The Guardian discusses Bjorn Lomborg's work today in a podcast which can be found here. The panel chosen to take part consisted of Chris Hope, Mark Maslin and Adam Vaughan. And if that doesn't put you off, a couple of minutes listening to it will do the trick, or at least it did me.
Just before nodding off, I did take in Mark Maslin's claim that renewables only appear uncompetitive because fossil fuels are subsidised so heavily. (Why the Guardian thought to raise this topic with Maslin, a geographer, is beyond me). Given that the vast majority of subsidies of fossil fuels are applied outside the European Union, this is of course entirely irrelevant to policy decisions in the UK, and it is grossly misleading of Maslin to suggest otherwise.
In passing Maslin also cited an IMF working paper that claims that fossil fuels are subsidised to the tune of $5.6 trillion per year. This is an astonishingly thin work, which has been "doing the rounds" in recent weeks. If you take a look at it, you find that it is not in fact a study of subsidies, but instead is an attempt to add up every harm that could even conceivably be linked to fossil fuels in some way, with the now traditional (but still breathtakingly dishonest) attempt to rebrand as "subsidy".
[This paper] focuses on the broad notion of post-tax energy subsidies, which arise when consumer prices are below supply costs plus a tax to reflect environmental damage and an additional tax applied to all consumption goods to raise government revenues.
And of course the estimates of environmental damage are very, very big indeed. But notice one thing. Even you accept the climate-spiv definition of a subsidy, this is still only an estimate of costs. Benefits do not come into it. So when Maslin is claiming that renewables are competitive, he is making this claim by loading fossil fuels with a bunch of costs of doubtful veracity and not doing the same for renewables.
This is climate spivvery of the first order.