h/t to WUWT reader Pat. We are witnessing the crumbling of the consensus mindset. Stern looked like a deer in headlights.
Nicholas Stern is challenged by ABC’s Tony Jones on China/coal/renewables propaganda, and comes out looking very foolish indeed. The Richard Tol stuff is predictable:
VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT: 27 March: ABC Lateline: Back tracking on carbon pricing will damage Australia
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: We were joined just a short time ago from London by Lord Nicholas Stern who headed the review on the economics of climate change published in 2006.
He was also the principal adviser to the British Government on the economics of climate change and development from 2005 through to 2007.
Lord Stern is now chairman of the Grantham research institute at the London School of Economics. Nicholas Stern, thanks for joining us.
…
NICHOLAS STERN: What China is doing is growing rapidly and trying to reduce the fraction of coal in its energy portfolio and it’s succeeding in doing that.
TONY JONES: Sorry, can I interrupt you there. Do you know what it is at the moment? I found it hard to actually find details of this. What is the percentage of power produced by coal?
NICHOLAS STERN: I think it’s around – you’ll have to check this Tony but I think it’s just below 60 per cent coming down from considerably above 60 per cent.
Don’t hold me on those numbers. All I can tell you is that it’s coming down pretty rapidly in China as a result of direct policy and notwithstanding a likely doubling of the economy in 10 years, that they aim, during that period, to find a peak in coal and then bring it on down thereafter…
***TONY JONES: Finally, as scientists meet in Japan to thrash out the final wording on the IPCC’s next assessment report on the impact of climate change, British economist Professor Richard Toll who was one of the lead authors, has asked for his name to be taken off the document, claiming it’s alarmist and has been changed from talking, as he says, about manageable risk to the four horsemen of the apocalypse. How much damage will his departure do to the credibility of the final report?
NICHOLAS STERN: Not much. He’s always been somebody who as argued that the damages from climate change are there but very small. He’s an outlier really and I think his departure won’t make much difference.
***TONY JONES: Do you think it’s been orchestrated in some way? Is that what you’re suggesting?
NICHOLAS STERN: I don’t know whether it’s orchestrated or not. He’s making his own statements and he’s entitled to do that but I think he’s seen as a bit of an outlier in terms of someone who thinks the damages are much smaller than the rest of us fear and this is risk management, Tony.
You have to be very, very confident that the risks are going to be very small because the science tells us the risks could be very big and it is irreversibility here, as the concentrations in the atmosphere ratchet up, the high-carbon capital and infrastructure gets locked in. Delay is very dangerous so one person saying he thinks the risks might be very small is a very marginal part of the argument because most of the science is telling us that the risks are very big and with the irreversibility that we see in this, any kind of common sense or risk analysis says we should act strongly…
Video and transcript here:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2014/s3973198.htm
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The lord is trying to cover his stern, because he knows that if anyone’s prediction of future damage is an outlier then it is surely his own.
Stern the politician/non-scientist said: “…because the science tells us the risks could be very big and it is irreversibility here, as the concentrations in the atmosphere ratchet up, the high-carbon capital and infrastructure gets locked in.”
What risks ? More food and plant growth ? Fewer humans dying ?
Is this cult literate ? Stern said: ‘Ratchet’ ? Co2 becomes ‘locked in’? The earth’s climate system is a complex million-variable convection system, and ‘greenhouse gases’ – another very useless appellation – are recycled by various processes in a variety of ways. There is no ‘ratcheting’ of anything.
I am still awaiting rationale as to why a trace chemical 4/100 of 1 % can cause anything, and why the 95 % emitted by Gaia is the ‘good’ Co2 and the 5 % by man, the ‘evil’ Co2….Stern would have no idea about any of this.
Anthony-all the language about adaptation and governance in the IPCC documents dovetails with the required systems thinking and virtual reality immersion focus via digital learning going on globally in education. It’s called the Common Core in US but Core Skills and Quality Learning or 21st century skills elsewhere. http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/surreptitious-vision-ed-reforms-as-designing-an-internal-keel-to-control-people-and-manage-society/ explains this proclaimed socio-cybernetic vision.
Unmentioned but in the described report are the constant references to shifting education to fit the new kinds of thoughtways required to fit in with Jay Forester’s 1970s Limits to Growth modelling for the Club of Rome and the World Dynamics software simulations he created subsequently. As the materials acknowledge education globally is no longer focusing on what is an accurate representation of reality. Instead, the focus is on what visually stimulates emotions to take action.
The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has said that UNESCO’s poorly understood control over education, especially when joined to that of the OECD, gives the UN the ability to gain implementation of its Climate Change recommendations. In the small print these models always say they are about changing the social systems, including human behavior. That’s why we keep hearing Kurt Lewin’s mantra “There is nothing as practical as a good theory” all over the world.
As long as it influences policy makers, it does not need to be true. As Marx noted, the point is to change the future.
My fellow Aussies are a deeply frustrating experience for demagogues.
We listen politely, nod at all the right places, wander home, open a beer, turn on the TV and catch up on the latest footy scores.
By the time the demagogue is reaching a crescendo, about to a call for the march on Munich, they suddenly realise the room is empty, and they are talking to empty chairs.
stern n Guano..what a pair
economist types with bugger all science knowledge running figures to screw nations into oblivion
chinas busy Building coal plants and so is germany
ya have to wonder what planet these buffoons live on
Stern looked like some cheap plastic robot during that interview. He was just laughable. I will wait some time before I expect to see Tony Jones having a red hot go at CAGW alarmism but he has seen the light on issues in the past and done a good job. He is generally a predictable lefty presenter on our ABC but is capable of being effective when the penny drops on some issue.
