Now even Australia's ABC is asking questions about the new IPCC report and why Dr. Richard Tol asked his name to be removed from it

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.

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.

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.

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.

LFTR’s, LFTR’s Kirk Sorensen YOUTUBE watch it.

The ABC never interviews anyone who resiles, even slightly, from the AGWing faith….NEVER!!!

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!!

Lord Stern”s China visit filled him with “hopium.”

Toniy? Sorry Tony – I really need a fat finger app.

First, hats off to Dr. Richard Tol for his integrity and courage.
(respectful moment of silence)
Isn’t it interesting the way Stern spins China? They are reducing the fraction of coal in their energy portfolio huh. That’s a lovely and probably true statement, and yet it’s utterly misleading. They are ramping up coal use like mad.
Stern is just playing games. Even the guys at Climate Central will (more or less) give you the truth on this without too much spin here.
The most honest thing he said about it was this:

in 10 years, that they aim, during that period, to find a peak in coal and then bring it on down thereafter…

They aren’t going to reduce coal use by diddle squat for the next decade and they make no bones about it. They already consume almost as much coal by themselves as the rest of the world combined.

My risk of getting cancer someday could be very big. So I should start chemo and radiation therapy right away.

Stern’s statement about Tol being “an outlier” reminds me of an old joke I sometimes use to lighten the tone when I am giving a talk to a mixed discipline scientific audience. It goes something like this:
——————-
Some scientists were given the problem of proving that all numbers are prime.
The mathematician’s proof is: 2 is prime, 2+1 = 3 is prime. Therefore all numbers are prime by induction.
The engineer’s proof is: 2 is prime, 3 is prime, 4 is prime, 5 is prime. Well it looks like all numbers are prime and that’s good enough for me. [remember this is just a joke]
The computer scientist’s proof is: 2 is prime, 2 is prime, 2 is prime, 2 is prime………..
The astronomer’s proof is: 2 is prime, 3 is prime, 4 is, hmmmm, well it must be bad data, an outlier, so we throw it out, 5 is prime so it looks like a trend and all numbers must be prime.
——- — —–
The joke can be continued for several other disciplines but you get the gist. The joking part is the (in this case self deprecating and usually humorous to astronomers) reference to a cavalier dismissing as an outlier anything that does not agree with your pre-conceived notion. I am thinking of modifying the joke the next time to replace the astronomer with a climate scientist.

At most, 1.5% of Chinese energy comes from wind and solar. Despite all the blather to the contrary, coal is still king in China…
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2013/12/02/not-much-of-chinese-energy-is-from-wind-or-solar/

It just occurred to me that this guy, Stern, has really no alternative reason to say anything other than his continued stream of fabrications about carbon tax and Carbon trading. It serves him no purpose to retreat one bit on his 1970s hippie green religion. What else is he going to do? Did you listen to his language? It is a steady stream of Green vernacular babble, all BS and phraseology of long practiced diatribes. Makes me wonder what I will sound like when I get old…er. Stern is absolutely deluded. He is gone.
As far as ABC goes. I could detect some skepticism in his response to Sterns remarks about Sterns claims of China’s efforts wrt coal plants etc. It was pretty stunning how Stern is so emphatic about how the world should turn on what China is doing then he immediately disavows knowing what the facts were. “don’t hold me to those numbers” he says after trying to browbeat Australia and the world into changing the world currency to carbon. ‘Oh don’t hold me to those numbers. I don’t know what they are [ but they are fantastic].”
Stern is an ass. He is a liar. He is a hippie leftover.
I think ABC could have gone a little farther. Prime Minister Harper killed Kyoto etc in Canada. Now Canadian news is pivoting to mock global warming:
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2014/03/20140314-071457.html
Brian Lilley is the prime time Canadian News anchor for Sun News, which get greater viewership than the CBC.
Australia and Canada are both walking away from the Eco-extremists. Decades of lies have revealed the green religion for what is is, a wealth redistribution cult.

“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…”
——-
We can’t have a marginal part of the argument. Look at the past scientific break-throughs, they’ve always come from huge consensus. No “lone wolf” on the fringes of the consensus was ever right about anything. The masses are never in error. /sarc

Didn’t take long for the ‘rebuttal’ to see the light of day.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/28/ipcc-climate-costs-estimate-meaningless

In 2014, Chinese CO2 emissions will be double those of the US. The future course of their emissions is basically dependent on their rate of economic growth and their improvement in emission intensity (CO2 emitted per $GDP). The Chinese have pledged to improve their emission intensity by about 3% per year, roughly what the developed world has done for the past half century. To pick your favorite estimate for the growth of the Chinese economy, subtract 3% if you are optimistic that the Chinese will meet their objectives, add it to 1, and calculate the exponential growth rate until their emissions are triple the US’s. Even with a 4% growth rate, China’s emissions will be triple the US (a 50% increase from today) in another decade! That’s right – if the US managed to reduce emissions the requested 80% over the next decade, the almost inevitable growth in Chinese emissions will more than negate those cutbacks. There are several billion other people in the undeveloped world who are desperate to follow China’s path.

