The costs of climate change: scientists say Lomborg is wrong 13 February 06

Mark, there are many ways to expand upon your thoughts. For me, the laws of physics have value. As an engineer, we have to understand the basic laws of physics or what we do can never work in the “real world”.

In fact, the laws of physics govern the entire universe and they can never be violated. They govern not only aspects of engineering and scientific study but also our climate, our biology, and all our ecosystems. In this light, all scientists and all technical people have common ground. We know what is possible and what is not based on the laws of nature, laws of ecology, and the laws of physics.

With comparison to “economic laws”, or “political laws”, the laws of physics must come first. No economic law or human law can truly work if it violates the basic laws of the universe. The question I always ask about any given idea is whether it “violates the laws of physics”? If the answer is “no” then maybe it is possible for the idea to work.

Mark, on your blog, I try to be an optimist. Yet, any optimism I can ever have is totally contingent on our human laws and our economics being in alignment with natural laws, climate physics, and implementing our best technical solutions. Without this precondition, I can easily become a pessimist.

I would tell Lomborg that when people do not listen to the climate scientists, ecologists, and engineers, then cities like New Orleans get flooded. When engineers are ignored, then space shuttles explode and what is the cost of that? I would ask Lomborg if he thinks designing a building to be earthquake-resistant in a fault zone is a bad idea because of “present” costs. I would ask Lomborg if a warning device in the Indian or Atlantic Ocean for tsunamis is a bad idea because of the “present” costs.

Truth will always be on the side of those who respect nature and physics when developing useful constructs for human civilization. Truth is never on the side of those who cannot do this. Lomborg economics can never supersede the laws of physics and therefore will fail to achieve the desired results. Lomborg may not realize that when basic assumptions are false, then the results can be disastrous even if the analysis was done with a “correct” methodology. False assumptions are akin to lies and our future cannot be built on lies! When our future does become our present reality, then those who thought they could violate the laws of physics will be exposed.

Based on my understanding of climate physics, I think by the end of this year, the paradigm shift may occur so no one may ever need convincing again. I say this because I think the hurricane activity we experienced last year will be back again. I say this because the cold winter in Europe suggests the ice-melt may have slowed the density-driven currents which bring the heat from the warm tropical ocean waters toward Europe. And this, all during the hottest year on record for average world-temperature.

It seems likely that this retained tropical ocean-heat will be available this summer to make more hurricanes and more intense ones. Both increased frequency and increased intensity have already occurred and so we need not debate which comes first anymore if the pattern repeats this summer.

Still, I am an engineer and not a climate scientist so I can never know as much as the true experts in this field; however, my own thoughts are still aligned with the simple climate physics which I do understand. So, I think I am better than Lomborg (at least) in making this prediction.

In that light, I do wonder what Lomborg’s economic forecast for our hurricane season will be this summer? Ask him Mark! Ask him if his economic models predicted last year’s Katrina and all the associated “present” costs with the devastation of our Gulf Coast? Ask him what the costs of this summer’s hurricanes will be for the USA?

And finally, please ask him if his wonderful economic models can predict how many hurricanes we will have plus their intensity since he is convinced he knows more than everyone else about these subjects.

Best Regards, Dan

in gasoline – all other things being equal (not being farther from shops, schools & other places frequented). In fact, the value of the property may go up faster, since peak oil & environmental concerns (only one of which is GW) will make homes closer to work even more attractive in the future.

Unless of course work is a dirty, polluting place that produces gasoline or some other foul thing, in which case I’d recommend quitting and getting a job closer to your home….then you’d also be saving on medical bills.

There is one thing that I would like to ask Lomborg – nothing to do with climate science, but one that I keep thinking about whenever I hear his name:

When I first read the reports from his economists’ conference it all went on about Kyoto taking away money which could be better spent to reduce poverty and mortality rates by paying for micronutrients, vaccinations and malaria prophylaxis. He called for a massive humanitarian effort to overcome some of the main present causes of suffering and early death. Which in itself is quite noble, although why we would need to sacrifice the climate to achieve this is beyond me.

