Bishop Hill Cue outrage
Apr 21, 2014 Climate: WG3 Economics Matt Ridley For those that can get behind the Times paywall, Matt Ridley has a good review of the state of play on the climate debate in the aftermath of the IPCC reports.
These IPCC and OECD reports are telling us clear as a bell that we cannot ruin the climate with carbon dioxide unless we get a lot more numerous and richer. And they are also telling us that if we get an awful lot richer, we are likely to have invented the technologies to adapt, and to reduce our emissions, so we are then less likely to ruin the planet. Go figure.
Meanwhile, Bjorn Lomborg has his own take on things at Project Syndicate, looking at the IPCC's cost estimates, the attempts to adjust them to help the green movement and the embarrassing chasm between current and earlier estimates like those of Lord Stern:
The Stern Review was produced by bureaucrats and never subjected to peer review. Economists knew that the damage costs had been extensively massaged, and that the estimates were outliers compared to the academic literature. The unfathomably low projections for policy costs were artifacts of ignoring most liabilities, again contradicting the academic literature.
The media, eager for breathless headlines, share the blame with politicians for this state of affairs. Following the release of the Stern Review, one British newspaper reportedly wrote: “Act now or the world we know will be lost forever.” Being accurate is less sexy, but much more informative.
No doubt outraged greens and lefties will be vocal in a few minutes' time.
Reader Comments (36)
But if we get richer then the well funded well oiled climate change denier machine will get even richer and be able to tell even more lies.
The Ridley article (or much of it) can be read here.
Monkey throwing poop
With the climate not doing as instructed by the gods of climate science the greens are getting ever more desperate. Hence the refusal to debate and the attempts to silence dissenting voices. Watch the contortions as they try to change their arguments and keep their agenda running.
IMHO, not enough is made of the fact that the Stern Review was not Peer-reviewed.
> Stern Review was not Peer-reviewed.
But it was. Baron Stern of Brentford reviewed it and since he is a Peer of the Realm it was peer reviewed.
TerryS - the Stern report was issued October 06. Stern's ennoblement was announced October 07.
Accordingly, at the time he apparently reviewed his own work he was plain Sir Nick.
Didn't Senna the Soothsayer also contribute to the Stern review
The Lomborg piece is very good. Perhaps it is time for SA to do a re-assessment of the Skeptical Environmentalist and give him credit for his both realistic and optimistic perspective. It was reading SE way back in 2002 that got me pondering the roots of the environmental alarmism that has plagued us ever since.
The man made warming supposition, mm emissions of CO2 = warming has been virtually left by the wayside. Like a dying electrical storm, only the bombast from the charlatans within the UNIPCC still echoes, it's 'voice' gradually diminishing as the resonance and indeed its raison d'etre dies away to naught.
But no energy - whither civilization?
Putin's adventures are focusing 'minds' [I use that term loosely] in the EU politburo, the nomenklatura are now even allowing talk of shale gas as some sort of provision to buffer and protect themselves from the ravages of the eastern bear and his Gazprom megalomaniacs.
A central pillar of the EU project is being kicked out from under vaulted ceiling of the holy cathedral of EU federal ambitions. Egad! The holy green creed and it's EU archpriests are in an agitated state of panic, running hither and thither, the 'lords of the flies' see their precious UNEP agenda 21 is under threat, though they have done their best to create hell on earth as it is. Plus, can it be that even the lunatics of the Berlaymont palace have finally got the message? I can only carry hope in my heart that Vladimir the impaler of EU imperialism will turn off the gas taps - that will really be a game changer for the EU - craftily the Germans have already commenced the change.
Germany meantime, pays only the merest lip service to man made warming, it is going 'full steam ahead' as it were for new build lignite burning power generation - not one for half baked measures are these Germans and global CO2 emissions - scheiß to all of that.
Over the pond, Obama is a dead duck, his death rattles are portentous but significant of not much at all - Americans will have to deal with the EPA and rogue states like California dreamers but the man made warming thing has died away after a vicious winter in the States.
Reality, like cold water splashed on a sleepy visage, the awakening has commenced.
MM warming is hokum, a myth, a lie, a fantasy.
The real enemy in the next few years will be the cold but just as the world is turning into a cooling phase, as the Germans prepare to bring coal fired generation and most importantly - key word base load back online.
There is, only one country in the western world which still clings doggedly to the old tired lies and mantras. A nation where 40 years of disinvestment, since the days of Wilson and Heath fifty years of political infighting over energy policy and now with an aging infrastructure of transmission grid, clapped out power stations and a nuclear industry on its last legs makes a feeble attempt to replace real energy with the gormless green fantasy technologies of wind power and solar generation.
