[Peakoil] Spam:*******, Bjorn Lomborg: Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret

[Paul Pollard]

Bjorn Lomborg has promoted for at least ten years the view that the optimal 
way to deal with global warming is to focus on research and development now, 
to find, for instance, financially viable renewable energy, rather than take 
immediate steps to lessen emissions, which he says is too expensive and 
premature. This is a main theme of his article and he finishes it with the 
same point specifically stated.

While he claims to accept the science on anthropogenic global warming, this is 
de facto denialism, for the following reason.

Research on new technology involves theoretical conjecture and laboratory  
bench-scale invention and testing. Development involves small scale 
production, and setting up of pilot plants to test viability of operation in 
the real world at a small scale. New environmental technology, in fact all new 
technology probably, can then only reach its full efficiency potential via 
widespread adoption, commercial deployment, and extended experience with it. 
This widespread experience includes how viable it is on a large scale 
technically, in terms of marketing, in terms of financing, in terms of mass 
production, and so on. Lessons from deployment then feed back to further 
research and development, and in time the technology reaches a mature, more 
optimal form.   

Lomborg's prescription of R and D only is thus a destructive approach to new 
technology and that is why it amounts to de facto denialism.

Subsidy to R and D, and to early real world mass deployment, or forcing its 
use in other ways, such as mandated use by regulation, is thus essential to 
get new environmental technology up and running, especially as its benefits 
aren't reflected in market prices.

Most of his criticisms of electric cars are straw men, or cherry-picked worst 
case, or things that will be improved in time, and there remains a strong case 
to subsidise them now to some degree, not that electric cars are any sort of 
magic solution.

His figure of $5 damage cost from every extra tonne of CO2 emitted as a basis 
for approaching emissions reduction is just pathetic. He doesn't quote a 
source but his figure was probably calculated by getting some money figure on 
damage currently from severe weather events, etc and dividing it by CO2 
emissions each year. On this basis 35 bn tonnes by $5 gives an average annual 
warming cost of $175 bn, or about 0.3% of global GDP, or about $25 a year per 
head of global population. 

However, imagine if we continue to emit growing amounts of CO2 for the next 
few decades, using the $5 rationale, so that we face towards the end of the 
century a catastrophic 4 degree increase above pre-industrial, with a 10 bn 
population. Given the catastrophic effect this would have on GDP (assuming the 
concept is still relevant), the cost of each tonne of CO2 in the atmosphere 
added since industrialisation will be 10 or 100 times the $5 figure. This $5 
figure could only be put forward seriously by someone who simply doesn't 
understand the problem, intentionally or otherwise. 

It's not surprising this utterly tendentious article appeared in Murdoch's 
Wall Street Journal. 

  


