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« On entering the climate arena | Main | Greenpeace has a bad week »
Monday
Jun162014

On Lord Stern and Wayne Rooney

Lord Stern is back into the climate fray, breathlessly telling us that...wait for it...it's worse than we thought. Isn't it always?

Lord Stern, the world’s most authoritative climate economist, has issued a stark warning that the financial damage caused by global warming will be considerably greater than current models predict.

This makes it more important than ever to take urgent and drastic action to curb climate change by reducing carbon emissions, he argues.

It's hard to credit the idea that Stern, alone among people working in this area, should merit a full-page article in a broadsheet newspaper, apart from the fact that his public pronouncements are reliably hysterical. It's also amazing that when climate economists like Nordhaus and Tol have, respectively, pooh-poohed the Stern review as a political document and as being devoid of academic merit, the Independent should choose to describe its author as "the world's most authoritative climate economist". This is like describing Wayne Rooney as the world's most glamorous ballet dancer.

Details on what Stern and colleagues have done in this new paper are thin on the ground, but they have clearly been upping the ante on the climate sensitivity front:

Whereas the standard model usually assumes a single temperature for climate sensitivity of about 3C, the new model uses a range of 1.5C to 6C, which the authors say more accurately reflects the scientific consensus.

If climate sensitivity is 6°C, how much warming should we have had since the middle of last century? It does look very much as a case of garbage in, garbage out.

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Reader Comments (28)

Tony Bliar and Nicholas Stern, a marriage made in hell.
Two of the biggest utterly corrupt empty vessels "ever".
Everything these two men touch ends up in a disaster.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/sep/22/tony-blair-nicholas-stern-climate

Jun 16, 2014 at 10:18 AM | Unregistered Commenterc777

"Whereas the standard model usually assumes a single temperature for climate sensitivity of about 3C, the new model uses a range of 1.5C to 6C, which the authors say more accurately reflects the scientific consensus."

If I recall, the IPCC refused to estimate a mean climate sensitivity in their last report due to a lack of scientific consensus.

(Although a range of 1.5C-6C is not very useful when 1.5-2C = global economic benefits and 5-6C = end of the world.)

Jun 16, 2014 at 10:20 AM | Unregistered CommenterWill Nitschke

" It does look very much as a case of garbage in, garbage out."

Lord Stern and Garbage, now that's a partnership that will last forever!

Jun 16, 2014 at 10:35 AM | Unregistered CommenterCharmingQuark

May I suggest Josh a cartoon with the Good Lord appearing as a poshier Mr Men character, "Lord Stern"? As in meaning #4 here...

Jun 16, 2014 at 10:37 AM | Registered Commenteromnologos

There is not the slightest evidence to suggest 6C of climate sensitivity is a realistic estimate. None.

Stern should demonstrate how he arrives at such an absurd position given the IPCC has recently declined to publish their best estimate due to 'disagreement', and the small matter of observations sending more legitimate sensitivity estimates dropping like a rock.

The Pause, the Divergence Problem and no solid evidence to support the whereabouts of any missing heat is killing them. This panic-mode arm-waving. They're hurting.

Jun 16, 2014 at 10:43 AM | Unregistered CommenterCheshirered

omnologous 10.37. I would think that #2 is more apposite - " the back or rear end of anything". It could apply to both parties.

Jun 16, 2014 at 10:52 AM | Unregistered Commenterdiogenese2

Cripes on a bike, I wouldn't trust Nick Stern with the tea money - give it to Wayne, that's just about his level.


"Lord Stern, the world’s most authoritative climate economist"


Lord Stern announced himself...............

And besides, can someone tell me, "authoritative" - a subliminal message - did they actually mean plausible, tenable, credible? Stern, economics man on the back of a fag packet - a bloke inextricably linked to the Gloomo Brown profligacy - those years of "investment" [tax and spend, spend, spend], of mass immigration and economic catastrophe.

Yeah right, "authoritative", indeed stick in another superlative and make him, "the world’s most authoritative" - hmm that'll work.

What with Blair, rambling on, still a megalomaniac and in denial, the left shouts "we must do something, anything is better than nothing" the wraith of Lord Stern is conjured up - desperate stuff and so redolent of the left - their collective amnesia - "last time, it wasn't our fault it was sub-prime, and probably Man made warming.....the weather ........we'll get it right next time - jus' giv us another go"............... kicks in again.

Nu Labour and Blair [with Dave's help] did turn the nation into a third world backwater, and sometime satrapy of Brussels - authoritatively, Lord Stern was a little helper.