Cheshirered says:
Didn’t take long for the ‘rebuttal’ to see the light of day.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/28/ipcc-climate-costs-estimate-meaningless
…Notice the Guardian’s new habit of disabling the Reader’s Comments section for all their “global warming” stories, such as this. RIP CiF.

Col Mosby says:
March 28, 2014 at 7:20 am
“Nothing like a pack of lies to incite the mob, eh? China’s use of coal has slowed to less than a third of what it was increasing during the 2004-2010 period. ”
Calls other people liars, then says
“China’s use of coal has slowed to less than a third of what it was increasing”
What do you mean with “USE OF COAL HAS SLOWED”; I take it that they burn it with one third of the speed they did before? Oh wait; there’s also an “INCREASING” in your sentence; okay, so what you really WANT to say is that they burn MORE coal now;
so I see that you completely agree with the statement you criticized even though you are incapable of forming a well-formed sentence.

Serious question: Why are the warmies ranting about China anyway? Is this a strawman “example of good”? Suggesting, maybe we should have a global communist government; then we could all like in a green paridise, just like China? or “Look, even China is getting on board!”
Clearly, China is doing what is best for them. I am quite sure that they are not concerned about CAGW. I suspect any reduction in coal “portfolio” is strictly a smog reduction attempt, or possible LNG is saving them money? I am not sure on the economics of coal vs LNG.

Ok, on the topic of China, could the siteing location of the Mauna Loa CO2 measurment station be unduly influenced by China’s massive CO2 output? I remember reading a post that showed that CO2 was not actualy well mixed. Could the global CO2 concentrations be lower than Mauna Loa indicates?

Here is my theory which is mine and belongs to me. CAGW/CACC is a coalmine canary for mass credulity. Just when First World mind control through leftist solidarity* of the mass media and public education was reaching critical mass as indicated by the near universal acceptance of the meme, the globalist ruling classes were thrown a curve by the emergence of an uncontrolled global market of ideas— the Internet— and a popular media outlier— Fox News. (Memo to Lord Stern: better an outlier than an out-and-out-liar.) Suddenly the canary has regained consciousness!
The global governance camel’s nose is in the door, but is being pushed back much harder and more effectively than expected by Climategate, the Hiatus and the recent “sensible” cooling trends with accompanying “cooling is warming” Newspeak (if the temperature plummets in the forest and everyone is there to feel it, is it still getting warmer?) These are being publicized and popularized by the alternative media and water cooler chat and are on the tipping point of going viral. So now it is all hands to the camel’s backside to push it the rest of the way through the door by sheer force of consensus-is-science Newspeak and international peer pressure. Thus Papa Stern calls out the shameful antisocial behavior of dear children Australia and Canada— pointing to the recent crocodile tears of Black Sheep Brother China and hypocritically taking personal credit for the US’s recent hygiene turnaround— and stresses that the Family of Nations is ready to welcome back the Prodigals with open arms. Gag me.
*I am not a pure conspiracist, but a solidaritist/conspiracist; conspiracy is the tip of the iceberg, from there it’s solidarity all the way down, Solidarity-of-error (clapping for Tinkerbelle) is the New Truth. Its poster children are legion.

Spoken like a true economist. Now who is the outliar?

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…

What a load of utter tosh and alarmist garbage. The reasons he says “we should act strongly” can be found HERE. It’s called carbon profits and profiteering.

China coal production:
“While Beijing said in September that it would cut the share of coal in its primary energy mix to “less than 65 percent” by 2017, down from 66.8 percent in 2012, consumption will still rise in absolute terms, with total energy demand set to grow 4.3 percent a year over the 2011-2015 period.
“The 2011-2015 plan said around 860 million tonnes of new coal production capacity will be brought into operation, as well as 300 more gigawatts of coal-fired power, twice the total generation capacity of Germany.”
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/01/07/china-coal-idUKL3N0K90H720140107

I watched the whole thing and did not see it as hard questioning of Stern at all. He was given a platform to air his views and the interviewer simply asked him leading questions that allowed him to make his main points.
The take at WUWT on this is a bit skewed if you ask me, and it no way shows any crumbling in resolve.
It would have been a perfect opportunity to point out some simple mathematical realities about emissions from China and India and what they really mean about reductions in countries such as Canada and Australia, an opportunity that was missed.