Now – I may be wrong, but I have never ever seen anything to suggest that Lomborg has done anything whatsoever to mobilise funds for those humanitarian efforts. Bill Gates seems to share his view that tropical illnesses, not climate change are the highest priority, but at least he is pouring huge sums of money into this. What came out of this big economists’ conference and out of Lomborg’s efforts? He may not be a rich man like Gates, but where is the charitable trust set up by ‘his’ economists, where are the demands on governments to fund this? Where was he during the Make Poverty History Campaign, during the disastrous UN Summit about the Millennium Goals last year? What instruments has he proposed to ensure that all the money ‘saved’ by the US not joining Kyoto (according to him, not me) does not pay for more wars rather than for alleviating poverty? He may well be doing things that I am not aware of – credit to him if he does. I hope he is, because I do not want to think of him as a cynic simply using arguments of global poverty in his efforts to undermine climate protection.

Almuth Ernsting

Well done Almuth. Very good questions. I wonder if there will be a response.

Douglas Coker

And do I detect a hint of shouting from our pet cornucopian contrarian?

Douglas Coker

The key to denialist rhetoric is equating anything to religion. The next key is the canned phrasie-phrases, in this case ‘serial alarmist’, but we have ‘environazis’, ‘feminazis’, ‘hockey team’, etc.

It’s a poor answer, Doug, only if you want something other than parrotted talking points. If that’s all you expect from bots, then the job was done admirably.

Just keeping FUD at the forefront is all that’s necessary – it doesn’t have to be true if it spams the discussion, making information-gathering tedious to those who seek answers.

Best,

D

One sure fire way to improve the human condition is to have fewer humans.

‘improving the human condition’ adds to the number of humans.

We have a dilema.

Of course the terms, mendacious, obfuscating denialists is a perfectly legitimate and widely recognized term that is used widely by those superior beings who have mastered the art of Enlightenment Principles.

Improving the human condition actually results in fewer, not more humans. Review the UN analyses of population trends in the developed vs. the undeveloped world. They clearly demonstrate that richer societies have lower birth rates and lower population growth rates than poor societies.

For example, the birth rate of Caucasian Europeans has decreased to the point that their population is decreasing. The European and U.S. populations are increasing only because of immigration and higher birth rates among poorer immigrants.

Here is a quote from the Revenge of Gaia (p.123): “Perhaps we know in our hearts the true nature of our peril and would rather face these minor imaginary risks [following a paragraph about worries about trivial risks] than confront the ineluctable consequences of destruction…Perhaps, the stridency of the sceptics of global heating hides and reveals their fear that they may be wrong”.

It seems true that fear of being wrong has historically been one motivation for people to defend and fight for an extreme and seemingly irrational position.

Almuth

The climate change debate is dominated by scientists and policy-makers. But economics cannot be ignored. The book that Lomborg edited, but did not write, entitled Global Crises, Global Solutions, provides a prioritisation of the major world problems. To which should governments devote resources? Climate change came low down the list, but was not completely dismissed. It was just that measures to alleviate other problems, such as poor female education and access to clean water, were seen by economists as providing a greater return on investment.

We should not ignore work like this, or dismiss it as self-serving or biased.

I believe that most of the assumptions about the underlying costs of climate change in Global Crises were actually wrong. (Most were based on work done in the early 1990s, before some of the costs were properly understood). They assumed that a rise to 550ppm would cost countries about 1% of GNP. We now realise that this is possibly a huge underestimate. (I’ve seen estimates that Katrina alone cost more than 1% of US GNP last year).

To get economists to view climate change as a more serious problem we need to get the assumptions about economic costs revisited, rather than simply ignoring their work. More than most people, economists view themselves as rational. If we produce compelling evidence about the likely economic costs of moving to 550ppm and beyond, economists like Lomborg’s authors will change their minds.

When scientists try to be economists, they often fail. Henderson and Castles’ criticisms of the IPCC economic methodologies are, in my opinion, broadly right. Merely bad-mouthing them has just made them more entrenched and dismissive of climate change. A bit more more work and we could be allies.

What continually perplexes me about economic assumptions is the normal assumption that economies can grow indefinitely.

This I think is one classic case where the laws of physics and the laws of economics collide.

It is clearly unsustainable.

In fact Japan has had something of a ‘correction’ on this front. A correction is where the market sees it is got carried away with itself (where the laws of physics ‘the fundamentals’ didn’t stack up with what the economy is doing) & the adjustment is usually very rapid i.e. stock market / housing market crashes.

The dot.com bubble is a good example -caused by not being able to calculate a value. When it finally became possible to put a value on these companies, they were not worth the assumptions and people (and their pensions)were in for a shock – it is similarly difficult to put a value on the climate.