Jun 16, 2014 at 11:05 AM | Unregistered CommenterAthelstan.

Is this worse than we thought?

Jun 16, 2014 at 11:30 AM | Unregistered Commenterjones

Rayn Woonie just has too short legs.
He would have been a great footballer if only he had longer legs, but look, a ball a pass and anybody sprints past him.

It is a pity really but of course we cannot deny him another couple of million, otherwise the family cohesion would suffer
at the Woonie's.

One should be properly off one's kilter to watch sucker, btw.
It's a sport to play not watch. Unless it is watching your kids play, or mates you have been to school with or something.

Jun 16, 2014 at 11:30 AM | Unregistered Commenterptw

So Stern's tried a sensitivity analysis. Pity it didn't extend to discount rate! But then, Nordhaus has already done that for him. And if I may, here's a nice couple of paragraphs from his conclusions: (pp182-3)

"A WRINKLE EXPERIMENT
The effect of low discounting can be illustrated by a "wrinkle experiment/' Suppose that scientists discover a wrinkle in the climate system that will cause damages equal to 0.1 percent of net consumption starting in 2200 and continuing at that rate forever after. How large a one-time investment would be justified today to remove the wrinkle that starts only after two centuries? If we use the methodology of the Stern Review, the answer is that we should pay up to 56 percent of one year's world consumption today to remove the wrinkle.22 In other words, it is worth a one-time consumption hit of approximately $30,000 billion today to fix a tiny problem that begins in 2200.

It is illuminating to put this point in terms of average consumption levels. Using its growth projections, the Stern Review would justify reducing per capita consumption for one year today from $6,600 to $2,900 in order to prevent a reduction of consumption from $87,000 to $86,900 starting two centuries hence and continuing at that rate forever after. This bizarre result arises because the value of the future consumption stream is so high with near-zero time discounting that we should sacrifice a large fraction of today's income in order to increase a far-future income stream by a very tiny fraction. "

Nordhaus has a whole chapter on Stern and it's all good stuff.

Jun 16, 2014 at 12:37 PM | Unregistered CommenterCapell

Ah, yes, you've noted that the higher the sensitivity the colder it would now be without man's efforts. This is a hellacious set of intersecting curves.
============

Jun 16, 2014 at 12:38 PM | Unregistered Commenterkim

Lord Stern is being deceitful. Why?

Jun 16, 2014 at 12:45 PM | Unregistered Commenterhunter

I don't see an issue - the missing heat is going into the hyperbole.

Jun 16, 2014 at 1:13 PM | Unregistered CommenterTDK

"Lord Stern, the world’s most authoritative climate economist".

Well that certainly stuck my eyebrows to the ceiling. Somebody actually wrote those words intending them to be taken seriously? Astonishing!

Jun 16, 2014 at 1:39 PM | Unregistered CommenterIan H

Climate sensitivity to man made CO2 is negative.

Man made CO2 started to climb after 1945.

http://sunshinehours.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/cdiac-co2.jpg

The rate of warming from 1900 to 1945 is higher than the rate of warming after 1945.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to:1945/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1900/to:1945/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1945/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1945/trend

Jun 16, 2014 at 2:54 PM | Unregistered CommenterBruce

A major consequence of low discounting is surely the total prohibition of any abortion, an act that by itself removes from existence countless future people, each one of them almost as important as any alive now - making abortion the equivalent of mass killing.

Am not sure many people understand all the consequences of Stern's economic gymnastics.

Jun 16, 2014 at 3:13 PM | Registered Commenteromnologos

@ Hunter 12:45

Lord Stern is being deceitful. Why? Because he can...

Jun 16, 2014 at 3:53 PM | Registered Commenterdavidchappell

davidchappell,
I call that sort of answer the Willy Sutton answer. Willy was a lifelong criminal bank robber. When caught and interviewed he was aske why he chose to rob banks.
His answer was, "That is where the money is".
One thing certain in the climate obsessed culture is that climate hype sells.
When an academic already comfortable with rent seeking and moral hazard knows he can write a long winded report with transparently false parameters for basics like 'discount rate' and get away with it, why should he stop?
After all, that is where the money is.

Jun 16, 2014 at 4:18 PM | Unregistered Commenterhunter

Missing word -
"financial damage caused by global warming [hysteria] will be considerably greater than current models predict"

Jun 16, 2014 at 4:53 PM | Unregistered CommenterJohn A

To be fair to the to the guy he has a great deal to defend , both from the point of view that is trying to defend the indefeasible and from a point of you he has much to lose as he his another that been made 'big' by riding the cause so he does not want to see this gravy train come off the rails.

