Lord Stern, author of the Stern Review, chairman of the CCCEP, which a week ago was accused of committing £9 million research funding fraud, has now claimed that a lot more money than he previously estimated will be required to address climate change.
Nicholas Stern: cost of global warming ‘is worse than I feared’
Ten years ago the leading economist warned about climate change in a landmark report – he says while there is cause for optimism, the picture is still grim.
A lot has happened since Nicholas Stern, then a permanent secretary at the Treasury, produced his landmark review of the impact of climate change 10 years ago. His work was quickly recognised as the definitive account of the economic dangers posed to the planet by global warming.
Since then, global temperatures have risen to record levels. Arctic summer sea ice has continued to shrink, as have many major land-based ice sheets. Carbon dioxide is being pumped into the atmosphere in ever-increasing amounts. At the same time, low-lying coastal areas, such as south Florida and parts of Bangladesh, are experiencing more and more flooding as sea levels have risen. Scientists have begun to link extreme weather events to the planet’s changing climate, while animal and plant species are gradualling moving towards the poles. So, a decade on, is Stern plunged in despair over our prospects? Not quite. While the picture is certainly grim, the world’s top climate economist still believes there are grounds for modest optimism.
“We have been too slow in acting on climate change,” he told the Observer. “In particular, we have delayed the curbing of greenhouse gas emissions for far too long. When we published our review, emissions were equivalent to the pumping of 40-41bn tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere a year. Today there are around 50bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. At the same time, science is telling us that impacts of global warming – like ice sheet and glacier melting – are now happening much more quickly than we anticipated.”
In his report, published in October 2006, Stern warned that the cost of inaction would be far greater for future generations than the costs of actions taken today. “With hindsight, I now realise that I underestimated the risks. I should have been much stronger in what I said in the report about the costs of inaction. I underplayed the dangers.”
…
Will Lord Stern receive his extra government funding?
The Brexit vote shocked the British establishment, by delivering an enormous mandate to leave campaigners, despite vigorous efforts by remain campaigners to claim Brexit would damage Britain’s commitment to green policies.
There have been some encouraging signs since Brexit of a softening of British environmental policy, but since the heady days of the Brexit victory party, the leader of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage has accused the British government of backsliding, of trying to renege on their commitment to serve the will of the British people.
My guess is Lord Stern is testing the water. If he receives more cash, the British green revolution is still on. If not, who knows, maybe he’ll get a job with the United Nations.
Tell the “greens” to learn to video conference.
That should save enough money.
And all new meetings for climate change scientists are to be held in Antarctica.
That way they can check any melting in person to confirm the data.
We ship them in during summer, then out next summer.
+1
+1 here as well.
However, I humbly suggest that instead of Antarctica, we should give them a break and send them some place warm, as that’s what they expect the whole world to be week after next. Taking a page from the Greens of the Maldives, they should don SCUBA gear and hold meetings at the bottom of Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay. I’m sure it is still just as clean and healthy as it was for the recent Olympic Games.
“We ship them in during summer, then out next summer.”
Ah, can’t we leave them there? Pretty please?
I believe there are strict regulations against leaving rubbish and other forms of detritus in Antarctica.
/snark
Yes! Polie bears have to be fed, too!
Russ Wood, polar bears don’t live in the Antarctic.
Sorry – posted my comment before I saw yours.
Monna,
Precisely.
So 50% [no, not 97%] of watermelons should go to the Arctic, to feed aforementioned ursids.
Auto
There once was a Lord named Stern
Who claimed that the world would burn
so books he could write
bout the great climate plight
And Big Greens Bucks he did earn
Better still hold them in a depressed northern town so they can see where the money they have diverted to wind farms and solar parks should have been used.
Hull would be a good choice: investment in offshore wind farm construction has created jobs there… or any E coast port, where wind farm construction and maintenance jobs are coming along to replace those in the declining offshore gas industry…
Can’t we just ship them in and leave them?
“A lot has happened since Nicholas Stern, then a permanent secretary at the Treasury, produced his landmark review of the impact of climate change 10 years ago. His work was quickly recognised as the definitive account of the economic dangers posed to the planet by global warming.”
What are these economic dangers? Ten years later and nothing has changed. That would be because the temperatures have *not* risen to record levels, there is no significant sea level rise, and although “Scientists have begun to link extreme weather events to the planet’s changing climate”, these same scientists cannot link extreme weather events to humans.
So ten years after his dire predictions, nothing of significance has happened, yet he claims it is worse than he thought.
Lord Stern is living in a false reality. He describes a world that doesn’t exist.
Has the “GFC” of 2008 been blamed on climate change yet?
