Bjorn Lomborg, the “skeptical environmentalist”, to borrow the title of his most famous book, and favorite academic of the deniers, seems to have made a full-speed, 180-degree U-turn that would make any Hollywood stunt driver proud. I’m not sure what to make of this. Is it nothing more than a ploy to get attention? Has he finally seen enough evidence to change his mind (if only to avoid being conspicuously wrong)? I don’t know, but fire up the microwave and make a big ol’ bowl of popcorn, because this should be entertaining, if nothing else.
Geoengineering: It’s a Great Idea, It’s a Terrible Idea:
The Copenhagen Consensus, an outfit organized by “skeptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg, just released a bunch of new papers seeking to answer the question: Would a technological fix for rising temperatures be cheaper and easier than the cat-herding that makes up today’s global climate-change talks?
The answer is a resounding yes, we don’t know.
That is, on paper at least, climate engineering looks fantastically attractive. For a tiny fraction of the cost of curbing global greenhouse-gas emissions, which lead to global warming, scientists could tinker with the atmosphere and avoid the worst effects of climate change.
Just spraying droplets of sea water to make bigger, whiter clouds, for instance, would reflect enough of the sun’s rays to limit future temperature increases—and it would be ridiculously cheap to do, bringing trillions of dollars of future benefits for a trifling investment today.
That’s the conclusion of “An Analysis of Climate Engineering as a Response to Climate Change,” which strongly recommends more research on ways to deflect solar radiation, whether through whiter clouds or artificially replicating volcanic eruptions, which also send temperatures falling. (Capturing carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere with giant vacuums is too expensive, the paper concludes.)
Sound too good to be true? That’s what other folks at the Copenhagen Consensus thought, too. First, keeping temperatures in check addresses the problem, not the cause—rising carbon levels are still making life miserable for oceans, for example.
(I’ll have more to say on the geoengineering issue in another post later today.)
Bjorn Lomborg, an influential figure among climate change sceptics, has thrown his weight behind a drive to forge a global deal to halt rising world temperatures at a summit in Copenhagen this year.
“It’s incredibly important. We need a global deal on the climate,” Mr Lomborg told the Financial Times.
The comments – from the author of the 2001 book The Sceptical Environmentalist and a 2007 follow-up saying climate change was less important than other world problems – are likely to be greeted with dismay by climate change sceptics who have seen him as an ally on the public stage.
“If that disappoints some people who are sceptics, I am not the least bit unhappy. I hope to have more people enthused [in thinking about how to tackle climate change],” he said.
He is concerned that the United Nations-led consensus that a climate treaty must focus on cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from rich countries is mistaken.
“It’s a costly way to achieve very little,” he said.
Instead, Mr Lomborg argues, there are cheaper ways of halting temperature rises.
These include tackling sources of climate change other than carbon dioxide, such as methane and soot; investing in new technologies; adapting to the effects of climate change; planting more forests; and weighing up whether emissions cuts are cheaper to do now or later.
…
Having questioned aspects of climate change science in the past, Mr Lomborg now says “the basic scientific questions [on climate change] have been answered pretty unequivocally”.
Therefore the question moves on from not whether to try to tackle climate change but how to do so most cheaply and effectively.
What a breathtakingly arrogant viewpoint. The question has suddenly become not whether to do anything, but what the best solution is? It’s mighty nice of Lomborg to pull his head out of the sand and join the overwhelming majority of the people studying this issue. Next thing you know, he’ll be talking about the potential of using that newfangled Internet thing to share information about climate change.
As for relying on methane reductions to halt climate chaos, consider me exceedingly skeptical. According to the latest IPCC report, methane accounts for only about one third of the total anthropogenic radiative forcing, and methane will be extremely hard to reduce significantly, simply because so much of it comes from food production: rice paddies, “enteric fermentation” (i.e. animal gaseous emissions), etc. The one benefit of reducing methane emissions is that the atmospheric lifetime of methane is much shorter than that of CO2, roughly a dozen years vs. centuries to millenia. Therefore lower methane emissions means not just a slowdown in the growth of the atmospheric level, but an actual reduction in the level, at least after 12 years. But given the avalanche of bad news on the environmental front, that’s not enough to avoid major human impacts unless we also make very large reductions in our CO2 emissions.
Is it just me, or does this sound like Lomborg still hasn’t fully accepted the scale and scope of the mess we’re in regarding climate chaos, his sudden enthusiasm for a Copenhagen agreement notwithstanding?