Is the world in need of a rethink of its macro-economic foundations?

Regards Martin

I think the book “Natural Capitalism”, first suggested on this blog by Lynn, helps to define precisely the many aspects of how capitalistic constucts can be enhanced to help us live “within our ecological boundaries” using the words of Mark Lynas.

In addition, the aspect of human population growth must be addressed or the only way our numbers will be reduced is through wars, starvation, and natural disasters.

In human terms, the word “unsustainable” does mean death by starvation and violent competition among groups for necessary resources. This may be the curse of our own DNA since this is nothing new from primordial times. I think we exterminated the Neanderthal species and so scarcity may not bring out the best in us as we are programmed for individual survival and survival of those most closely related to us (so those who survive can pass down those same “competitive-survival genes” we inherited)!

If we lived but a moment in the future we are creating, then I think we would be more passionately engaged in avoiding it. In that light, I wish you success Martin with any involvement you have with sequestration technology and any efforts to utilize power-plant waste heat or make the grid more efficient. In our modern world, we are still the tool makers of the human tribe.

I like to think about ideas that I do not read about. I posted one before which you might think about with your colleagues. If we can combine existing infrastructures for a greater benefit, then this can be more cost effective. This is good economics from an engineering perspective.

Today, I measured my water temperature again and it was 45.1 F or 7.3 C. In the summer, the water was much higher near 68 F or 20 C. This makes us use more energy to heat our water for domestic use in the winter by as much as 30 percent.

If we could dump a little power-plant waste heat in the water supply to make it “less cold” and especially during the winter, then this could reduce the heating energy required for domestic hot water use in double digits.

I think this is a good idea to analyze and I share it with you wondering how it can be done. One factor which will come up in discussion will be that the underground pipes are “not insulated”.

There are other problems to address but this should not be a major concern with an abundance of waste heat energy available. I say this because the earth surrounding the pipes will act like an insulator once a thermal gradient is established.

In the present scenario, the water is cold because it usually comes from a body of water exposed to ambient temperatures. This water can actually be colder than the temperature underground. With a constant flow rate from domestic water use, this must cool the surrounding earth around the pipes. By adding heat normally sent to the atmosphere in a cooling tower to the water supply instead, I imagine that this would heat the surrounding earth all along the network of pipes from the same flow rate until a reverse thermal gradient is established between the water pipes and the surface. Most of this heat retention will occur in the larger pipes which have the higher flow rate as compared to the smaller ones which branch into the house or building.

Since we are not attempting to bring the water to operating temperatures, then both the water pipes and surrounding earth should be sufficiently “less cold” to have a significant decrease in domestic hot-water energy.

I think this idea has enough merit to warrant additional study. I think a modest increase in the electric bill or water bill would warrant an even greater decrease in the hot water heating bill. Along with the economics are reduced fuel consumption and a reduction of greenhouse gases. We use natural gas to heat much of our hot water in the states and the price keeps going up.

The trick is how to best transfer the heat uniformly utilizing as much of the existing water-supply distribution system as possible to lower costs. If the flow rate is not sufficient to deliver this heat adequately because of heat losses, then maybe a few return pipes to the waste-heat source via pumps would insure major supply pipes are at the correct elevated temperature. I think there is a way to make this system work.

A friend from our blog cautioned me about insuring the water is not affected by “too much heat” which may enable microorganisms to flourish. This is not a major problem to solve I am sure.

I assume that power plants may use the same body of water used to supply a city’s domestic water supply. How can we get some of the waste heat there? The potential energy is more than sufficient with respect to the Carnot Cycle as the waste heat is always greater than the energy in the electricity supplied.

In a radically changed world desperate for bold ideas and solutions, I leave it to your own imagination of how to take it further. One interesting economic idea is not even building a cooling tower at all but to integrate the water supply network in the original design of a new power plant having a readily available place that utilizes the waste heat.

Martin, keep working and thinking about bold ideas. We cannot have enough of them. We will need all of them if we are ever going to get out of this mess.

Best Wishes,

Dan

A good idea, but sometimes you want the water hot, and sometimes cold!

I undrestand some poeple are looking at using the waste heat in ‘grey water’ (the stuff you put down the drain), to heat up the hot water, using heat pumps to reach a suitable temperature. That way the waste heat is closer to the point of use.

Try a google search on grey water heat pumps.