Jun 16, 2014 at 6:28 PM | Unregistered CommenterKnR

Hunter wrote: "His answer was, "That is where the money is"."

To day I just happened to come across this http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2014/jun/05/jobs-bad-polar-bears-good-jobs/

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics states that the “Employment of environmental scientists and specialists is projected to grow 15 percent from 2012 to 2022, faster than the average for all occupations."

"Stacy Barnes, 28, of Escondido is getting her master’s in environmental sciences for many reasons, only one being a paycheck.
“I plan on becoming a scientist so I can find out how to slow global warming, because at this point I am not sure we can stop it,” she said. “I love being an environmentalist and I hope to be able to help keep the earth the way it is for my children and generations to come.”

"In 2011, the median annual wage for atmospheric scientists was $89,790, with the top 10% earning more than $136,000, the Bureau reported. Those salaries represented increases of approximately $2,000 and $4,000, respectively, over the previous year."

Jun 16, 2014 at 6:51 PM | Unregistered CommenterDaveJR

It's desperation, isn't it? With public comments and thoughts becoming more strident *against* the blatant 'mistruths' being fed to the public, the proponents of AGW are throwing everything they have at it in the vain hope that this last push will create the public consensus they need to carry out their plans.
What they plan to do NEXT is the key issue that needs discussion.

Jun 16, 2014 at 8:44 PM | Unregistered CommenterDave_G

The peculiar habit the English have of 'ennobling' very ordinary men and women as they are inducted into the House of Lords leads to some hilarious and quite strange 'noble names' and 'Lord Stern' is probably the funniest (to me) as it suggests a confusion as to which orifice he speaks from.
I know I am merely a rude Colonial, but I have always, since I became aware of him, thought of him as 'Lord Arse'.
Every one of his increasingly alarmist pronouncements serves to reinforce my personal image of him.

Jun 16, 2014 at 10:24 PM | Unregistered CommenterAlexander K

If teh consensus for climate sensitivity is a range of 1.5 to 6C then one could well ask what use is the consensus. If after decades of research and vast amounts of CO2 emitted fro jet flights to conferences, climate science can only say that sensitivity is in a range of 1.5 to 6C then perhaps it is time to shut down all climate science research as useless.

Jun 16, 2014 at 10:26 PM | Unregistered Commenterdljvjbsl

"If the consensus for climate sensitivity is a range of 1.5 to 6C then one could well ask what use is the consensus."

Yes the "consensus" tells us that global warming could either be economically beneficial or wipe out civilization, or something in-between. One might consider it to be a rather broad consensus, but not in a good way. ;-)

Jun 16, 2014 at 11:21 PM | Unregistered CommenterWill Nitschke

Dave JR,
As someone who experienced first hand the sure thing of the late 1970's/early 80's oil boom, I can tell you that young enviro who is out to save the planet is going to experience reality in a seat of the pants- specifically the wallet side back pocket area of the seat of their pants. This rent seeking parasitic faux boom of governments pouring insane amounts of money down the climate obsessed rat hole will end in a bust.
I do not not wish ill on the apparently endless rubes who have bought into the cliamte obsession. But I will smile as I enjoy the schadenfreude that the anthropomorphic climate crisis blow out will cause.

Jun 17, 2014 at 5:49 AM | Unregistered Commenterhunter

Seeing as how the UKMO Central England Temperature record has already lost almost 1degC this century, i.e. since the year 2000, has "Lord" Stern calculated the global damage that would certainly occur from a minus 2 degC cooling.

If he wants to make a real contribution to the climate policy, perhaps he should apply his great economic mind to that topic.

With diminished solar output in cycle 24 and as presaged for cycle 25, it is certainly as likely or more likely outcome than Catastrophic Man-made warming for the foreseeable future.

Ricard Tol has assessed that up to +2 degC is universally beneficial.

There are things with the climate we really should be afraid of and +2 degC warming is not one of them.

Our Happy Holocene epoch after some 10,000 years is fading.

The last millennium 1000-2000 AD was the coldest of the Holocene almost 3degC less than the peak of the Holocene "optimum".


BRRRRRRRR!!

Jun 17, 2014 at 11:24 AM | Unregistered Commenteredmh

Thank you for sharing.
I support you.
And I will love forever.

Jul 3, 2014 at 1:20 PM | Unregistered Commentersbo

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