LECTURERS CAN USE AN OVERHEAD PROJECTOR ... A. TO PRESENT KEY POIN...

85. Lecturers can use an overhead projector ...

A. To present key points in advance

B. To present key points as they arise

C. To help students understand what a "follow diagram" is

D. To show students normal handwriting done on the spot

Part 5: Read the following extract from a newspaper article about environment. For questions 86-91

choose the best answer (A, B, C or D) according to the text. Write your answers in the corresponding

numbered boxes.

Lomborg's book entitled The Skeptical Environmentalist cause an uproar when it was published in 1998. The

author's beef is with the litany of doom espoused by certain environmental activists. We have all heard the main

points several times; natural resources are running out; the world's population is too big and growing at an

alarming rate; rivers, lakes, oceans and the atmosphere are getting dirtier all the time. Forests are being destroyed,

fish stocks are collapsing, 40 000 species a year are facing extinction and the planet is warming disastrously. The

world is falling apart and it is our fault. Nonsense, says Lomborg. There are just scare stories put about by

ideologues and promulgated by the media. There is little evidence that the world is in troubles, he claims, and a

good deal more that suggests that we have never had it so good. Air quality in the developed world has improved

markedly over the past 100 years. Human life expectancy has soared. The average inhabitant of the developing

world consumes 38% more calories now than100 years ago, and the centage of people threatened with starvation

has fallen from 35% to 18%. The hole in the ozone layer is more or less fixed; the global warming theory has

been much exaggerated. And though we worry incessantly about pollution, the lifetime risk of drinking water

laden with pesticides at the European Union safety limit is equivalent of smoking1.4 cigarettes. In short the world

is not falling apart; rather the doom mongers have led us all down the garden path. "Lomborg" is the dirtiest word

in environmental circles at the moment. Henning Sorenson, former president of Royal Danish Academy of

Science, maintains that his fellow countryman is wrong, dangerous and lacking the professional training even to

comprehend the data he presents. These are strong words. Sorenson was referring specifically to Lemborg's

opinions on mineral resources, but this book contains sufficient biological nonsense to add ignorance of at least

one more discipline to the charge sheet. For example, the long term growth in the number of species on Earth over

the past 600m years - itself a disputed issue, though you would not know it - is accredited to "a process

specialisation in which both due to the fact that the Earth's physical surroundings have become more diverse and a

result of all other species becoming more specialized." One really has to look further than a United Nation

Environment Programme report to understand such complex issues. And surely only a statistician could arrive at a

figure of 0.7% extinction of all species on Earth in the next 50 years, when respectable estimates of total diversity

range from 2m to 500m species (not 2m-80m, as Lormborg claims). However, my greatest concern is with

Lomborg's tone. He is clearly committed to rubbishing the views of hand-picked environmentalists, frequently the

very silly ones such as Ehrlich, whom professional have been ignoring for decades. This selective approach does

not inspire much confidence: ridiculing idiots is easy. Who better to manipulate data in support of a particular

point of view than a professional statistician? And who to trust with the task less than someone argues like a

lawyer?

The reader should be wary in particular of Lomborg's passion for global statistics; overarching averages can

obscure a lot of important detail. The area of land covered with trees may not have changed much in the past 50

years, but this is mostl y because northern forests have increased in area while the biologically richer tropical ones

have declined. If you want to see how global trend translate into one particular local context, go to northern

Scotland and gaze over immense plantations of America conifers that have replaced Britain's biologically unique

native peatlands. And to balance the books, the area of noisome tree farms has to be reflected by deforestation

somewhere else in the world, let's say Madagascar, for example. That the global forest area has remained more or

less constant actually tell us nothing about the state of environment.So have we been led down the garden path by

the environmentalists? Lomborg argues a convincing case with which I have much sympathy, but the reader

should perhaps follow the author's lead and maintain a healthy scepticism. And if you come away with the

nagging suspicion that Lomborg has a secret drawer of data that does not with his convictions, that you are quite

probably a cynic.