Some delicious weasel words from Lord Stern over at the Guardian this morning. The great man purports to be explaining the state of the climate debate, and invites us all to believe that extreme weather is getting worse.
More frequent and severe extreme weather, rising sea levels and acidifying oceans are already posing threats to homes and businesses across the world...
But read that again. It's a sentence of striking ambiguity. Is he saying that extreme weather has become worse? That would be untrue, of course. But perhaps he is saying that there is the threat of increased extreme weather. The question that one would then have to ask is why, if the threat of extreme weather has gone up, hasn't the number or intensity of extreme weather events gone up too.
As for the suggestion that a marginal decrease in alkalinity in the oceans is "already posing a threat to homes and businesses", you have to wonder what threat precisely he is thinking of?