Lord Stern: Models ‘grossly underestimate’ costs of global warming
Submitted by Eric Worrall
Lord Stern, the British Academic who prepared the “Stern Review” on global warming for Prime Minister Tony Blair, has just claimed a carbon price of up to $260 / ton is required to prevent dangerous global warming.
“The risks are in fact likely to be so large that a globally coordinated carbon price of $US32-$US103 ($34-$110) per tonne of emissions is needed as soon as 2015 to prevent the temperature increase from exceeding 2 degrees of pre-industrial age levels, said Lord Stern and co-author Simon Dietz, from the UK’s Grantham Research Institute.
Within two decades, the carbon price will need to almost triple in real terms to $US82-$US260 a tonne, the two researchers say in their paper to be published in The Economic Journal.”
Lord Stern’s “Stern Review”, prepared in 2006, has been heavily criticised since its release, for making some unjustifiable assumptions.
For example, according to “The Economist”, Lord Stern used a near zero discount rate when calculating the impact of future harm.
http://www.economist.com/node/14994731
The effect of using such a low discount rate is to make problems which occur in the distant future as important in terms of the calculation as problems which occur today – for example, if your report predicts mass starvation in 100 years, a near zero discount rate could be used to justify creating global hunger today, to ward off the predicted future risk, if the future casualty rate was greater.
Non-discount of future risks is wrong for all sorts of reasons, not least because we have no idea of what advances 100 years of technological progress will deliver.
Economic forecasts of the past, such as the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894, are often a source of hilarity in modern times, due to their rather outdated assumptions.
http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/great-horse-manure-crisis-of-1894.html
Stern is not an academic. He’s a Civil Servant who decided to tell porkies to ingratiate himself with Tony Blair. Another Civil Servant also told porkies to ingratiate himself with Tony Blair, the man who wrote the fake ‘WMD dossier’ which led to the Iraq War and the Sunni-Shia 30 years’ war we have just entered.
Anyway, back to Stern. He was ennobled and became an academic whose job is to oversee propaganda for carbon trader Jeremy Grantham, who, so it appears, wants to create totalitarian government of the West to profit from carbon trading.
Lord stern was a uk treasury hack with no knowledge of climate. He obviously does not know his history either.
So, by keeping temperatures to within 2 degrees of pre industrial levels does he mean he wants to keep it to within. 2 degrees of the depths of the little ice age in the 1690’s or within two degrees of the 1730’s, which are indistinguishable to the current decade?
Tonyb
Here is he link to cet to 1659 which gives us a good idea of pre industrial temperatures
http://www.climate4you.com/CentralEnglandTemperatureSince1659.htm
Tonyb
The 800 pound gorilla of “business as usual” has always been, in my opinion, a ridiculous
assumption to make, especially as regards energy production and transportation fuel. I mean, does any sane person not believe that electric cars will take over once a practical cost-effective battery is at hand? First of all, much of the power used by a gas powered vehicle is in the form of electricity already – power windows, fans, power steering, etc etc And no one will dispute the fact that building an electric car is simpler, and cheaper, and requires far less maintenance and is more reliable than a gasoline powered car. Nor would anyone not believe that current and future generations of nuclear power plants will become widespread, if for no other reason than for the reduction of emissions that are actually harmful. Assuming no change in energy and fuel technology in the next 100 years is completely absurd.
And the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894 has been repaired on a Pay It Forward scenario as we all the amount of manure being produced today
What a fool. You’d think after the nonsense called the Stern Report this guy would shut his yap. All over the western world, the (mostly) men in power are fools. How did this happen?
Has Lord Stern informed the Chinese?
Col Mosby says:
June 16, 2014 at 2:17 pm
I look forward to the electric car that can handle a Chicago winter.
“All over the western world, the (mostly) men in power are fools.” Not really, not when you consider their real priorities. (which perfectly explains the perceived “foolishness”)
Men who are in power are generally there because they are those men who have treasured gaining power, and keeping power, above all else. And many of them have figured out that if you are very good at that one particular trick, you don’t need any other skills, other than an ability to lie convincingly. (As per the famous Bill Clinton quote: “Once you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made!)
