article claiming the environment was nowhere near in bad of shape as as the environmental movement was claiming. Convinced this was nothing more than right-wing propaganda, Lomborg bought the author's book and assigned his class the job of debunking it. To his surprise, Lomborg discovered that science supported some of the man's arguments - enough progress has been made that the planet is actually in better shape than it used to be and he believes many of the most dire predictions about our pending environmental doom are overblown. Lomborg came to believe that the environmental movement has adopted the position that the public cannot be trusted with the actual facts and has embraced the tactic of attempting to terrify it into taking action based on what it thinks is are the most important issues. Lomborg, however, has come to see this as a shortsighted and highly detrimental approach, not to mention a condescending one. He has more faith in people than that. A statistician by training, he knows that good decisions can't be made on the basis of faulty data. Give people accurate information, though, and they will make the right choices. So he wrote TSE with the intent of taking a close look at each of our major environmental issues and spelling out what the science really says about these problems so that we can prioritize our resources and actions accordingly. To say this book has been controversial is an understatement. Lomborg was the subject of attacks by those upset at his challenge to current policy. Scientific American devoted a full issue to challenging and debunking his conclusions. His work has also been misappropriated by anti-environmentalists who try to use it as an excuse to claim that everything is hunky-dory and there is no reason to do anything about our current environmental situation. I don't have the science knowledge necessary to adequately evaluate the criticisms against Lomborg, nor do I know how well his conclusions hold up in light of changes since the book was first published. I came away from the book with the understanding that his message is not that we should do nothing; on the contrary, it is that we are doing the wrong things because of fear-based misunderstandings of the data. On global warming, for example, Lomborg states emphatically that it's real, it's human caused, and it needs to be aggressively addressed. However, he is a critic of the Kyoto Protocol because it spends so much money money to accomplish a carbon emissions reduction that is so small as to be in his opinion essentially meaningless. Lomborg's book did help me consider that no, things aren't so bad we should all just throw in the towel; on the contrary, we've made real progress and have the technology and the ingenuity to solve even the most daunting problems still facing us. What we need is the will to do so, and in order to develop that will, we need not fear-based manipulation, but accurate information about what's really happening and the tools we have to change it. This book makes a meaningful contribution towards that goal.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-25 00:00:00 Joel Cason The cover of The Skeptical Environmentalist looks promising, a stunning sandstone canyon with lovely pine trees dotting an outcropping. Above the title “a brilliant a powerful book” proclaims Matt Ridley author of Genome. This would lead the casual reader to believe that Ridley is an impartial scientist. These two elements are representative of the problems with this book. Using a pristine setting and an expert quote reminiscent of the slight of hand, a magician’s trick, Lomborg lures the skeptic. Ridley is anything but an impartial scientist, he is a past editor of The Economist magazine and a staunch proponent of economic progress. The packaging certainly had me convinced; the subtitle “Measuring the Real State of the World” promised a scientific refutation of doomsday predictions. I selected this book because I did judge the book by its cover. It is unfortunate that while this book claims to offer a scientifically based appraisal of environmental issues, Lomborg uses not science but cajoling, manipulation and whining to try and convince the audience of the veracity of his claim that “statistics is the only way that we can make a scientifically sound description of the world” (page xx) He argues that the state of the planet isn’t all that dire, “children born today –in both the industrialized world and developing countries will live longer and be healthier, they will get more food, a better education, a higher standard of living, more leisure time and far more possibilities-without the global environment being destroyed. And that is a beautiful world” (page 352) which is in sharp contrast with many of the other books I read this quarter, most specifically Derek Jensen’s Endgame. Lomborg takes on many of the environmental spheres of concern including; life expectancy, forests, food and hunger, global warming, biodiversity, and some of the myriad aspects of pollution. In each case, he finds a happy conclusion Even with my limited understanding of statistics, I can find fault with many of his conclusions. I find flaws with his logic. After I finished his book, I found that I was not alone in my distaste for this book. Hundreds of others also find Professor Lomborg’s book to be riddled with flaws. These flaws are so numerous that many readers, including myself, cataloged them. When I reached more than 100 flaws, I categorized them. Other readers did the same. Many of the flaws are minor discrepancies but some of the flaws seemed designed to mislead the reader to a wrong conclusion. This is one of my biggest complaints about this book. As an example, in the chapter about forests he claims that we are not loosing our forests and “since World War Two, not much has changed.” (page 117) My own observation is that the forests of my youth including the Palomar mountains of Southern California and the forests of Northern Colorado is that the acreage might be the same, but the first growth forests, with rich variety of plant and animal life have been replaced in many areas with monoculture of one type of tree with no companion plants or animals. As I walk acre upon acre of these tree farms on a mountain side, I’m not fooled into thinking this is a forest. In addition, Lomborg argues that these tree farms better protect the real forest by decreasing pressure. It’s so irksome, that his arguments seem so very reasonable, yet they reek of oversimplification and the language of denial. Another significant criticism of this book is that I don’t accept the premise that science and scientific facts build a reasonable foundation of knowing what decisions policymakers and stakeholders should make. Culturally we seem to have grown complacent in accepting that scientists have the unique ability to accurately predict the future. This process of creating a future model depends on many variables the most troubling of which is trying to reduce risk associated with uncertainty. Lomborg arrogantly claims repeatedly that his models “more accurately” and “more plausible” (page 286 for example) represent any given problem and solution. As he scientificates cultural and policy problems, he picks and choices the information and the point of view for presentation and solution. As a sample of his audacity, on page 91, he writes “by and large all measurable indicators of human welfare show improvement.” This statement has been flaws, specifically the choice of language “by and large” and “measureable”. He also spends a lot of energy discounting both oil and water shortages. Proving, to himself, that we will not run out of either. This is simply preposterous. Not surprisingly, the Union of Concerned Scientists, a political action group, completed a series of rebuttals to this book. In summation, they concluded that Lomborg’s book is “seriously flawed and fails to meet basic standards of credible scientific analysis.” They specifically blast his assertions where he uncritically cites literature that does not meet the basic standard of having been peer-reviewed. The pervasive use of flawed data is in the words of the UCS, “unexpected and disturbing in a statistician.” (review by Union of Concerned Scientists) This very flawed books with its many significant factual and conceptual errors is nonetheless worth a read. Read it to know the enemy--the enemy of common sense, right use of will and most important the false use of a scientific style of presentation to falsely placate the public. Reading this book will incense anyone who cares about sustaining human life on earth. Richard Fisher of the Skeptical Inquirer reviews this book: Union of Concerned Scientists and Peter Gleick’s review: .