For the love of sweet mercy, braindead doesn't quite encapsulate the lunacy of British energy policies but what can you expect when communist policy inspired labour wonks and greenpeace agitators write energy policy [CCA 2008]?
Steam power took over from wind at the outset of the industrial revolution, photo voltaic cells have been tried in far sunnier climes only to be disconnected by reality - simply put: they do not work.
£Billions wasted on useless technology, and Britain will suffer - soon the grid will overload as the first major outage event occurs. But still the message is not getting through - why? One can only conclude that here in Britain, our ruling class, the politicians, the corporate world with the big investment bankers and green hedgers, and the establishment must hold us in such utter contempt. And that as the climate turns into a colder phase - TPTB will be happy to witness hundreds of thousands of their 'fellow' countrymen dying of cold and related diseases exacerbated by frigid conditions in their homes - influenza, bronchitis and any such pulmonary complications.
Britain, where the nefarious and malignant political doctrines of agenda 21, sustainability and green dogmas: are more important than the lives of the people.
Worse could be yet to come, if Obama gets together with Miliband [as 'our' new PM God forbid it] and strikes a new climate deal in Paris in 2015 - 'glacial' Armageddon will arrive quicker than you think, those with their own form of domestic heating will be glad of it but for some it will mean early death.
Civilization, was once primarily about government providing its citizens with protection, security and cheap energy was part of such provision and thus, then to enabling the conditions so that people could achieve personal comfort through work and industry. In a post modern world - where confusion and insanity is the new norm, where money is debased with pretty much everything else - where does one turn and is the end of civilization............
Athelstan - I reckon your post should be required reading at the Department of Energy And Bloody Climate Change...
But - it won't be, wil it..?
Athelstan, when necessary I comfort myself with the knowledge that the Agenda 21 crew and their courtesans are actually very few in number. There are actually several thousan million people on this planet who are taking precisely zero notice of them.
The main problem with all these reports is that very few people actually read them, we just get a short summary or soundbite from journos or politicians with agendas. I'm pretty sure that most alarmists just assume that the reports warn of catastrophe, and green organisations wrote their press releases years ago.
There is a solution to the UK energy problem, but it will be viciously opposed by the carbon traders, the real force behind Wormtongue Stern and their attack polecat, Ward, also the Mafia who own renewables and BTL.
The UK has nearly been overrun by the inheritors of the Moselyite Blackshirts who via the Soil Association in Coventry, set up in 1946, kept eco and real fascism alive before putting their people into power in the last government. One of their other propaganda ploys has been to stop meritocratic education of the working class to ensure only their own can rule.
michael hart
The trouble is that the thousands of millions are in danger of sleepwalking into a future they don't want run by people they didn't elect and can't remove simply because they are paying Agenda 21 no heed.
Ogden Nash wrote a nice little poem which is relevant.
The other phrase is "salami tactics". Or try Joni Mitchell's 'Big Yellow Taxi' — you don't know what you've got till it's gone!
The Agenda 21 fanatics will plough on as long as they can because they either have or at second hand control the levers of power. They don't need the approval of the masses only their acquiescence.
Athelstan: the US and UK represent only 15% of global emissions. So a deal struck by Obama and Miliband would be meaningless: see this. Agenda 21 will get nowhere in a world where countries responsible for 70% of emissions have wholly different priorities - such as poverty alleviation, economic growth and political power. In any case, the US Congress would never accept a deal that didn't include China.
Robin hits on a key piece of reality and the reason I say that one only need understand arithmatic and not physics to grasp the key points of climate change.
Europe and the US could go to zero emissions tomorrow and the impact to "limiting" warming would be minimal. If you already know that all of your efforts are a waste of time with regard to the stated goal and yet you keep pushing them, then your real goal has to be something else.
I agree that Robin speaks reality on emission reduction and the uselessness of suicidal gestures from the UK and US. On Agenda 21 and its ilk I'm not so sure. Why do certain people work so hard to establish global governance? It's a more complex phenomenon that can be solved with simple arithmetic, of that I'm sure. I don't claim to know where it is headed but I do think every individual matters. Call me romantic if you like. :)
I disagree Richard. Agenda 21 might have made a sort of sense - at least in the eyes of some - when the world was dominated by the West. But today things are utterly different. Countries that once comprised the "Third World" or (per the Brandt Report) the "South" are now the "emerging economies". And, as I've noted above, their priorities are poverty alleviation, economic growth and political power. They're happy to go along with the outdated distinctions defined by the UNFCCC - but they're hardly involved and barely interested in the machinations of the IPCC. In particular, they have no intention of doing anything - especially GHG reduction - that might impact their priorities. And with responsibility for 70% of emissions they call the shots. It's not unlikely that they view the West's agonising over emissions with detached amusement.
