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
Stern’s a fair example of how someone like Tol is dismissed – taken down in the eyes of people not following any of this very closely. Or at all.
Yes, he’s defensive and we like to see that. But for the informal masses – who’ve stopped worrying for the time being but are still buying the ‘consensus’ and comfortable with it – he’s just cut Tor off at the knees.
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
Reblogged this on Flying Tiger Comics and commented:
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.
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.
It might be interesting for you to Google coal surface fires. When I was sitting a unit ‘The Earth in Crisis?” at UNE (Armidale NSW) I got a recent book out and it mentioned how China’s Eastern coal fields were losing 250,000 tonnes of coal each year from surface fires that are very hard to put out. The amount of pollution they were creating was equal to the amount of pollution caused by America’s combined cars and trucks per year. The same with India, to a lesser degree, and Indonesia whose forest fires were started by surface coal fires, and burned for 4 years. We have a burning mountain in NSW that is caused by subsurface brown coal burning, even the Aborigines knew about this, and the first colonists thought it was a volcano. So coal can cause pollution but few mention this as it is something we can’t control at the moment.
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.
MikeUK says:
March 28, 2014 at 6:40 am
Pretty sympathetic interviewer, is Aussie TV like that throughout?
But I wonder how your average Aussie (and Canadian) takes to being lectured to (and slighly threatened) by a Brit. Watching that made me feel like we have a world govt telling unruly nations to behave themselves, for the good of the planet.
*****************************************
Maaate, it is like this. For far to long Australians have been lectured to by the POME. They know it all. They have always done it better and come out here to lecture us in their ways because, in their view, we are under educated and still on a learning curve and desperately need help. And they are just the ones to give it. Arrogance in the extreme.
Little do they realise that they are ignored and mocked.
Then again, I have some that are wonderful friends from the UK. They are not all the same. Like everywhere, there are a few duds.
To typify our thinking, they are summed up in our jokes.
Pom.. ” For 10 cents I’d go back home.”
Australian… ” Here’s 20 cents, take one of your mates with you !”
Stern is just another dud.
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.
If there’s one thing that the Chinese communists have learned from their Russian counterparts, it’s the value of what Lenin called “useful idiots” – those woolly lefty liberals in the West who are only too happy to parrot their propaganda lines whilst remaining wilfully and stubbornly ignorant of the truth behind the scenes.
Lord Stern has once more established himself as a leading light among that legion of happy offenders. Even Tony Jones, who despite being an intelligent and incisive interrogator is prone to giving leftist interviewees some free kicks that they don’t deserve, was clearly amazed by Stern’s apparent eagerness to believe the Chinese line on coal. Given that Stern is also a prominent catastrophist, one of those who thinks we’re already roasting/under water/sheltering from hurricanes, with much worse to come next year, one might have expected him to take a harder line on the nation now responsible for half of global coal consumption.
But then, he is an economist, so he’ll believe anything.
Q: Why do some economists accept everything that climate scientists say?
A: Because both implicitly believe in models, even those proved to be absolute b*llocks.
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. 😉
Stern is the UK’s equivalent to Gaurnout, both economists and completely scientifically illiterate. And tonight we have “lights out for the barrier reef” Earth Hour spectacular!!! *sigh*
“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” !
Hey guys the word is Pom. I am one. But naturalized Ozzie. And we were not 10 pound immigrants or a whinging poms. Where they had to work in hotter temps, and they left England to get away from the rain. Used to strong unions that went on strike if the T Breaks were cut short of 30 secs, something that was new to them. Didn’t Lord M once accuse him of something. He might have been on T.E.R.I board at one time.
Gaunaut, whatever, the guy who said farm kangaroos instead of ruminants to save the planet? When he visited one of our organically minded farms, he was told the new methods were to increase the production not cut down CO2 or methane.
Lord Stern is in a wonderful profession with a reputation for rigor and skill.
—————-
“bushbunny says:
March 29, 2014 at 12:51 am”
Garnout also worked with the Aussie and PNG Govn’ts to sell land to mining companies in the 70’s. He was also on the board of the PNG copper and gold mine Ok Tedi. He, like Al Gore, has made a lot of money from digging stuff out of the ground for energy intensive industries and selling it. To give credit where it is due however, he also managed the clean up of some toxic spills at Ok Tedi too.
With regards to POM and POME, the terms are interchangeable, and pretty much mean the same thing. Just some Aussies can’t take a joke when joking themselves. POM, in Aus and NZ, is short for Pommy/Pommie, or Prisoner Of his/her Majesty and POME is as described previously.
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/
Pom is not an acronym, it’s rhyming slang, from pomegranate/immigrant.
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.
Don – (‘Here is my theory’) for those who haven’t had the pleasure of listening to (Miss) Anne Elk, she’s on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAYDiPizDIs
Lord Stern, The Informed
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
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
Lord Stern knows nothing about the Chinese Ultra Super Critical Coal-Powered plants that produce more power than nuclear plants?
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.
I guess we can say “All of the above” WRT “Pom” etc.
I am looking forward to July when a new senate is elected in Australia. There is so much anti LNP/Abbott media coverage it’s rediculous. Get used to it left leaning Australians, democracy stinks! Abbott will put an end to the greenwashing and greentape.
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.
oh my god, did you guys take any brains with you when we sent you down under or has all that sun cooked them dry? The world is laughing/grimacing at your liberal government, and as we dig into your newws and blogs we realise, actually, he is speaking for a fair amount of deluded aussies, surprised we were!. Climate change is real, it’s happening, and it’s not going to be great you backwater f***tards. Ask your unscientific minds, why do you show so much anger and arrogance despite a wealth of evidence that makes you look like an idiot? Who has been spending billions trying to sow the seed of doubt in your mind, that you, without scientific reasoning were so happy to take on board? What self-justification do you seek, and how far will you read around the subject at the risk of perturbing your own delicate egos?
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[Left as-is, as written. Mod]