He’s an outlier really and I think his departure won’t make much difference.

When you have more and more outliers, they aren’t outliers anymore.

Jeff in Calgary says:
March 28, 2014 at 9:53 am
“Serious question: Why are the warmies ranting about China anyway? Is this a strawman “example of good”? Suggesting, maybe we should have a global communist government; then we could all like in a green paridise, just like China? or “Look, even China is getting on board!””
Our Western leftist journos are all Maoists; they grew up in decades where Stalin was already known to be a murderer of tens of millions; but Mao was still untouchable. That’s why the NYT and the BBC a few weeks ago had fawning articles to Mao’s 130th (I think) birthday that could have been written by the Chicoms themselves, completely ignoring the tens of millions of dead during the Great Leap Forward and the Culture Revolution.
So, they’d rather cut off their right hand before writing anything critical of China.

Anthony:
I’d like to nominate the rgbatduke at
March 28, 2014 at 9:49 am comment for a separate post. A clear and detailed explanation of the (apparently still misunderstood) atmospheric “greenhouse” effect. Excellent!
Bob, retired physicist

to anyone who doesn’t think this was tough questioning by Jones, u obviously aren’t familiar with the softly softly approach of the ABC to all things CAGW. relatively speaking, this was a real breakthrough, and Stern must be wondering what hit him.

Pat, and the ABC are under criticism from the present government for their handling of some controversial management of the question of our navy personnel deliberately burning men’s hands on an engine they were trying to disable to gain entry as asylum seekers into Australia. They were sent back to Indonesia where they complained about their treatment, so I think the ABC are soft peddling at the moment. It was a nasty segment, with one failed asylum seeker, threatening Australia with a reminder of 9/11 and killing Tony Abbot.

Col Mosby: China’s use of coal has slowed to less than a third of what it was increasing during the 2004-2010 period.
Reread your piece carefully. Nowhere do you have an argument that coal use is decreasing in China. All you have are claims that other types of energy production are increasing at a faster rate, compared to their baselines. The future is literally not known, but every reasonable extrapolation to the near future based on the recent past is that Chinese coal consumption will continue to increase.

Brian Lilley is the prime time Canadian News anchor for Sun News, which get greater viewership than the CBC.
The sad thing (but not at all a surprise), the CBC network with their radio network included, ABC (Australia, although the one in the USA follows suit and sets the example), are only alive today because without over a billion $$ in taxpayers subsidies here in Canada, the CBC would not even exist today,
My HT to Sun news, Brian Lilley, Ezra Levant Michael Cohen etc. and the rest of the crew. You go guys! But what is even more evident is that at one time ( 40’s 50’s) CBC, BBC and many other TV and radio networks were fighting against the Eastern block and at the time very much anti progressive and socialism, but my, has that ever changed, it is even more apparent in all facets of our lives from schooling to “the everybody is a winner mentality!!

“Chris in Australia says:
March 28, 2014 at 8:53 pm”
You have it very wrong my friend. Australians are POMEs. They are the original Prisoners Of Mother England. 😉
—————————————-
Exactly my point ! After 226 years, you still think we are all convicts descended from convicts.
Very wrong “My Friend” !

Lord Stern is in a wonderful profession with a reputation for rigor and skill.

BBC – 19 April 2013
The student who caught out the profs
This week, economists have been astonished to find that a famous academic paper often used to make the case for austerity cuts contains major errors. Another surprise is that the mistakes, by two eminent Harvard professors, were spotted by a student doing his homework……
His professors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst had set his graduate class an assignment – pick an economics paper and see if you can replicate the results. It’s a good exercise for aspiring researchers……
EU commissioner Olli Rehn and influential US Republican politician Paul Ryan have both quoted a 90% debt-to-GDP limit to support their austerity strategies.
But while US politicians were arguing over whether to inject more stimulus into the economy, the euro was creaking under the strain of forced austerity, and a new coalition government in the UK was promising to raise taxes and cut spending to get the economy under control – Thomas Herndon’s homework assignment wasn’t going well.
No matter how he tried, he just couldn’t replicate Reinhart and Rogoff’s results…….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22223190