Under-estimation could be an error, underplaying is manipulating the way he presents what he knew.
So he admits being dishonest in what he presented. ( Or he is being dishonest now, or more likely both ).
Guardian text:
More climate lies from the Guardian. Sept min 2016 was same as 2007 and higher than 2012. It has basically been flat for the last ten years.
If ANYONE falls for his sc@m, he or she are is as uninformed as this car repair customer…..
😉
“Carry the two….” (eye roll)
(youtube)
Answer to Stern: Who in the world do you think you’re fooling? Get lost!
areNote: Some of my attempts at analogy are not understood (and I can’t tell which will not be (shrug 🙂 )), so, here is a little explanation so I don’t get snipped:
AGWers use same slimy tactics as crooked auto repair mechanics — use fear to scare
customertaxpayer into buying junk they don’t need.(while the above video was a practical joke — there are sc@mmers pulling similar hu$tle$ at this very moment)
Aaaaand, I’m back again.
Just had to say this: I realize that most of you DO get my attempts at humor. Thus, such an “explanation above” is sickeningly insulting (to me). So! I’ll just take my chances at being snipped from now on! #(:))
(I just hate being snipped(((cringe))))
Hi Janice,
I’m not sure if (most) AGW supporters are lying. I think most of them try to find supporting facts for their special belief. Sometimes possibly sort of cheating oneself unknowingly. It happens everywhere in life.
If someone hears a certain messsage xxx times, he will own it as a truth. This happens to most AGW believers, even academics.
At least they do not have an agenda for lying. Sometimes people have maneuvered themselves in a certain corner and got stuck there.
Possibly they need mercy and help to get out there without loosing their face.
Janice, good to see you’re back. I always enjoy your input.
Thank you, Mr. Keohane! 🙂
Thank you, also, Mr. Herbst. You make a good point. (please see my reply below: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/11/06/lord-stern-puts-up-the-price-of-climate-action/#comment-2334626 )
Johannes S. Herbst, November 7, 2016 at 2:05 am
People have an absolute responsibility for what they say and do. The only exceptions to this responsibility are for those without the capacity to know and understand the facts.
The first lie people tell is to themselves, and it is not always the same lie they tell to others.
All lies are told with an agenda.
The above article addresses a liar with a specific agenda.
So, in other words, adaptation is cheaper than mitigation. (H/T Lord Monckton.)
At least, much less costly in lives than the methods of HRC and Naomi Oreskes.
Technically the adaptation vs mitigation arguments are a misuse of terms in the risk management methodology. People are talking about mitigation as if it will prevent or reduce the likelihood of a risk event happening. Similarly the term adaptation is used as if it means to reduce the consequences (harm) of a risk that occurs.
The correct term, in both cases, is “reduce”, as in reduce the likelihood of it occurring and reduce the consequences if it does occur. The idea is that in any risk analysis, you would use both aspects of reduce. But more importantly, you would analyse the risk and any proposed mitigation (in the correct usage of the term) in terms of cost to implement and the cost of any risk eventuating.
I have never seen any genuine attempt at a risk analysis for global warming.
I wonder if Lord Stern believes in his precious United Nations IPCC? They are, after all, the world’s repository of not just the climate consensus, but the body of climate knowledge in its entirety. So what do they say shall befall us should the temperature rise 2 degrees over the next 50 to 100 years?
Winter Tourism – more affected by population, lifestyle, income and aging than climate:
https://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-Chap10_FINAL.pdf
Summer Tourism – same
https://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-Chap10_FINAL.pdf
Cooling Demand – more affected by population, income, energy prices and technology change than climate
https://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-Chap10_FINAL.pdf
Heating Demand – same
https://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-Chap10_FINAL.pdf
Health Services – more affected by population aging, income and diet/lifestyle than climate
https://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-Chap10_FINAL.pdf
Transportation – more affected by population, income, urbanization, and consumer behaviour than climate change.
https://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-Chap10_FINAL.pdf
Sorry, Lord Stern. If you believe you are correct, then you should address your comments to that august body and make certain that they update their findings commensurate with your own.
+1!
We Americans almost elected our equivalent of Stern president. Gore and Stern seem to skate on bad predictions, but they keep their supporters nevertheless.
“Gore and Stern”, My mind immediately saw Gorn. Very…very scary.
In those olden days, my Spooneristic mind insisted on the two characters Gush and Bore.
Lord Stern would like to live in a World of continually rising funding and grants, especially those directed towards himself. Instead, he lives in a World of stagnant sea-level with very feebly rising temperature, emulating the Golden Roman and Mediaeval Warm Periods and with beneficially rising CO2 levels, which aid all plants and herbivores. Lord Stern is so out of touch with reality that the next logical employment for him would be at the United Nations.
