It was my plan to get out into the garden a bit this weekend. We have had beautiful weather lately here in Brisbane – clear skies, warm days and cool nights. This morning it’s raining – just nicely.
But the official forecast is for a climate crisis.
Indeed, the Stern report with its finding that we risk a global recession because of global warming has dominated media headlines in Australia this last week. According to Sir Nicolas Stern 'the future' will be worse than the two world wars and the great depression combined.
But, there were a few lone voices of reason out there, and getting published, and suggesting, that the Stern warning will join Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb and the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth in “the pantheon of big banana scares that proved to be unfounded”.
Following are three published opinion pieces from three friends of mine:
1. Stern Review: The dodgy numbers behind the latest warming scare
By Bjorn Lomborg
Thursday, 2 November 2006
THE report on climate change by Nicholas Stern and the U.K. government has sparked publicity and scary headlines around the world. Much attention has been devoted to Mr. Stern's core argument that the price of inaction would be extraordinary and the cost of action modest.
Unfortunately, this claim falls apart when one actually reads the 700-page tome. Despite using many good references, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is selective and its conclusion flawed. Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalized, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off. Read the full article here: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009182
2. British report the last hurrah of warmaholics
By Bob Carter
Friday, 3 November 2006
NICHOLAS Stern is a distinguished economist. Climate change is a complex, uncertain and contentious scientific issue. Have you spotted the problem with the Stern review yet?
An accomplished cost-benefit analysis of climate change would require two things: a clear, quantitative understanding of the natural climate system and a dispassionate, accurate consideration of all the costs and benefits of warming as well as cooling.
Unfortunately, the Stern review is not a cost-benefit but a risk analysis, and of warming only. Read the full article here: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20690289-7583,00.html
3. The Alternatives Are Too Costly
By Alan Moran
Thursday, 2 November 2006
THE Stern report and its associated intensified diplomatic push for carbon restraints is already having an effect on policy. In Britain the Opposition Leader has announced that if he wins government he will place a windmill on the roof of Number 10 Downing Street. In anticipation of the report, additional subsidies were announced in Australia for exotic and very expensive renewable energy. Australian total taxes, subsidies and other regulatory measures aimed at combating emissions of carbon dioxide will approach $1 billion a year by 2010 even if no further measures are introduced. Read the full article here: http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/the-alternatives-are-too-costly/2006/11/01/1162339917976.html
But The Age left out the most important part of Alan's piece, the graph. Here it is:
Several personal observations about Global Fooling.
1/ Tony Blair is in deep poo in GB. He has to try and regain the 3rd way if he is to leave office as a hero. Hence the shonky terms of reference for Stern.
2/ALL of the EU countries & GB are in deep financial POO as they grapple with an ageing population that expects their promised pension entitlements to be paid. The only way is for increased taxation. (OH look carbon taxes are on the agenda. Shucks folks)
3/The stupidity of people to believe the Communists of 20 years ago threw their hammers & sickles into the fields and became good Capitalists is indicated in their stupidity in relation to believing in CO2 induced Global Fooling. ALL Green parties are far left-wing.
When Bernie Taft was interviewed after winding up the ACP he said they would not go away instead they would.
move into the Public Service
move into the Unions.
move into the Environmental movement.
4/There is something wrong with the way in which the "media" have reported the evolving debate. Trouble is there isn't a debate. They love disasters. It makes more money. This is the same media that stabs our troops in the back by giving support to those who are trying to kill them.
5/ As far as I know not ONE EU/Kyoto signatory nation has come close to meeting the targets set.
Where is the Government in all this?? Having a bet each way. Its not only Kim Beasley who lacks vision & ticker.
In the US, energy production is between 6 and 7 per cent of GDP. I suspect that would be fairly typical given that the energy intensity of the US economy is only slightly higher than the OECD and world averages.
So if Stern claims that the cost of reducing CO2 emissions by 80 per cent will be less than 1 per cent of GDP, he is in fact claiming that energy costs will not increase by any more than 1/6 to 1/7 (i.e., 14 to 16 per cent). If, as I imagine, the cost disparity is far greater than that to start with, it will have to become a lot more favorable at some point in the future to compensate.
Pinx - I think old Monkie is a shonky wonky. All the usual try-ons.
I was wondering when we'd get to the old Mars and global warming scam. Sigh.
"There is a slight irony in people rushing to claim that the glacier changes on Mars are a sure sign of global warming, while not being swayed by the much more persuasive analogous phenomena here on Earth.."
http://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=navclient&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-42,GGLJ:en-GB&q=mars+global+warming+realclimate
Sid nobody knows what will happen if your drive your car down the freeway at 160 km/hr either - maybe nothing.
So Sir Nick Stern joins Sir David King and Mother Shipton in the Club of Great False Prophets!
As a scientist friend commented on the AGW issue, 'No one knows. Anyone who claims they 'know' is either a time traveler from the future, an ideologue, or ignorant.'
By the way, a scientific report has Mars suffering from 'global warming', with the ice caps melting. Is that our fault too? Or is it just our little old Sun?...In both cases???
In the Telegraph story (Jen's link), Monckton criticises the models.
"... Monckton (sorry, 3rd viscount of Benchley) was the inventor of the "eternity puzzle", a post-Rubik’s toy that he was so confident would take between three and 130 billion years to solve that he offered £1 million to the first person to do so.
It took seven months, and he lost his ancestral home. Also irrelevant to point out that he was an advisor to Margaret Thatcher during the full flush of monetarism. "
Guy Rundle in Crikey
oh bugger, they'll lower the rapture index