—————-

BBC – 10 January 2014
“Only days before the 1929 stock market crash, one of the best known economists of the time, Professor Irving Fisher of Yale University, announced that “stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau”. Even after the crash occurred, Fisher insisted it was only a market correction that would soon be over. Losing most of his own fortune, the distinguished economist was as deluded as nearly everyone else. In case you’re wondering who anticipated the crash, two who did were the mobster Al Capone, who described the stock market in the boom years as a racket, and Charlie Chaplin, who unsuccessfully pleaded with his friend, the songwriter Irving Berlin, to sell out the day before the market collapsed.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25680144

Compare with our George Negus’s grovelling, psycophantic pig-ignorant mush in 2009.
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/06/16/in-which-george-negus-sucks-up-to-lord-stern/

Lord Stern is either incompetent or a liar. See this.
What is more he is being protected by the “system”. In his reply to this letter The House of Lords Commissioner for Standards stated “a members views and opinions are outside my remit”
The House of Lords Commissioner for Standards,
House of Lords, London,
SW1A 0PW.
Dear Mr. Kernaghan.
As you can see I sent the accompanying letter to Lord Stern on 25th April, 2012. Despite the fact it was sent by recorded delivery, Lord Stern did not have the courtesy to reply. Having given Lord Stern ample opportunity to reply to my enquiry, I now believe it is appropriate to make a formal complaint about Lord Stern.
I have taken a particular interest in Sections 3.3 and 3.4 of the Stern Report, which largely concerns crop productivity, as I am a Plant Physiologist by training (M.A. PhD, Cantab) and can therefore write with authority in this area.
My first concern is why Lord Stern used data from an obscure publication (Wheeler et al 1996) and indeed, manipulated it to produce a conclusion that was not supported by the original authors? They clearly state in their abstract “Mean seed dry weight was increased by > 72 % at elevated CO2, because grain numbers per ear did not decline with an increase in temperature at elevated CO2”. Furthermore whilst Lord Stern went to the trouble to delete data, which did not support his narrative, from the graph (see my original letter), he further emphasised the apparent decline by adding a “dogleg” line, which did not appear in the original graph.
Moreover one has to question why Lord Stern did not chose to present evidence from multiple publications, all available at the time, that clearly demonstrate that under the scenarios of increased CO2 and temperature used in his report: “Projections of future warming depend on projections of global emissions (discussed in chapter 7). If annual emissions were to remain at today’s levels, greenhouse gas levels would reach close to 550 ppm CO2e by 2050. Using the lower and upper 90% confidence bounds based on the IPCC TAR range and recent research from the Hadley Centre, this would commit the world to a warming of around 2 – 5°C.” (Stern review Page 12 and Table 1.1) plant and agricultural productivity are increased, rather than decreased as Lord Stern states: “In tropical regions, even small amounts of warming will lead to declines in yield. In higher latitudes, crop yields may increase initially for moderate increases in temperature but then fall. Higher temperatures will lead to substantial declines in cereal production around the world, particularly if the carbon fertilisation effect is smaller than previously thought, as some recent studies suggest.” (Stern review Page 67).
Even a cursory search of the relevant literature, available at the time, shows that Lord Stern’s conclusions are seriously flawed. Perhaps the most authoritative paper of the time is that of Ainsworth and Long (2005) which collated data from 120 primary, peer-reviewed articles describing responses to plants under a variety of high [CO2] (475–600 ppm) scenarios, precisely those envisaged in his report. They state that: “Stimulation of photosynthesis at elevated [CO2] is theoretically predicted to be greater at higher temperatures (Drake et al., 1997). When the FACE data were divided between experiments conducted below 25°C and those conducted above 25°C, this prediction was supported. At lower temperatures (< 25°C) Asat was increased by 19%, and at temperatures above 25°C Asat was increased by 30% when plants were grown under elevated [CO2] . Precisely what Wheeler et al (1996) found. Significantly they quote Drake et al (1997) which demonstrates that the theoretical underpinning of increased plant productivity, in response to elevated CO2 and temperatures, was well-known at the time Lord Stern wrote his report, further undermining Lord Stern’s partisan conclusions.
Finally I note that the other graph that Lord Stern has chosen to use in Figure 3.4 (Page 69), from Vara Prasad et al (2001), uses Peanut (hardly a major crop) as an example of a tropical crop where “even small amounts of warming will lead to declines in yield”. However Lord Stern studiously omits to say that the authors only exposed the plants to high temperatures, rather than in combination with high [CO2], as is required by Lord Stern’s own future high temperature, high [CO2] scenarios.
Accordingly it is clear that Lord Stern has some serious questions to answer:
1) Why did he exclude mainstream papers from his review that clearly show that plant productivity will increase under the future [CO2] and temperature scenarios he predicts?
2) Why did he deliberately remove data from the Wheeler et al (1996) paper, which clearly stated “grain numbers per ear did not decline with an increase in temperature at elevated CO2”, to suggest precisely the opposite?
3) Why did he further manipulate the already altered graph, using a superimposed line, to emphasise a decline in productivity when, in fact, no such decline existed under his stated scenario?
4) Why did he further compound the misinformation presented in the Wheeler paper with that of Vara Prasad et al (2001) which does not duplicate the conditions of his chosen high [CO2], high temperature scenario?
I do not accept that the misinformation in this part of Lord Stern’s review is the result of lack of expertise. Lord Stern is one of the World’s foremost economists and well versed in the collation, interpretation and presentation of complex data. The fact of the matter is that Lord Stern actively and deliberately chose and manipulated data to support a particular conclusion. Any reasonable person would conclude that these omissions of fact and manipulation were specifically designed to mislead Parliament. The fact that so much Government policy is directly informed by Lord Stern’s report is particularly disturbing.
Accordingly I request that you communicate my concerns to Lord Stern and I await his and your considered reply.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. D. Keiller.
Ainsworth, E.A. and Long, S.P. (2005). What have we learned from 15 years of free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE)? A meta-analytic review of the responses of photosynthesis, canopy properties and plant production to rising CO2. New Phytologist 165: 351-372.
Drake BG, Gonzàlez-Meler MA, Long SP. (1997). More efficient plants: a consequence of rising atmospheric CO2? Annual Review of Plant Physiology and Plant Molecular Biology 48: 609–639.
Wheeler TR, Batts GR, Ellis RH, Hadley P and Morison JIL (1996) Growth and Yield of Winter Wheat (Triticum Aestivum) Crops in Response to CO2 and Temperature. Journal of Agricultural Science, Cambridge, 127, 37-48.
Vara Prasad, P.V., P.Q. Craufurd, V.G. Kakani, Wheeler TR and Boote KJ. (2001): 'Influence of high temperature on fruit-set and pollen germination in peanuts', Australian Journal of Plant Physiology 28: 233.