Everything men like Stern do is focused on gaining and keeping power, to the damnation of any other interests. One of the best ways to do that is to frighten the low information voters and other gullible types, and get them to invest the power-seeker with all he wants, so that he can promise to “keep them safe”. How convenient, how perfect, it is when the plan to do that involves taking a vast amount of resources (ie, money) away from the people who might otherwise oppose you!! And as far as making everyone miserable, Lenin and Stalin demonstrated how a state of constant envy, promoted by the government, allows an abusive government the leeway to impose an incredible level of oppression on the citizenry.
Lord Stern is a serial fabricator, a manipulator, and a would be dictator. But he is no fool – he knows exactly what he’s doing.
Looks like Mr. Stern has observed the Al Gore Wealth Creation Model in action….. and he wants a piece of the action in the UK!
Col Mosby says:
June 16, 2014 at 2:17 pm
Assuming no change in energy and fuel technology in the next 100 years is completely absurd.
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/low-cost-fusion-project-steps-out-shadows-looks-money-n130661
$260 a ton. By my rough calculation that cost on top of fossil fuel would make the alternatives actually be cost effective. Not cheap, not actually practical but if you ignored the fossil fuel used in the manufacturing process finally PV and wind power would make some economic sense. Could that be the whole purpose of all of this? This scam and contrived “solution” all to make alternative energy the only energy and we would have to pay 10-20 times as much as we would for cheap fossil fuel energy but after the $260 a ton carbon tax it would be “cheap”. I think a light just went on.
Could someone do the math and translate this into $/litre of gas?
So much for considering the economy.
What a moron. And who gets the $260.00?
If Lord Stern is sincere in this, he is deluded or stoned. If he is just rent seeking he is a cynical slimeball.
Col Mosby says:
June 16, 2014 at 2:17 pm
“First of all, much of the power used by a gas powered vehicle is in the form of electricity already – power windows, fans, power steering, etc etc ”
Yes and that electricity comes from an alternator which is driven by the gas powered engine.
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M Simon says:
June 16, 2014 at 2:28 pm
“I look forward to the electric car that can handle a Chicago winter.”
Indeed, and I look forward to what will happen when 3 million electric cars all try to recharge at the same time during one of those Chicago winter nights.
davidmhoffer – each litre of petrol produces 2.31 kilograms of CO2, so 432.9 litres will produce a tonne. At a price of US $260 per tonne, we are looking at US $0.60 per litre, or $2.25 per US gallon.
However, that does not include the cost of carbon dioxide input in the production process – this calculation is purely the rate of tax on CO2 produced by combustion only.
Well…..I guess removing carbon from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is very expensive….
2.5 kg CO2 per litre of fuel.
$260 per metric ton is $0.26 per Kg.
$0.26 x 2.5 = $0.65 per litre of gasoline or about a 50% increase in price in Canada.
spdrdr says:
June 16, 2014 at 3:11 pm
davidmhoffer – each litre of petrol produces 2.31 kilograms of CO2, so 432.9 litres will produce a tonne. At a price of US $260 per tonne, we are looking at US $0.60 per litre, or $2.25 per US gallon.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Well \i’m starting to warm up to this idea. As the polls have been showing, the great unwashed don’t have climate change very high on their radar screen. Hit ’em with a $2.25 uptick in fuel prices and they will be up in arms and calling BS on the whole caper in nothing flat. Nothing turns someone into a skeptic faster than increasing the price of gas by $2.25 per gallon. Not to mention that rampant inflation that would follow as prices in every energy intensive industry from food production to autos goes through the roof.
“… Models ‘grossly underestimate’ costs of global warming …”
What costs? The only cost I can think of is the opportunity cost of abandoning fossil fuel energy in favour of so-called alternatives (which aren’t), as well as the cost of human life and welfare.
Methinks if models are sooooo out of whack regarding the costs of global warming, maybe they’re not so reliable about the existence and magnitude of global warming as well.
I stand up like a scholar in pulpit,
And when the uneducated people all do sit,
I preach, as you have heard me say before,
And tell a hundred false jokes, less or more.
…
Of avarice and of all such wickedness
Is all my preaching, thus to make them free
With offered pence, the which pence come to me.
For my intent is only pence to win,
And not at all for punishment of sin.
– Chaucer, “The Pardoner’s Tale”
$260 / ton for carbon – the price of
salvationstarvation.