Everybody from global warming delayer Bjorn Lomborg to the country’s worst science writer seems to be embracing geo-engineering schemes these days.  Geoengineering is “the intentional large scale manipulation of the global environment” to counteract the effects of global warming — such as injecting massive amounts of soot or mirrors into the air.

But why would you choose an experimental combination of chemotherapy and radiation therapy that might make you sicker if your doctors told you diet and exercise — albeit serious diet and excercise — would definitely work (see “Geo-engineering remains a bad idea” and “Geo-Engineering is NOT the Answer“)?

Well, desperation drives some people to contemplate extreme things, and climate scientists are increasingly desperate to prevent the catastrophe we face on our current path of unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions (see “Desperate times, desperate scientists“).

But why do people who don’t believe anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real or would be catastrophic push it?  Richard S. Courtney, British coal industry flack  (see bio here), is one such denier who spreads disinformation on various blogs (including this one today).   As BigCityLib informs us, Courtney recently made this remarkable admission:

I am firmly convinced that dangerous AGW is not a problem and cannot become one.  However, I do think the possibility of the geo-engineering should be supported.  My reason for this is a political ploy and I explain it as follows….

The politicians need a viable reason if they are to back-off from this commitment to the constraints [of GHGs] without losing face.

The geo-engineering option provides the needed viable reason to do nothing about AGW now….

This suggested political ploy is not fanciful and it has precedent.  Opponents of the nuclear industry have objected that there is no “safe” method to dispose of nuclear waste.  The nuclear industry has responded by asserting that the waste could be vitrified.  A practical method for the vitrification still remains to be developed, but assertion of the possibility of the vitrification has been sufficient to overcome objections to nuclear power in several countries for nearly 40 years.

Fool me once….

(See also “Geoengineering and the New Climate Denialism.”)

Geo-engineering remains a dubious set of schemes — literally smoke and mirrors.  Science advisor John Holdren told me in April that he stands by his long-standing critique:

“The ‘geo-engineering’ approaches considered so far appear to be afflicted with some combination of high costs, low leverage, and a high likelihood of serious side effects.”

Now uber-delay Bjorn Lomborg is embracing geo-engineering — and NYT‘s John Tierney is flacking that work (here).  What a surprise!

RealClimate just published an outstanding response, “A biased economic analysis of geoengineering” by Prof. Alan Robock.  Since Robock gave the best talk I ever heard on geo-engineering (here), and since this post is an excellent primer with numerous links, I am reprinting it below (with his permission):

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Okay, Senator Johnson (D-SD) may have had a Probability of a Yes Vote of 87% to Nate Silver (see “Epic Battle 3: Who are the swing Senators?“).   But others, like E&E News (subs. req’d), had him as a straight fence sitter with the likes of John McCain (R-AZ) and Richard Lugar (R-IN).

So it is a reasonably big deal for him to come out now and endorse a strong climate and clean energy bill.  Here is his full piece, “Climate Change Bill Could Bring Jobs, Prosperity and Clean Air“:

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A “new” study by the National Asssociation of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation rehashes their analysis of the Lieberman-Warner Climate bill (see “Wrong Again 2: Delayers cry wolf with same old Garbage In, Garbage Out economic model“).  And both are just a rehashing of the analyses of the Clean Air Act sulfur trading program that were proven wrong by reality, which is to say by the ingenuity and technology of entrepreneurs.

But what is fascinating about the GIGO analysis by NAM/ACCCF is that even though they ignored the key cost-containment provisions in the climate bill — including virtually all of the international offsets and the strategic reserve — they still found that 20 million new jobs will be created in the United States by 2030 and GDP will be some $9 trillion higher, as Brad Johnson shows in the post below first published by Wonk Room.

So NAM has ironically made a solid case for strengthening the bill, for limiting the international offsets and setting a high ceiling price — since the climate bill manages to achieve these outcomes even with NAM’s absurdly high price estimate for  carbon allowances in 2020 of up to $60.  Even EIA, which uses a similar economic model as NAM/ACCF (but less biased assumptions, although EIA also ignored the strategic reserve), found a permit price in 2020 of $32 (see here), which was about double what EPA and I project and 50% higher than CBO’s projection.

A new analysis of the economic impact of clean energy legislation forecasts powerful job and economic growth through 2030. The analysis of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), commissioned by the right-wing National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF), finds that 20 million new jobs will be created in the United States by 2030, even under high-cost assumptions:

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I will be speaking Tuesday, August 18 at the The Gulf of Maine Research Institute, 350 Commercial Street, Portland.  Reception starts at 6 pm, talk at 7 pm.