Likewise, keep thinking bold ideas.

All the best Martin

Yes, this idea is similar to drain heat exchangers which transfer gray-water residual heat directly to the cold water stream or back to the hot water system when taking a shower using a counter-flow heat exchanger.

Under ideal circumstances, 50 percent of the waste heat can be reclaimed when taking a hot shower for example. It does not work as well with bath or laundry when the 2 streams are not occurring simultaneously. In this situation, I think the heat pump would have more merit.

For others reading this, the concept Martin and I are discussing refers to the fact that our drain water is still warm and we flush this waste heat away along with the waste water.

A drain heat exchanger or a gray-water heat pump reclaims some of this energy which is normally wasted increasing the overall efficiency of heating our domestic water.

A drain-heat exchanger requires no energy and an inexpensive product called “Warmit” may be available soon in the UK and Europe. Site below:

http://www.pera.com/website/clientsandcasestudies/creatingnewproductideas/domesticwastewaterheatrecoverydevice.aspx

Best, Dan

Dan,

I understand also that there is a heat recovery condensing tumble dryer now available, who’s efficiency is better than a conventional (non condensing) tumble dryer!!!

Not sure who makes it… But more efficient tumble drying (or better still not using one) will have significant CO2 savings.

Regards Martin

Using the latent heat of the exhaust stream to preheat air going into the dryer is a good idea. I never thought of that.

On that note, is all the water collected and transferred to a drain?

If so, then there are energy savings during the winter by not allowing the exhaust air stream to go outside the home. The exhaust stream of the dryer must be replaced by outside air which infiltrates in. This extra outside air must be heated and that requires extra energy over the energy supplied to the dryer. Much of the residual heat from the dryer will stay inside the home under this scenario and further add heat to the home supplementing the house heating system.

During the summer months, outside clothes drying is more feasible with more sunshine and warmer temperatures.

I wonder what the energy profile will be when this type of dryer is used during times requiring mechanical cooling. It is good to avoid bringing in outside air (especially on humid days) as this increases the cooling load but if the condensed water is directed to a drain, is there still more heat retention inside adding to the cooling load from not venting the heated air from the dryer outside?

The energy savings of a condensing dryer must be analyzed in the light of these additional benefits and liabilities if the design eliminates the air exhaust stream going outside the home. Accounting for the total net energy savings is important when making decisions on major appliances. Knowing the total energy profile is also useful for owners who desire to conserve on their energy bills even with regular tumble dryers.

For the benefit of the blog readers, it is best to run regular tumble dryers when the outside weather is not very cold or very hot (if mechanical cooling is used). This adds to the total energy used above the energy used for the dryer from outside air infiltration that replaces the vented exhaust from the dryer. This is also true on humid days in the summer since mechanical cooling requires extra energy to remove humidity from inside the home.

Best Regards,

Dan

Using the latent heat of the exhaust stream to preheat air going into the dryer is a good idea. I never thought of that.

On that note, is all the water collected and transferred to a drain?

If so, then there are energy savings during the winter by not allowing the exhaust air stream to go outside the home. The exhaust stream of the dryer must be replaced by outside air which infiltrates in. This extra outside air must be heated and that requires extra energy over the energy supplied to the dryer. Much of the residual heat from the dryer will stay inside the home under this scenario and further add heat to the home supplementing the house heating system.

During the summer months, outside clothes drying is more feasible with more sunshine and warmer temperatures.

I wonder what the energy profile will be when this type of dryer is used during times requiring mechanical cooling. It is good to avoid bringing in outside air (especially on humid days) as this increases the cooling load but if the condensed water is directed to a drain, is there still more heat retention inside adding to the cooling load from not venting the heated air from the dryer outside?

The energy savings of a condensing dryer must be analyzed in the light of these additional benefits and liabilities if the design eliminates the air exhaust stream going outside the home. Accounting for the total net energy savings is important when making decisions on major appliances. Knowing the total energy profile is also useful for owners who desire to conserve on their energy bills even with regular tumble dryers.

For the benefit of the blog readers, it is best to run regular tumble dryers when the outside weather is not very cold or very hot (if mechanical cooling is used). This adds to the total energy used above the energy used for the dryer from outside air infiltration that replaces the vented exhaust from the dryer. This is also true on humid days in the summer since mechanical cooling requires extra energy to remove humidity from inside the home.

Best Regards,

Dan