The opinion piece, “Doing math on climate change,” in response to Kevin Ma’s “Bright ideas on lights,” St. Albert Gazette, July 1, 2015, contains numerous errors. My comments below are on a few of them.
Joe Prins claims, “The Earth has not gained any appreciable warming for the last 18 years.” That is incorrect. Forbes is not a climate science journal, and has a track record of misrepresenting climate science. The case for human-induced climate change, e.g. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report AR5 is backed up by 9,200 peer-reviewed climate studies (ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/). Climate deniers make lots of claims, but rarely even attempt to back up their claims with peer-reviewed science.
Also, the IPCC does not disagree with its own studies, as Prins claims. Its AR5 states, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal” (p. 4), and, “Human influence on the climate system is clear” (p. 15). Scientists have been able to provide some evidence that human influence has increased heat waves and daily temperature extremes (p. 72). With respect to tropical cyclones (AR5 p. 73) and long-term trends in economic disaster losses (SREX Summary p. 7), IPCC reports that these cannot be currently attributed to climate change. What Mr. Prins conveniently left out in his letter was that IPCC also states that this is due to low data availability, and that "... a role for climate change has NOT been excluded …” (emphasis added).
Climate scientists tend to be fairly honest and need to look at all the evidence or they will be mercilessly critiqued by their peers, which can lead to the rejection of their publication. Climate deniers, on the other hand, often cherry-pick a single study or quote that seems to support their point (e.g. of local or short-term cooling), and simply ignore the other 999 studies that contradict them. This is why climate denial is largely confined to unaccountable websites and online articles, and exceedingly rare in climate science journals.
Prins states, “For some reason I do not hear complaints from the many millions of people that inhale the smoke from their wood burning fire pit inside their homes.” Actually, inefficient wood fires lead to 4.3 million premature deaths per year (who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/).
Prins further claims, “There is a direct relationship between standard of living and fossil fuel use.” Not really. Economically, technologically and socially successful countries like Sweden and Denmark, which have among them the highest happiness indices on the planet, are increasingly decoupling economic growth and carbon emissions, or even energy consumption. “Fossil fuels vs. the stone age” is a false dichotomy.
Finally, Prins erroneously assumes that the payback calculations for energy efficient lights were based on LEDs only. They were actually based on a mix of two LEDs and eight CFLs. So, yes, Kevin Ma’s numbers in “Bright Ideas on lights” were just fine. In general, CFLs still have better paybacks than LEDs. However, in an increasing number of applications, LEDs are the best choice, for example when replacing GU10 and MR16 halogen track lighting found in many kitchens. Electricity costs directly dependent on energy consumption amount to 11 cents per kiloWatt-hour for most residents in the Edmonton area, not six cents as claimed by Prins.
Godo Stoyke, M.Sc., LEED A.P., President, Carbon Busters Inc., Edmonton
