Stern and his gang

Lord Stern appeared before the House of Commons Energy and CLimate Change Committee this morning. It was amusing to see him arriving with his posse of assistants, Bob Ward among them. Why on earth does he need a PR man to go to the House of Commons with him? [Update - just seen one of his minions passing him the answer to a question]

Lilley from 10 mins with a few fireworks, Stern accusing him of being misleading, Lilley referring to Stern's "attack dog". Smashing stuff. The bit about discount rates is fun too, with Stern denying using different rates for costs and benefits and then flannelling furiously. I can't wait to see the transcript.

Graham Stringer was there, alongside Peter Lilley; questions from 10:43.

Comments

[tomo]

Nobody had the wit or guts or prepared properly to dismantle Stern - and he came mob handed obviously prepared for more of a tussle...

It did seem all quite cozily informal. I know there are undercurrents but Stern is at the committee in his position as a paid-for advocate and nothing else - that in my book means that his case must be tested robustly and his evidence should be just that - evidence.

His demeanor is quite another matter. I'm not that familiar with his career but I have a suspicion that confrontation isn't one of his strong points - and one that really should be tested - he looked quite brittle, constantly falling back on status.

Good that Lilley and Stringer are there - but from his own lips right at the end: "I do hope Tim Yeo's issues are erm , resolved, and resolved quickly, I've *intracted him quite a lot over the years"

Well goodness! - I agree with Lord Stern on one thing at least.

*intracted?? anybody?

[Athelstan.]

I know that Stern doesn't do reality but even so - he must be neutralized exorcised, thus we plough on.

Everything Stern says or does is predicated on; economic, climate what if - catastrophe scenarios - modelling, none of his published work bears any resemblence or, comparison to real world observations, because - after all he is an economist.

Stern is promising: 4º of global warming!

And yet, this item is, as I write dissolving Stern's fabulous fictions:

In other words, over the past third of a century—the period with the greatest amount of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions—the behavior of the real world (i.e., reality) falls far below the average expectation of climate models and, in fact, is clearly inconsistent with the range of model results. Less than 2.5 percent of model runs show that global warming is really global luke warming to the degree that real-world observations indicate.

Basically, the models don’t work.

This reality ought to be enough to stop the anti-fossil fuel (via carbon dioxide emission restrictions) crusaders in their tracks.

But thus far, it hasn’t, aided in part by the obfuscations of the United Nations (through the IPCC reports) and our own federal government (via reports such as the National Assessment of Climate Change).

If the people currently in charge of these organizations can’t face reality, then it is high time to replace them with others who can.

WUWT see it here.

Stern's guff - is history, is bunk, old bunk and bad bunk at that.

[Kevin Marshall]

Lord Stern starts off by claiming the 2006 Review that bears his name was conservative in climate impacts for not including the dangers of thawing permafrost. In terms of policy, he suggested that this was investment in the growth story of the future, potentially creating a wave of technological change comparable to those of the past such as in textiles or cars. The implication is that wind turbines, solar panels and electric cars are not a net cost but a net benefit in the long-term.
An alternative perspective was provided in an article by Tol & Yohe, which claimed that Stern Review exaggerated the costs of global warming and massively understated the policy costs.
A Review of the Stern Review - Richard S. J. Tol & Gary W. Yohe (WORLD ECONOMICS • Vol. 7 • No. 4 • October–December 2006)
If you look at textiles, cars and computing, the technological revolutions were characterised by sustained cost reductions per unit over time, yet giving a large net increase in employment in those industries. There has been failure of renewables to generate these cost reductions. Indeed they only exist because of subsidies, and increase the unit costs of existing industries.
Conversely, the extreme costs of global warming used by Stern are even more out of kilter with the current science given the growing evidence of lower climate sensitivities to CO2 and the failure of many short-run predictions of adverse consequences to bear fruition. This is in addition to growing evidence of the benefits of higher CO2 levels. Indeed, Richard Tol, in a paper published earlier this year (summarized at WUWT), showed that warming has likely net benefits up to around 2 degrees of warming.
So Tol and Yohe pointed to the extremism of the Stern Review, but still overstated the potential costs of warming when they said of the Review that one of "its more important messages: that climate risks are approaching more quickly tha(n) previously anticipated,....."
So in summary, the Stern Review assumed that unchecked global warming would have catastrophic consequences, whilst there existed a range of policies that were low cost and high impact. The evidence of catastrophic global warming is simply not there, whilst the policies we face are high cost, with negligible impact.

[Pharos]

Shame he went to Nuffield instead of Balliol.

He has perfect attributes to be immortalised with a wicked parody in the classic style of the Balliol rhyme.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balliol_rhyme

[Billy Liar]

Stern kept trying to tell everyone on the Committee that his report was worthless because of incorrect assumptions (conservative in climate impacts and over-estimated growth figures) but they ignored him!

[Peter Maxwell]

I recall that when the Stern Report was first published, it took several months and much pressure on Stern from Lord Lawson and others for Stern to reveal what discount rates he had used. Only then did it become public knowledge that he had indeed used different rates to suit his narrative. His reply to Peter Lilly's questions indicates that Stern is still struggling to justify the dishonesty in his report.

[sHx]

johanna

"I love your title. For those who missed the implications:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_%28group%29

The Stern Gang were people who would snuggle up with absolutely any lowlife for short-term advantage."

Thanks, dahl. The things I learn in this village.