This notion makes me quite berserk. The consequences of unfettered fossil fuel emissions are not confined to global warming, heinous as that is. Pollution that is causing epidemic cancer outbreaks is one, environmental degradation such as mountaintop coal mining is another, but as far as I can tell the most immediate threat is the creation of ozone, which is rapidly decimating plant life of all sorts. Leaving aside droughts, wild weather, and desertification, we are poised for widespread crop failures, amplifying positive feedbacks from wildfires and rotting wood, soon to result in global famine.
Could you tell these idiots that it isn’t enough to grow clouds and a radical scaling back of greenhouse gas emissions is the ONLY POSSIBLE PATH towards survival of a livable climate?
k thx.
Great post Lou. I think you’re right on, if Lomborg thinks the solution is permanent geo-engineering for the next 1000 years, he doesn’t get it (which isn’t too surprising, since he obviously never has so far).
My personal view of him is that he doesn’t really care much about this stuff beyond a surface level – he’ll stand for whatever gets him the most attention at the time (being a denier won’t get him near as much mileage/attention, anymore, as a “we don’t have to do anything except think we can control the planet climate ourselves in perpetuity/1000years and nobody has to change what they do” dude). If he has to completely flip what he’s standing for or saying, so be it – reminds me of Newt Gingrich and how he’s taken opposite positions on things over the last couple of years just to stay in the “current” spotlight. This guy just wants to be at the center of attention no matter what.
Another angle in all this might be the following. At some point in this soap opera that is Climate Change, the Oil, Coal etc. folks are going to look at the big picture and see they’ve delayed action on Global Warming as long as they can, but that action is coming – and they still won’t want it. Their next best position is to pour huge amounts of resources and lobbying into doing a “geo-engineering – free lunch – no change” solution (i.e. no appreciable CO2 emissions reduction action) – so they can keep destroying their grandkids future – I mean keep on just doing what they’re doing to make money.
I haven’t heard that angle talked about previously, but the richest most powerful industries in the world aren’t just going to give up on subverting real climate change action just because their denier funding/turn it into a political issue ploy has played out with enough people that they can’t stop action. Old Bjorn may just be pointing to the future direction of the corporate funded denier groups/lackeys – and would probably appeal to all the conservative deniers when they can’t deny reality anymore – since nothing would have to change (in their heads). What a dream of a political position for Exxon and Co. to take compared to now. I can see them saying it like Bjorn said – it’ll be easier/cheaper to do it this way…I wouldn’t be suprised to find out ol’ Bjorn has been getting checks from a front firm for Exxon.
I would guess we’ll know this flip in strategy has occurred when we see the Wall Street Journal Editorial page (and other conservative Editorial pages) start espousing this angle (just geo-engineer and nothing else) instead of trying to poo-poo the science as not valid.
Thanks for putting this up, nice catch on all this, I had no idea ol’ Bjorn did this.
witsendnj: Yep, it makes me nuts, too. Why do you think I write off this site on my taxes as “therapy sessions”?
sasparilla: Wow, I hadn’t made that connection (the transition from denier to geo-engineering proponent), but it makes a frightening amount of sense. I would be shocked to find out that it’s not already been widely discussed and accepted inside nearly all of the fossil fuel companies.
“I would be shocked to find out that it’s not already been widely discussed and accepted inside nearly all of the fossil fuel companies.”
I’m sure your right, they have way too many smart people not to have thought of that “next” step and frankly with the power etc. that they wield, makes me nervous. Although maybe we’re giving them too much credit – would they really be that smart and strategic in their planning?
This line of thought makes me think we really need this climate bill to get through the Senate to get the future energy rails pointed in the right direction, emissions reductions – while most of these bad actors are still focused on denying (before a shift to a free lunch solution could be proposed and embraced).
Ahhhh, here’s the NY Times to the rescue again (their climate reporting group must be headquartered down with Exxon/Mobile in Texas) – with a wonderful piece telling us how we need to use geo-engineering to solve the climate change crisis and that it would much cheaper than really dealing with the emissions problem and missing that it won’t really solve the problem:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/science/11tier.html?hpw
I just stumbled over a link to that NYT/geo-engineering piece. I’m not impressed with the article, to put it mildly.
My view of geo-engineering is pretty much what it’s been for quite some time: It’s insanely risky, I hate it, even talking about it will dilute the argument for taking a much better route (reducing emissions), and our own half-hearted measures (plus cheating on international agreements) will force us to rely on it within the next few decades.