Maybe one day it'll be these countries that begin to show an interest in global governance. But thankfully there isn't the slightest sign of that yet.
The bottom linie is that some insiders practicing moral hazard are ramming through idiot policies that only help themselves and their pals. This will continue as long as we allow these self-enriching people to do it.
The Middle Kingdom
Starts engine at slightest sign.
Hydrocarbon Bond.
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Robin: I did say 'Agenda 21 and its ilk' so it's possible we don't disagree. You've probable read the Agenda 21 documents more than I have. I don't claim to understand the inscrutable Chinese let alone others parts of Bric, Mint and the ruling classes of such radically different nations. I am concerned about CAGW and other crises 'perceived' at UN level curtailing historic freedoms of the Anglosphere. Without necessarily buying all of Daniel Hannan's work I don't think that's healthy for wider freedom. Big subjects. All I said is that I didn't know and it wasn't simple arithmetic. I appreciate your clarity. :)
I have found that Kevin Marshall over at manicbeancouter has done a pretty thorough job of dissecting Stern, have a look though his pages here -
http://manicbeancounter.com/tag/the-stern-review/
Once again the skeptical position is proven to be the correct position:
The climate is not changing into some great calamity generating system- at least no more than it has been throughout the history of climate.
Coming outrage alert!
The Japanese are experimenting with super critical CO2 as a frakking liquid.
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0001212238
Wait for the howls! Some of the CO2 will come back up to the surface! Will cause earthquakes! Drinking water will contain CO2 (just like soda water)!
The Stern report was written while Stern was funded by $100 billion carbon trader Jeremy Grantham.
Grantham is a communist, obviously.
Don’t hold back, Athelstan (2:16 PM)!
Truth be told, I have a suspicion that mass death in this country is what some want – not including themselves or anyone they know, of course. I take some comfort in the knowledge that there is a reason that this little island has shaped the modern world, and it is not that we are subservient people, unless we choose to be. There are some things that have confused the enemies of the English (in its historic reference, at risk of upsetting some) in the past; should the agents of Agenda 21 and their like find out what they are, they are in for a shock, and probably regret.
I think the real problem is that even if a rich middle class is best for the environment it is still very bad for Marxism? As Amerca and the Western World got wealthier the leftist had to move towards the middle to get support in elections? And like in Norway when we where poorest, after the War, the more majority labour got in elections. Go to North Korea where you have to vote, on the one and only candidate, to get your food rations?
Sorry, RR, but I think you are deluding yourself.
Google "[virtually any UK local authority]+Agenda 21" and see what happens. Almost all the LAs signed up years ago. The local environmental policies — waste collection, recycling, etc — are being done to further the Agenda 21 aims.
esmif
Engels was a wealthy capitalist AND a communist.
@Radical Rodent
Both the Kaiser and Hitler had reportedly felt aggrieved when the supposedly acquiescent British Lion had awoken and roared.
(Tom Clancy?)
It will be a cold day in hell when China and India bow down to the UN's ambitions to become some kind of world government.
For every tonne of hydrocarbon we do not burn...they will burn for us.
I know who my money is on for going into the next half century stronger.
In the 1930s and in the modern Green movement there are both left and right wing anti capitalists. The right wanted to dismantle capitalism and go back to a more rural society . Apologies if anyone is offended by the Hitler quote.
Rewilding, Monbiot promises, "is about resisting the urge to control nature and allowing it to find its own way".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jul/06/nature-writing-revival
His views are echoed here
“When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against nature must lead to their own downfall.” . Here, of course, we encounter the objection of the modern pacifist, as truly Jewish in its effrontery as it is stupid! 'Man's role is to overcome Nature!'
Millions thoughtlessly parrot this Jewish nonsense and end up by really imagining that they themselves represent a kind of conqueror of Nature; though in this they dispose of no other weapon than an idea, and at that such a miserable one, that if it were true no world at all would be conceivable."
Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf
http://www.csustan.edu/history/faculty/Weikart/hitlermk.htm
> Stern Review was not Peer-reviewed.
But it was. Baron Stern of Brentford reviewed it and since he is a Peer of the Realm it was peer reviewed.
Apr 21, 2014 at 10:31 AM | TerryS
Terry - after about 5 pints I just cannot stop peeing
So I think I am a Liberal Peer
And I think the Stern Review is a crap dodgy dossier.
A few real academics poured scorn on the Stern Review. The climate change industry, like the pharmaceutical industry, plays by its own rules.