[SimonW]

Athelstan, indeed! My questioning of Stern (what's his real name, I can't bear to call these clowns Lord) would go like this:

SimonW: Good morning Mr Stern. Can you tell me if you have a track record of getting anything right?

Stern: I'm President of X, I'm Chairman of Y, I've been to China for 85 years....I'm a VERY IMPORTANT PERSON.

SimonW: I'll take that as a No then. Next!

Stern uses "academic" as some sort of badge of honour: Look at me I'm an academic.

The more I follow this sorry saga I tend to think: Oh my God, he's an academic. Totally out of touch with the real world.

BillyL,

yes, another feature seems to be a penchant for discussing weighty tomes that are out of date virtually the moment they're published (Stern, IPCC) yet still treating their conclusions as relevant and gospel years later.

Surely it's not beyond the wit of man to have a spreadsheet (I'll exempt Jones from this one) clearly listing all the assumptions (growth, discount rates etc) at the top and then update them regularly as the actual figures come in or forecasts of those parameters change. You know, like just about every business in the country can manage quite easily. This would provide clarity for all concerned during discussions like this committee.

You always get the impression with Cli-Sci and its hangers-on though that clarity is the last thing they want as the paucity of their case would become obvious to all (think spaghetti graph).

Now who else employs those methods: "You will meet a tall dark stranger...".

[oldtimer]

I found listening to the exchanges to be both depressing and revealing about the mind set of Establishment thinking represented by Stern. My initial observations are as follows.

His equation of current green technology with the technologies that drove the industrial revolution is phoney. The industrial revolution raised living standards by raising the efficiency of human endeavour. Green technology lowers efficiency and raises costs. Even the example of higher emissions standards for cars (which he mentioned towards the end) only achieves higher mpg at a considerable cost; it is not an efficient way to do so.

He claimed that government are creating risk for investors by introducing uncertainty for investors - if that is uncertainty about future subsidies then that is to be welcomed. It seems to me that the drift of questioning from the MPs can only have increased that sense of uncertainty. Peter Lilley clearly established that Stern cherry picked his discount rates in his report by applying different rates to costs and to benefits. This raised doubts about its integrity; Lilley also pointed out that more recent IPCC reports reached a very different conclusion to Stern, namely that costs and benefits were evenly matched. Graham Stringer`s comment that UK climate policies were effectively subsidising Chinese imports hit the mark as did his comment that "we were doing the wrong things". Lavery made a telling point about the continued importance of the role of coal.

Stern paid lip service to the need to discuss the evidence (about GAST) in a balanced way and that the science made it difficult. It is more the pity then that the recent SR5 SPM has been edited the way it has been in order to obfuscate the science. He also conceded that (economic) models depend on the assumptions in them. In response to Lavery he conceded that one should never use a single model to provide an unambiguous answer for policy. Yet that is precisely what his own report did in informing UK government climate policy, and whose growth prediction he now says was optimistic and whose discount rates, as Lilley pointed out, were cherry picked to produce his conclusion.

Energy prices are a hot political issue. A general election is not that far away. Votes are at stake. I sensed a shift in mood from unquestioning acceptance of the Stern line by MPs on the Committee.

[Dolphinlegs]

DECC have poured cold water on Stern's border tariff proposals

http://www.thegwpf.org/lord-stern-snubbed-uk-government-free-trade-trumps-climate-change/

a measure of how useless this particular member of homo sapiens is

[Ecclesiastical Uncle]

From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.

My impressions for the little they are worth:

1. Stern's opening disassociating what he was going to say from the (?) talk-shops he (?) chairs was a clear admission that he knew that a large proportion of their members would be incensed by any connection to his tendentious report, and that he did not want the bother or risk of arguments over it.

2. Stern chairs bodies because of the prestige it gives him and because as chair he is only required to agree with the majorities that arise within them, a much easier task than actually making a case in an argument, and safer because the case might somehow turn out to be unfashionable.

3. In 2006 the government must have been well into its pursuit of green policies and Stern had to be no genius to see that his job was merely to provide the justification of an economist to compliment that anticipated from UEA and the like. It would have been obvious that his job was only to make the required case and that investigations without evident outcomes would not be required. Success would be measured by the ease with which the case was defended when the attacks came, and that would be much increased by ensuring that the opposing forces would be both small and disadvantaged. The report was therefore to be made long enough to deter most people from reading it, and as full as possible with unrelated facts and written in a jargon that few could understand. His work in India and China, without much doubt the writing up of reports to proceed with projects or reforms that would never be cancelled, would have given him plenty of relevant experience and the job would have been easy. He was equal to the task and, as he no doubt expected, he is richly rewarded.

4. Countering the arguments over discount rates by arguing the case for horses for courses was easy, but risks making the choice entirely subjective. So be it, providing it is not obvious because the subjective choice of rates would be very readily attacked.

5. In the same way that the cat so evidently enjoys the cream, Stern clearly enjoy the benefits of his association with government policies. Licking his lips, he chuckles at those, like the two on the Committee Chairman's left, who fail to take advantage of the largesse the government lavishes on those who have both the wits required to be allowed in and the greed required to ignore the harm caused to others from time to time. How quaint they are!

To change the metaphor, Toad of Toad Hall perhaps?

[tomo]

I wonder at Stern's well documented pontifications over vegetarianism & CO2 - is he vegan or demi-carnivore ? I think we should be told.

Dolphinlegs -
suggesting the good lord is a mate of Baron Browne of Madingly and Lord Smiffy of Finsbury?