The clearest point Stern makes is that the IPCC report self-selected itself to be alarmist and doesn’t want anyone but high risk adherents contributing to the unrosiest of scenarios that they think they can get away with at this time.
China has gone from 1.5 billion tons to 3.8 billion tons of coal consumed in 2011, and he is claiming that the Chinese percentage is 60% and falling?
“because the science tells us the risks could be very big ”
Surely there must be many alarmists who read WUWT. Could one of you please tell me exactly what the “science” is that leads you to your conclusions?
http://youtu.be/ikssfUhAlgg
I am reminded of this as the alarmists continue to eat their own that do not toe the exact party line.
I wonder if the last one out will turn off the lights?
Don’t get too excited that the ABC and its “ethnic TV” companion SBS are developing even-handedness in the CAGW “debate”. Both channels’ evening news programs featured a sickening segment featuring Ban Ki Moon in Greenland, where apparently disaster is just around the corner and young Greenlanders are in for a terrible future as their ice disappears. There was so much emotive nonsense I was shaking my head that adults could actually believe so much BS, or even produce it in the first place. The report was actually produced by the BBC.
Sure, it’s a misleading indicator, as with many things from the alarmists. Coal might be dwindling from it’s percentage of the mix, but only because other generation methods are ramping up more quickly. You can double your usage, but if that doubling is across the board you’re still looking at 60%.
We also know that China has many nuclear power plants under construction, which should rapidly reduce the percentage from coal, but probably won’t actually reduce coal usage in the near term.
Lord Stern is now chairman of the Grantham research institute at the London School of Economics.
Set up by Grantham to promote ideas that will make Grantham even richer than he already is.
It is not part of the LSE , its actual a separate legal entered which does no research and no education of its own . Its ‘task’ is to promote the view point of the person paying its bills, in other words its marketing firm with all that means for truth and reality.
The LSE took the money and turned a blind eye , while allowing a ‘iffy’ organisation to ride on the back of its name, and not for the first time. One day the media may start to say just what this organisation actual is rather than give it the credit it has no right too.
Would have to see if Stern is implying that China is adopting renewable energy in place of coal. The EPA lists China at 70% energy from coal in 2011, same as in 2006. Oil is 18, and natural gas is 4. The only significant renewable is hydro at 6, which they never count as renewable in terms of energy mandates. Other renewables is listed as <1%.
Sounds like Stern believes the Chinese guys have taken St Augustine’s prayer to heart:
‘Oh Lord, make us green, but not yet’
So they’ll increase their coal production and consumption for 10 years and then they’ll fall dramatically? Yeah, right. Meanwhile we cripple our own industry to set an example?
Nick, I have this nice bridge you’ll be interested in. See how the snake-oil covering glistens in the sun! Highly recommended by the economic planners in Beijing. Buy now.
Let’s file a FOIA request to the Chicoms to verify Stern’s numbe… oh wait… never mind.
LFTR’s, LFTR’s Kirk Sorensen YOUTUBE watch it.
“the science tells us the risks could be very big”
It isn’t science.
The ABC never interviews anyone who resiles, even slightly, from the AGWing faith….NEVER!!!
China is continuing hell for leather for coal, opening new coal fired stations every month! 79% of electricity is generated by coal. Wind power is an infinitesimally small proportion of the energy used in China. Remember China has one fifth of the world’s population.
[img]http://static.cdn-seekingalpha.com/uploads/2013/3/11/7181641-1363022016981377-PatrickG24.png[/img]
Even if China’s “other renewables” sector increased tenfold it would still only be 3% of the total! Hard sums, eh?
An interesting development all over the verdant sector: they’ve cleaved so tightly to the bad-CO2- mus- be- eliminated litany that they’ve collapsed on anti-nuclear and hydro, two former evils that have now come to be grudgingly respectable since, at long last, they’ve come to see that renewables are a joke. They also see that they can take credit for the surge in nuclear and hydro that will take place with green pressure off them. It will be good to see the next “EU 5yr plan” as things crumble in the carbon battle elsewhere. For UK, the rest of the ‘commonwealth’ has abandoned them on this stuff and the eastern EU is not buying into it. Oh the pressures! It won’t be long now. The UN has even abandoned corn auto fuel!!
My take on it is that it was just ABC propaganda implying, as per the ABC title “Back tracking on carbon pricing will damage Australia”, that Australia is an outlier taking the wrong direction.
There are some powerful vested interests in the UK, many of them Lord and Lady landowners, making millions out of the poor with their green investments, chairmanship of ‘renewable’ industry firms, subsidies for green technology and income from windfarms on their land. They will not be backing down anytime soon.
I found it disgraceful and distasteful that Lord Stern was criticising the policy of the Australian Government, especially as the carbon tax was one of the issues they were elected on.
Bang goes Richard Tol’s Knighthood then!
Lord Stern”s China visit filled him with “hopium.”
Wow.
From Toniy Jones, with his usual reflection of the ABC ‘watermelon’ agenda (and no Mr Scott, I don’t know how he votes), this was practically an ambush interview.
I’m not holding my breath, but maybe, just maybe, this is the start of some movement on the part of the ABC. I’ll just go check my 7th floor window for any passing pigs …
Toniy? Sorry Tony – I really need a fat finger app.