+
CCCP is more like it.
How’s this for a giant lie: ten years ago, predictions claimed coastal uraban areas under water by now with global warming refugees and no summer ice in the arctic ocean. Things are nowhere near that bad, yet this Palooka claims more money than previously expected will be needed. He thinks costs will be higher with inaction, but I believe exactly the opposite. Energy technology and transportation technology clearly indicates a future close at hand that is low to no carbon emission
technology: electric cars and molten salt nuclear power plants. Each technology will not require
additional expenditures – cars will be replaced with electric cars as a matter of course as has
always been the case, and ditto for the power plants, which will be very economically desirable,
sure to hasten their adoption. Global warming alarmists are selling the public a bill of goods based on ignorance of what should be the obvious future
The econmics of the two technologies will force their adoption – there is no need for any political grandstanding and irrational alarmism. Global warming alarmists are simply unwilling to lose their
milch cow or too stupid to see the real future of emissions. Their hysteria serves no useful purpose .
The tide of rising grants must be accelerated to float the sinking ship of AGW.
at least one politician is speaking out http://www.senatormalcolmroberts.com.au/csiro-report
Yes!! It will be interesting (or not) to see where this goes.
That is a brilliant report. Malcolm Roberts puts the CSIRO on the spot well and truly. They have proven to have no empirical evidence whatsoever for their reports, having blindly accepted the claims of the IPCC and other UN bodies, exercising no due diligence of their own.
It is especially telling that the CSIRO have a disclaimer that they will not be held responsible for any discrepancy or errors and that their reports should not be the basis of policy, yet that’s exactly what Australia’s policy is based on!
Malcolm Roberts covers everything and has an excellent handle on what should be done now. I particularly like his closing lines. Well worth a read. 🙂
The sooner this pompous, preening, self regarding pointless berk is history – the better.
The intellectual larceny and misrepresentation would’ve sunk a less prominent academic – but he’s a member of the UK’s great and good rarefied inner circles so he might as well be royalty…
The guy is just so intoxicated by his status that he cannot be bothered to even evidence his pronouncements so grand is he… we are not worthy…
Take a look at the gent’s appearances in front of the UK’s parliamentary committees….. You’d be forgiven for thinking that he regards any challenge or criticism as lèse-majesté – and will not stoop to defend his analysis from oiks who bring inconvenient evidence to the table – or for that matter even acknowledge them….. we are not worthy.
Funny how their estimates of temperatures are always too high, and their estimates of costs are always too low.
A constant source of humor.
“With hindsight, I now realise that I underestimated the risks. I should have been much stronger in what I said in the report about the costs of inaction. I underplayed the dangers.”
How paternalistic!
Janice Moore: Keep it up!
Stern, like Justin Trudeau, is so enamoured of his image, as to be Nympho/Narcissistic (same opiate?) Their respective buttons continually need be pressed to satisfy their Primary Needs for Self Actualization.
Anything that works, works! Forget the content — the goals of popular fame and fortune trump everything.
Thanks, Mr. King!
Your hypothesis is highly plausible (lots of data to back it up). It would explain how someone as:
1. well-informed and
2. intelligent as Stern
could say such ridiculously wrong things.
I have encountered enough personality disordered people of the narcissistic bent to know that they lack insight into how foolish they appear to others. It’s like a stroke victim who goes to the doctor with a semi-paralyzed arm and sincerely asks, “Why is my bowling game off?” They are unhealthy/brain bent.
Others, the enviroprofiteers (I often include a separate group, the “envirostalinist,” but at bottom, virtually all of them are all about money, power is only a means to that end), are blinded by greed (or with clear vision, realize they sound ridiculous, but, don’t care — money is everything to them).
**************************************
Re: Mr. Herbst’s kind and gracious (to the befuddled) insight above, he is right to point out that we can’t lump all the “AGWers” into one category. The definition of “AGWer” is the key to clarify what I wrote above. An “AGWer” (not that I made that clear) is one who is either:
1. blinded by irrational (there ARE rational emotional responses) emotions( and or willfully ignorant of the facts), e.g., “‘It’s Republicans who are against AGW! I hate Republicans! So! I am for AGW!” or “The people who love the forest are for AGW!! Loggers are evil. Loggers are against AGW. I am for AGW!”
OR
2. cynically well-aware that AGW is a bunch of junk science, but whose greed and or lust for power controls them.