Here is the full event release from the sponsor organization, the The Natural Resources Council of Maine (with RSVP info):

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A new analysis of the economic impact of clean energy legislation forecasts powerful job and economic growth through 2030. The analysis of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), commissioned by the right-wing National Association of Manufacturers and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF), finds that 20 million new jobs will be created in the United States by 2030, even under high-cost assumptions:

Similarly, NAM found the gross domestic product of the United States would increase by $9 trillion by 2030 from current levels. To be more precise, the analysis estimates $9.1 trillion in growth under its low-cost scenario, and $8.9 trillion under its high-cost scenario, versus $9.5 trillion in growth under its baseline scenario.

This analysis, conducted by the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), uses the same economic model as the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), but with “input assumptions provided by ACCF/NAM”:

SAIC is a policy-neutral organization. SAIC executed the NEMS/ACCF-NAM 2 model in this project using SAIC’s and ACCF/NAM’s interpretation of the bill, and input assumptions provided by ACCF/NAM. The modeling was performed independent of EIA. Analysis provided in this report is based on the output from the NEMS/ACCF-NAM 2 model as a result of the ACCF/NAM input assumptions. The input assumptions, opinions and recommendations in this report are those of ACCF and NAM, and do not necessarily represent the views of SAIC.

These “input assumptions” for the deployment of the ACES carbon cap-and-trade market include:

– International offsets are limited to 5%. ACES allows 50% of offset use to come from international offsets.

– Wind energy deployment limited to 5 to 10 GW per year for the next twenty years. In reality, 8.5 GW in new American wind power was deployed in 2008, even without the incentive of a carbon market.

NAM also made unusually pessimistic assumptions for the deployment of biomass electricity generation and the use of banking provisions by polluting corporations. These assumptions lead to a carbon allowance price of $123 to $159 per ton of carbon dioxide in 2030. This price is more than twice as expensive as the estimates of the EIA, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Congressional Budget Office.

Essentially, NAM is assuming that American companies will be unable to deploy clean energy and energy efficiency technologies in a timely fashion. It’s odd that the National Association of Manufacturers is so gloomy about its members’ ability to build the clean energy economy. Even so, its analysis finds vibrant economic growth while global warming pollution is kept under control.

Here’s a followup to “Coal lobby hires top GOP voter-fraud company to run massive ‘grassroots’ efforts to undermine climate and clean energy action“:

Lobby Groups to Use Town Hall Tactics to Oppose Climate Bill

Taking a cue from angry protests against the Obama Administration’s health care restructuring, the oil industry is helping organize anti-climate bill rallies around the nation.

The American Petroleum Institute, along with other organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers opposed to the climate legislation Congress will consider again in the fall, is funding rallies across 20 states over the August recess.

In template fliers for rallies produced by the API-founded alliance, EnergyCitizens, the public is warned that “Climate change legislation being considered in Washington will cause huge economic pain and produce little environmental gain.”

U.S. CO2 emissions from fuels seen falling 5 percent in 2009

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The following post is written Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whom I have known for almost two decades.  He recently authored a cost-benefit analysis of energy efficiency measures entitled Building Commissioning: A Golden Opportunity for Reducing Energy Costs and Greenhouse-Gas Emissions.

In the figure below, the overlaid orange “step” is derived from the analysis in the new LBNL report and superimposed for reference over McKinsey’s 2007 green carbon “abatement curve.”  The full abatement curve indicates the potential emissions savings potential for a set of measures, ranked by the annualized net cost per ton of emissions reductions (y-axis), i.e., the cost of commissioning minus the value of the resulting energy savings over the measure life. The horizontal width of each step is the potential emissions reduction attributed to each measure.

One particularly potent form of energy efficiency is an emerging practice known as building commissioning. Although commissioning has earned increased respect in recent years it remains an enigmatic practice whose visibility severely lags its potential. Fortunately, a massive database on commissioning experience in the U.S. provides a potent antidote to those who poo-poo the notion that major greenhouse-gas reductions can be had at negative cost.

The aim of commissioning new buildings is to ensure that they deliver, if not exceed, the performance and energy savings promised by their design. When applied to existing buildings, commissioning identifies the almost inevitable “drift” from where things should be and puts the building back on course, often making it perform even better than the original designers intended. (Why do we tune up our cars but not our far more complex buildings?) In both contexts, commissioning is a systematic, forensic approach to quality assurance, rather than a technology per se – CSI for efficiency, if you will. Quality assurance is an essential element of any serious technological endeavor. Energy efficiency is not alone in this regard, and commissioning offers a key solution. (Consider how even more poorly electric power plants would perform if there was no QA in their construction and operation.)

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