Lord Stern, The Informed

China’s very worried about water, their water largely comes off the Himalayas and as the snow and ice starts to melt the, their water supply’s become much more unreliable.

Veteran Himalayan researcher reverses earlier findings of looming water shortage
Stephanie Paige Ogburn, E&E reporter
ClimateWire: Monday, August 5, 2013
http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059985593

A study out yesterday in Nature Geoscience by Walter Immerzeel, a physical geographer at Utrecht University, suggests that, in at least two major Himalayan watersheds, river flows and runoff should rise until 2100.
“We show that the peak in meltwater is later than we previously thought, which in combination with a projected increase in precipitation results in an increase in water availability until the end of the century,” he said.
The two watersheds Immerzeel reports on in the paper are those of the Baltoro and Langtang glaciers, which feed the Indus and Ganges rivers, respectively. In the Baltoro watershed, this is largely due to more glacier runoff from melt. In the Langtang, increased precipitation drives the extra runoff.

Rising river flows throughout the twenty-first century in two
Himalayan glacierized watersheds
W. W. Immerzeel, F. Pellicciotti & M. F. P. Bierkens Nature Geoscience (2013) doi:10.1038/ngeo1896
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1896.html

Pom, pommie or pommes is named because of the pommels on their military bonnets thank you very much. Well the Americans even called us limies. Pomme is a short for Pomme de tere, the potatoe. Anyway, Lord Monckton is English too. I remember one very English QANTAS pilot being addressed by some Ocker bloke in a pub back in the 60s. “Yer donna mind if I call yer a Pom?” “Of course not old chap, so long as you don’t mind me calling you an Australian?” For some reason there was once a thought we English would be insulted, we are not. You can’t insult a Brit. We are too self assured. However, unfairly in the 19th Century one pollie, called corn stalks (those born in Australia from either convicts or free settlers, ‘South Sea Island cockneys”. Enough said, eh. Stern is self defending himself, and others.

China’s energy percentage from coal depends on what energy measure you use.
http://www.eia.gov/countries/cab.cfm?fips=CH
The EIA states that coal supplied 69% of China’s total primary energy in 2011.
They also state that coal provided 66% of installed electricity generation capacity in 2012 (i.e. before capacity factors are included).
They also state that coal provided almost 80% of total electrical energy.
They also state that China’s coal consumption will increase by another 50% by 2040.

Unbelievable, is that an April 1 joke. Must be. After July 1st democracy will be back as normal.
I wonder if your real name is Tim Flannery. Having lost his lucrative job, I suspect he is spitting chips.