Even the naive, “Well, so many nice people are saying AGW is true, so I believe it, too,” type is, imo, culpably mentally lazy. Mr. Herbst is correct, though, these people need to be gently instructed, not blasted (as I love to do, here at WUWT) for being gullible (if we want them to be open to listening to science facts).
Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Herbst.
Janice
Hey! lol, I just posted in the FUTURE!! I time traveled to one hour ahead! Cool! 🙂
IOW: WUWT’s time stamps are 1 hour off (we set our clocks back 1 hour on Nov. 6, in the USA). The time is now, 6:41AM PST.
I have read some of Stern’s report. I can sincerely state that in my opinion, it would not pass scrutiny at Economics 101 level.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemisofchristchurch.com
Certified Climate Scientific Practitioners: If there is such a ‘Club’, what professional entry criteria would be listed as acceptable, first-off? Who wd make the list? Who wd adjudicate the candidature? How wd the Selection Committee be formed, and by whom, and how even-handed would they be?
Methinks it’s a useful frame of reference (if tragically laughable in the current context) as it seems that anyone who reckons they’re ‘in’ are ‘in’ but none of those who run contrary to the ‘Party Line’ are *out* … even if their professional qualifications match those among the ‘sanctum-sanctorum’.
Your thoughts please ….
P.S. to above…… Ooooops! Before the Pedants get me…..
” …[N]one of those who runs contrary to the ‘Party Line’ are *out* ” shd read:
” All of those who run contrary to the ‘Party Line’ are *out*
“…science is telling us that impacts of global warming – like ice sheet and glacier melting – are now happening much more quickly than we anticipated.”
That’s not how I remember it. Ten years ago we were being told that all the Arctic ice and many of the world’s glaciers would be gone by now. Children would not know what snow is. And Al Gore predicted doomsday would occur in ten years. His doomsday clock expired and nothing happened. The oceans did not boil and we haven’t experienced runaway global warming that would turn the earth into venus. So if Nicholas Stern and his friends were privately anticipating the impacts of global warming to occur even slower than they actually have over the past ten years, then they lied about it publicly. It would be interesting to see a chart comparing what these people predicted would happen with what actually happened. I really don’t think it would show that any of the so-called impacts happened “much more quickly” than they anticipated.
The Holocene Optimum temperature averaged ~1C warmer over a couple of millennia, implying it was even warmer (and cooler) at times.
The Central England thermometer record suggests Britain has been warming steadily without significant acceleration since about the coldest period in this interglacial around 1650.
It should be easy enough to calculate the cost to that warming to the British economy and extrapolate it into the future for Britain and by extension to the developing world.
Or is His Lordship claiming that the planet has finally settled to the ideal temperature?
There must be a clause in the law that one can sue these guys for creating hysteria.
“low-lying coastal areas, such as south Florida and parts of Bangladesh, are experiencing more and more flooding as sea levels have risen”. Really? 30 mm per last decade (or less) has created more floods? It is not even measurable!
These people should pay for spreading fear.
What is the difference between them and a “regular” terrorist?
I would argue that if Lord Stern is right then it is important to get everyone on board. This means that climate scientists should face a public examination on the standards of their work starting with the area in which they have failed to spend as much as they should which it that of the measurement verification. As in many academic areas the practical side is relegated to the backwater with no kudos whatever attached to research in that direction.
Measurement is an engineering function not a scientific one so they are falsely claiming expertise and training they simply do not have. They make extravagant claims for deviation from the normal but what is normal depends on the analysis of the past and measurement quality. Again they do not have any significant degree of expertise and their methods show them to be behind a first year engineering undergraduate in this sort of analysis.
Another area of dissent is in the claim for the science to be beyond question. To proper scientists this makes them self confessed quacks as the very definition of science is that it should stand up to questioning.
If climate change is man made and so important then why is he so reluctant to face the fact that some want proper external examiners not self certification by those who have repeatedly altered data previously self certified as beyond question?
The hundred months to climate Armageddon expires in less than a year now. Can the scientists prove that unmodified data shows thepredicted rises or worse? If not, we are entitled to say up yours Stern We would rather hang the climate scientists and risk the world than pay up.
Climate science integrity and proof by external examination or no deal Stern.
Perhaps part of the Brexit vote was due to ‘Britain’s commitment to green policies‘?
In USA, the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, employ Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC, activists to write their latest ‘anti-CO₂ pollution‘ Climate Action Plan, which penalizes, not only current nuclear power plants, but those under construction. A disincentive to low-CO₂ electricity.
At the UN cancer agency IARC, an NRDC activist was employed to author pseudo-scientific reports classifying glyphosate carcinogenic. Glyphosate is a herbicide which allows less CO₂ intensive farming. This UN agency manages to classify literally 99.9%, almost everything it looks at, as causing cancer. A feat of, near unsurpassed, scientific ignorance.
