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WarrenS has taken on an admirable resolution: to send a letter to the editor (LTE) (or, well, a major politician) every single day, on the critical issues of climate change and energy. This discusses his approach and here is an amusing ‘template’ to for rapid letter writing.

Now, I have always written letters and even had many published — just not one every day. WarrenS inspires me to do better.

Many newspapers state that they will reject letters that have been published elsewhere, thus I have not been blogging letters … perhaps that should change. Thus, below is what might be the first in an “unpublished letters” series publishing those LTEs that don’t get picked up by the editors.

17 November 2010

To the Editor,

In “Cost-effective ways to address climate change” (opinion, 17 November), Bjorn Lomborg continues his traditional path of half-truths supporting misleading conclusions and dangerous recommendations.

While Lomborg misrepresents a myriad of items in this column, let’s highlight just one: painting cities white to reduce heat-island impact. Lomborg is correct: reflective roofing is a highly cost effective path to reducing urban heat. What is misleading is that Lomborg suggests that this has simply a local impact, that this is divorced from a larger program of climate change mitigation.

by painting roofs white, covering asphalt roadways with concrete-colored surfaces and planting shade trees, local temperatures could be reduced by as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

In fact, white roofing is a preeminent example of a win-win-win strategy climate mitigation strategy. A ‘cool’ roof saves significant money through reduced air conditioning costs and reduced roof maintenance (which is Walmart white roofs every store). It also improves the local environment, saving money for others by lowering the ambient temperature. And, it helps ameliorate climate change due to the lowered energy use and by reflective solar radiation back into space.

And,  white roofing’s benefits are understood — and are being acted on. The Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, ordered earlier this year that all roofing projects be cool roofs. Flying into any major city and there are large numbers of commercial buildings with white roofs. What we need to see is integration of cool roofing into building codes and adapted as general practice to enable economy-wide capturing of these benefits.

Lomborg suggests that white roofing is an alternative to climate mitigation efforts when it is something central to a cost-effective and economy boosting climate mitigation strategy.

Lomborg’s systemic manipulation of facts is so legend that Yale University Press recently published The Lomborg Deception (by Howard Friel) that documents, in gory detail, deception after faulty citation after distortion. The Washington Post’s editors would do their readers a service in considering Friel’s work before again giving Lomborg space to confuse the public about such critical matters.

Sincerely,

A Siegel

Note:  Brad Johnson, at Wonkroom, used Lomborg’s column as a tool to test the new Climate Rapid Response Team.  Let’s just note that Bjorn “Smiling Dane” Lomborg’s assertions didn’t stand up well in the face of expert scrutiny.  While the whole post is strongly recommended, here is a small sample.

In separate e-mail interviews (the scientists also offered to conduct phone interviews), the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology’s Ken Caldeira, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Josh Willis, and Rutgers University’s Alan Robock independently confirmed that Bjorn Lomborg had misrepresented the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report. ….

Robock’s response reaffirmed Willis and Caldeira. Furthermore, when asked the research the IPCC summarized still “the best research we have” on the likely range of sea level rise, Robock said, “Absolutely not”:

Absolutely not. It was the best we had five years ago, but there has been a lot of work since then, including better observations of the rate of melting from Greenland and Antarctica and better models. …

He is also wrong in asserting that we know how to adapt to climate change. If that were true, nobody would be worried about it. How do we adapt to massive extinctions of natural species? How do we adapt to all the major coastal cities of the world having to deal with flooding from stronger storms and rising sea level? Dikes will not do it.

And there are no geoengineering techniques that have ever even been tested, let alone shown to produce less risks than the risks of global warming.

Sources / References provided are now incorporated as links above. Please note that the Lomborg’s history of misrepresentations include twisting material taken from The Washington Post even as Lomborg has often been given space to publish in the Post. For an example, see the discussion here: Energy Bookshelf: The Lomborg Deception leads to a question: Does the Washington Post have any honor left?

Previous posts on Lomborg:

• Energy Bookshelf: The Lomborg Deception … leads to a question: “Does the Washington Post have any honor left?” reviewing Howard Friel’s painstaking dissection of Lomborg’s academic dishonesty.
• The Lomborg chill effect hits again dissects Lomborg misrepresentations in an OPED.
• Not misrepresenting, but lying about evidence … providing an example where a Lomborg footnote simply did not provide a basis for his sweeping claim.
• Reviews are coming in … to cool interest in COOL It … highlighting a Tim Flannery Washington Post review of (the book) Cool It.