On Sat, 23 Mar 2013 06:48:11 pm Keith wrote:
> This article shows the shaky environmental grounds for preferring electric
> cars. This unconventional perspective must already be familiar to policy
> makers and we can expect, therefore, undiminished demand for liquid fossil
> fuels for private motorized transport.
> 
> ================
> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324128504578346913994914472.h
> tml Updated March 11, 2013, 10:14 a.m. ET
> Bjorn Lomborg: Green Cars Have a Dirty Little Secret
> 
> Producing and charging electric cars means heavy carbon-dioxide emissions.
> 
> By Bjorn Lomborg
> 
> Electric cars are promoted as the chic harbinger of an environmentally
> benign future. Ads assure us of "zero emissions," and President Obama has
> promised a million on the road by 2015. With sales for 2012 coming in at
> about 50,000, that million-car figure is a pipe dream. Consumers remain
> wary of the cars' limited range, higher price and the logistics of
> battery-charging. But for those who do own an electric car, at least there
> is the consolation that it's truly green, right? Not really.
> 
> For proponents such as the actor and activist Leonardo DiCaprio, the main
> argument is that their electric cars—whether it's a $100,000 Fisker Karma
> (Mr. DiCaprio's ride) or a $28,000 Nissan Leaf—don't contribute to global
> warming. And, sure, electric cars don't emit carbon-dioxide on the road.
> But the energy used for their manufacture and continual battery charges
> certainly does—far more than most people realize.
> 
> A 2012 comprehensive life-cycle analysis in Journal of Industrial Ecology
> shows that almost half the lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions from an
> electric car come from the energy used to produce the car, especially the
> battery. The mining of lithium, for instance, is a less than green
> activity. By contrast, the manufacture of a gas-powered car accounts for
> 17% of its lifetime carbon-dioxide emissions. When an electric car rolls
> off the production line, it has already been responsible for 30,000 pounds
> of carbon-dioxide emission. The amount for making a conventional car:
> 14,000 pounds.
> 
> While electric-car owners may cruise around feeling virtuous, they still
> recharge using electricity overwhelmingly produced with fossil fuels.
> Thus, the life-cycle analysis shows that for every mile driven, the
> average electric car indirectly emits about six ounces of carbon-dioxide.
> This is still a lot better than a similar-size conventional car, which
> emits about 12 ounces per mile. But remember, the production of the
> electric car has already resulted in sizeable emissions—the equivalent of
> 80,000 miles of travel in the vehicle.
> 
> So unless the electric car is driven a lot, it will never get ahead
> environmentally. And that turns out to be a challenge. Consider the Nissan
> Leaf. It has only a 73-mile range per charge. Drivers attempting long road
> trips, as in one BBC test drive, have reported that recharging takes so
> long that the average speed is close to six miles per hour—a bit faster
> than your average jogger.
> 
> To make matters worse, the batteries in electric cars fade with time, just
> as they do in a cellphone. Nissan estimates that after five years, the
> less effective batteries in a typical Leaf bring the range down to 55
> miles. As the MIT Technology Review cautioned last year: "Don't Drive Your
> Nissan Leaf Too Much."
> 
> If a typical electric car is driven 50,000 miles over its lifetime, the
> huge initial emissions from its manufacture means the car will actually
> have put more carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere than a similar-size
> gasoline-powered car driven the same number of miles. Similarly, if the
> energy used to recharge the electric car comes mostly from coal-fired
> power plants, it will be responsible for the emission of almost 15 ounces
> of carbon-dioxide for every one of the 50,000 miles it is driven—three
> ounces more than a similar gas-powered car.
> 
> Even if the electric car is driven for 90,000 miles and the owner stays
> away from coal-powered electricity, the car will cause just 24% less
> carbon-dioxide emission than its gas-powered cousin. This is a far cry
> from "zero emissions." Over its entire lifetime, the electric car will be
> responsible for 8.7 tons of carbon dioxide less than the average
> conventional car.
> 
> Those 8.7 tons may sound like a considerable amount, but it's not. The
> current best estimate of the global warming damage of an extra ton of
> carbon-dioxide is about $5. This means an optimistic assessment of the
> avoided carbon-dioxide associated with an electric car will allow the
> owner to spare the world about $44 in climate damage. On the European
> emissions market, credit for 8.7 tons of carbon-dioxide costs $48.
> 
> Yet the U.S. federal government essentially subsidizes electric-car buyers
> with up to $7,500. In addition, more than $5.5 billion in federal grants
> and loans go directly to battery and electric-car manufacturers like
> California-based Fisker Automotive and Tesla Motors. This is a very poor
> deal for taxpayers.
> 
> The electric car might be great in a couple of decades but as a way to
> tackle global warming now it does virtually nothing. The real challenge is
> to get green energy that is cheaper than fossil fuels. That requires heavy
> investment in green research and development. Spending instead on
> subsidizing electric cars is putting the cart before the horse, and an
> inconvenient and expensive cart at that.
> 
> Mr. Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center in Washington,
> D.C., is the author of "The Skeptical Environmentalist" (Cambridge Press,
> 2001) and "Cool It" (Knopf, 2007).
> 
> A version of this article appeared March 11, 2013, on page A15 in the U.S.
> edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Green Cars Have a
> Dirty Little Secret.
> 
> -----------------------------
> Keith Thomas
> myrmecia at gmail.com
> +44 74 2929 4146
> ------------------------------
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