MichaelLind off base on #globalwarning, #PeakOil too

Sometimes Michael Lind is great; sometimes he's thought provoking. Occasionally he's irritating. This time, he's all three and worse He may be right on the abundance of natural gas, but he's "out there" on an age of future oil abundance. Plus, although not a global warming denier, or even a skeptic of its reality, he appears to be a "minimalist" on its effects.

In sounding like Daniel Yergin, and in making claims for both crude oil and natural gas that even Exxon won't, he's sounding like a utopian, or Kurzweil, or Michael Shermer, with a dash of Bjorn Lomborg thrown in on the global warming side.

It's clear that he's overstating the case for future oil reserves. He should know that King Hubbert made allowances for new technology when he first proposed his ideas on Peak Oil.

He also, while perhaps quite right on natural gas reserves, overlooks the difficulty of converting an entire infrastructure, and not just an occasional filling station, to natural gas pumping. Finally, he ignores the costs of that, and how much more quickly running cars on natural gas would draw down those reserves.

That said, he is right that hyper-abundant natural gas will put the use of renewables for electricity in doubt. But, gas is no panacea on global warming issues. More on that below.

As for coal? Its use for electricity is simply not allowable if we're going to have any reasonable chance of controlling (no, not stopping) global warming. Using coal to produce diesel? It's environmentally dirty and requires massive amounts of water, among other problems.

Finally, he ignores global warming almost entirely in this whole long piece. When not ignoring it, he poo-poos it with a comment like this:

The scenarios with the most catastrophic outcomes of global warming are low probability outcomes -- a fact that explains why the world’s governments in practice treat reducing CO2 emissions as a low priority, despite paying lip service to it.

Big fail. Big fail. Big fail.

I don't know whether or not Lind has read the news from across the pond that there's good research indicating we have a 50-50 chance of a 4C, not a 2C, rise in temperatures by 2100. I suspect, thought, in light of this column, that he'd pooh-pooh that, too, though, even though it means we have a 50-50 chance of a 3F/1.5C rise by 2050, when Lind is likely to be alive.

As for his claim on why politicians are treating CO2 emissions as a low priority? It's not because they think scientifically-backed worst-case scenarios are alarmist; it's because they're craven.

Lind has written enough about politics to know how craven politicians can be, which makes his refusal to take that into account all the worse.

Lind was someone I enjoyed reading. I'll be looking at him with much more skeptical eyes now, assuming he's a semi-neoliberal cornucopian.

Andrew Leonard, his Salon colleague, has the right reaction today; WTF? That said, until/unless Lind admits he bloew it, he's on skeptical probation.


Lind now weakly claims he's "not a global warming denialist." No, just a pooh-pooher of how bad it's going to get.

Right here:

If there were really a clear and present danger of catastrophic overheating ...

Now, "present" isn't in the next 5 years, perhaps. But, a 3F rise by 2050, in the lifetimes of many of us here right now? I'd call that "present" enough. And, catastrophic enough.

Michael Lind, put down the shovel.

Oh, and STOP LYING. Andrew Leonard never called you a global warming denialist, despite your claim in your second column.

Bjorn Lomborg ... change of heart or a hypocrite?

OK, I earlier blogged about Danish climate change denialist extraordinaire Bjorn Lomborg has apparently repented of his earlier ideas.

(I)n a new book to be published next month, Lomborg will call for tens of billions of dollars a year to be invested in tackling climate change. "Investing $100bn annually would mean that we could essentially resolve the climate change problem by the end of this century," the book concludes.

Examining eight methods to reduce or stop global warming, Lomborg and his fellow economists recommend pouring money into researching and developing clean energy sources such as wind, wave, solar and nuclear power, and more work on climate engineering ideas such as "cloud whitening" to reflect the sun's heat back into the outer atmosphere.

OK, that's the part that scares me.

Having reread the Guardian story, let me say that I'm leery of his emphasis on climate engineering. Through importation of species, Homo sapiens has done a horrendous job of biome engineering in the past. Any native of the U.S. Southwest knows about salt cedars/tamarisks. When I read ideas about deliberate "sooting" of the upper atmosphere (which Lomberg doesn't specifically name, but is a highly-discussed climate engineering idea, I cringe.)

Then, there's the fact that he's still a wee bit ... uhh, hypocritical:

Lomborg denies he has performed a volte face, pointing out that even in his first book he accepted the existence of man-made global warming. "The point I've always been making is it's not the end of the world," he told the Guardian. "That's why we should be measuring up to what everybody else says, which is we should be spending our money well."

Uhh, that's so less than true, as far as the spirit of accuracy.

Technically, sir, maybe you didn't deny the human element; but you minimized it damn near to the point of denial. Add in the fact that the Guardian interview coincides with the launch of a new book, the fact that big industries that may have previously been in denial could profit most from climate engineering, that you could profit from being their consultant, and I'm starting to say ...

Something is indeed rotten in the state of Denmark.