Skeptical Environmentalist makes greens see red. (Correction, Please!).

ITEM: Bjorn Lomborg, author of a book called The Skeptical Environmentalist, claims "that the planet is in far healthier shape than most greens maintain." Lomborg's book has brought him "worldwide obloquy" by those greens, reports The Economist. He has now been named to run Denmark's Institute for Environmental Assessment. "Local greens are spitting with fury," noted the London publication in its March 2nd-8th issue.

"Academic critics have denounced him to Denmark's committee on scientific dishonesty." Indeed, said The Economist: "Critics say Denmark's reputation as a pioneer in environmental protection will be devastated."

ITEM: A series of essays in the Scientific American for January 2002 hit the new book The Skeptical Environmentalist for using "misleading math" to "dismiss warnings about peril for the planet." But, insist the editors, "it's the author who is out of touch with the facts."

CORRECTION: In truth, it's Scientific American's 11-page attack that's out of touch with the facts. If that were not the case, the authors of that attack would surely have been able to find more than a couple errors in the book of more than 500 pages, neither of them particularly significant.

The Economist took a somewhat different approach with Bjorn Lomborg's book, condemning it with faint praise. Yet the London magazine knows full well that such criticism is unwarranted, having earlier rated The Skeptical Environmentalist one of the best of 2001. In its year-end issue, it stated that that Lomborg had produced a "mammoth statistical exercise" proving that, by almost every measure, "the environment is improving as the world gets richer -- thereby casting grave doubts on the common green view that trade and economic growth automatically harm the environment."

Lomborg remains a left-winger, but the green cult brooks no apostates. Its unprecedented attack proves its obsession. Matt Ridley, author of Genome, offers perspective in another London publication, The Spectator: Even if the Kyoto treaty on reducing carbon dioxide could be ratified, it would "delay global warming by six years at most by 2100." Lomborg shows that the cost of treaty implementation, every single year over the century, would be "the same as the cost -- once -- of installing clean drinking water and sanitation for every human being on the planet. Priorities, anyone?"

But doomsayers need doom, and the doom-and-gloom establishment has gone bonkers over this book. Green activists have reacted to it with "sheer panic," as put by James Glassman of the American Enterprise Institute.