Comments on: Lovelock & Lomberg on climate change

By: John Mashey

John Mashey — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:14:47 +0000

1) I've gotten Lovelock's book and at least looked at the wind mentions. He says there are places (US, Canada, and he doesn't say it, but Australia, for similar reasons)where it might make sense, but is skeptical of its value to the UK. That makes some sense, given those global wind maps I mentioned. The UK has intense winds, but they're mostly offshore, and geographically more concentrated than the Archer/Jacobson studies in US Midwest. The UK would have to tie into a much bigger grid, and as I noted, nuclear will coem back, hopefully 4thGen. 2) However, somewhat disappointingly, Lovelock doesn't consider demand-response programs like PG&E or EnerNOC, and otehrs have done for industries for years, and are certainly coming to homes as well. Maybe V2G will work some day. Anyway, next to #1 efficiency, demand-shifting and customer assistance is a really big help ... and economists should love all the interesting problems! (Places dependent primarily on coal or nuclear power don't seem to think about this quite so much, but people with a mix that includes hydro, solar, wind, and gasa peakers think about it often.) 3) Lomborg seems to have had a consistent underlying view for a long time, no matter what else he writes: no government regulation of anything, especially CO2. See further comments @ Deltoid. Saying "governments should invest in green tech" sounds good (and I'm in CA, and *we* do, and we actually mean it), but I still think it's clever misdirection on his part, and it fools many people. CA does better at energy efficiency and green innovation than most parts of the US, and it's from: a) Relentless raising of CA government standards, via powerful entities like California Energy Commission and California Air Resources Board. Given the unique role that CA plays in setting emissions standards in the US, and the other effects on efficiencdy standards, it is thoroughly loathed by CATO, Wall Street Journal OpEd, etc. In practice, the right sorts or rules (and CA gets it wrong, too) encourage innovation that people didn't believe was possible, like more efficient fridges and much-lower-emission cars. Utility-rate decoupling is awesomely effective in unleashing creativity ... and fossil fuel provides hate it, of course. b) The government sometimes directly invests in encouraging greentech. Lomborg wants b), but does not at all seem to want a), although a) is at least as important. Lomborg is perfectly happy if governments give more money to companies for greentech, as long as governments make no regulations... I don't think it's an accident that The Skeptical Environmentalist leads off with a key quote from Julian Simon, or that Lomborg does the rubber-chicken circuit for certain US thinktanks.

By: John Mashey

John Mashey — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:54:48 +0000

HC:
Sorry, I should have been more explicit on the wind.
Part of the issue is the dispersion/grid CS intermittency.
But the other part, and more relevant for this, was the set of global maps on wind resource.
I.e. What you think about wind depends at least somewhat on where you are located, and the compatibility of turbines with other uses.

For example, US Midwest has good wind, and farmers are happy to allocate 3% of their acreage to turbines if the price is right.

I am concerned about the UK, of course, as wind us not so easy, and sunlight isn’t up to Oz or California stds.
As their North Sea resources diminish, it surely seems nuclear will come back.

By: hc

hc — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:03:42 +0000

John, the archer-Jacobson paper is interesting though mainly concerned with interconnecting wrong farms to smmothe out the delivery of electricity. I’ll read carefully when I get a chance. Thanks for the valuable link. Lovelock is emphatic in rejecting wind.

By: hc

hc — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:59:40 +0000

Tim, As I say above I think Lomberg has some good points. I agree that apart from trying to mitigate emissions we should subsidise non-carbon-based energy technologies. Read what I wrote – I did not malign him.

By: Tim Curtin

Tim Curtin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:47:36 +0000

HC and JM: Lomborg is a believer in global warming, and skeptical only of claims that it will always be bad for all and that benefits of mitigating it far outweigh the costs, when those costs otherwise invested would yield far higher returns for all humanity. Neither Stern nor Garnaut ever assessed the opportunity costs (ie benefits from alternative uses of the resources to be devoted to ETS CCS etc) of their proposals for ETS CCS etc. Try reading his (ed.) Global Crises Global Solutions before next maligning Lomborg.

By: John Mashey

John Mashey — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:22:11 +0000

1) Is your negative comment on wind a general one, or specifically for Australia? papers by Stanford folks are worth considering. 2) Regarding, Lomborg, one must always be careful, as what he says and what he seems to be trying to do sometimes are not necessarily the same. He is in some ways a slicker reincarnation of Julian Simon.