The EU itself is rife with green sympathizers. EU even fund greens to lobby it : European Union funding £90m green lobbying con. Just about every green group funded by the EU formally oppose non-CO₂ emitting nuclear power.
Climate activism came from the green movement. Jim Hansen was an anti-nuke, as were many of his ‘ecomodernist‘ allies. I believe the first ever climate model was anti-nuclear war propaganda. In most cases climate activism remains firmly within the anti-nuclear power / anti-GMO / Luddite axis of 350.org / ClimateProgress thinking. Greens trusted by the likes of Nick to sort out climate change are still more interested in promoting Luddism. It’s as if Churchill fought the WWII with Mosley in his cabinet and Edward_VIII on the throne. This can get a lot more expensive.
then he says ..i was wrong even if i was sure to be right ..but now i am right….
the point is the worse it is the more right it is…..
“maybe he’ll get a job with the United Nations.”
Been there done that, he’s got several T-shirts. After Copenhagen, he became a member of Ban Ki Moon’s High Level Climate Finance Advisory Panel, along with George Soros and Christine Lagarde, set up to find ways of garnering $100 billion a year from developed nations for “sustainable” and “renewable” energy developments in developing countries.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/science-papers/originals/high-level-climate-finance
Also check out out Stern’s connections to carbon trading via Idea Carbon, Christiana Figueres was a colleague before she became UNFCCC exec secretary.
http://www.ideacarbon.com/about-us/advisory-board/Lord-Stern.htm
http://www.ideacarbon.com/about-us/advisory-board/Ms-Figueres.htm
In 2013, the whole circus was shown up in the Mail, but nothing ever seems to stick, they just carry on regardless. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523726/Web-green-politicians-tycoons-power-brokers-help-benefit-billions-raised-bills.html#ixzz2nV84KSiQ
For lefty/democrat/statist politicians, there is no failure of any previously defined sure-fire remedy that cannot be breezily explained away by declaring that not enough money was spent, nor remedied by declaring that more money needs to be spent.
Especially when it’s other peoples’ money.
Especially when the official advisors to the government are (nearly) all dependent on checks from the government for their livelihoods.
Especially when the press/media is (nearly) totally in the bag for the lefty agenda.
“At the same time, low-lying coastal areas, such as south Florida …, are experiencing more and more flooding as sea levels have risen.”
&w=480
I am so tired of this lie being repeated over and over. South Florida has always been subject to flooding during King Tides (or Spring Tides). It happens just about every year and it hasn’t changed. If you want to “prove” something on climate change, you should cite a scientific report, not a scaremongering, unsubstantiated article from the Guardian.
This “nuisance flooding” is always greater during an El Nino (which we just had).
GreenTruth™ is created through the awesome power of repetition.
Lord Stern should be more concerned about the UK’s electricity power supplies reliability.
First cold autumn day and National Grid website warned that its capacity to supply electricity fell below critical said the BBC news channel.
The story as reported on Reuters was not quite as you represent it:
“A National Grid spokesman told Reuters it was a notice to generators to “be ready because we might need you in a few hours.
“It’s not an emergency,” he said, adding there had been no power plant breakdowns.
Last month, National Grid said Britain’s electricity supply would be tight this winter but there would be enough power to meet demand due to emergency back-up capacity it procured last year.
It forecast the surplus power margin to be 6.6 percent this winter.
The day-ahead UK baseload power price rose 60 percent earlier on Monday to 150 pounds per megawatt hour due to colder temperatures, less wind energy output and tight power supplies in neighbouring France due to nuclear reactor outages.”
Do note that France is currently in trouble due to issues with its nukes being offline… which affects the power usually transmitted to the UK.
The pathetic wind power blowhards lobby to reduce nukes and then blame the reduced nuke capacity for grid shortages.
England has developed a concept known as “fuel poverty”. They count “fuel poverty” as anyone who spends more than 10% of their income on fuel to keep their home warm (not total energy usage.)
As a result of climate change policies to raise the price of fossil fuels, fuel poverty is rising. Roughly, 25,000 excess deaths occur each winter in England & Wales due primarily to fuel poverty. As much as 40,000 can die during extended cold snaps.
The surge in energy poverty and excess deaths has been caused by a rapid increase in fuel costs. This increase in fuel costs is due directly to UK taxation policies which rose out of climate change policies. In some bizarre twist of logic, the government blames fuel companies — which sort of misses the point that government policy is specifically trying to reduce the usage of fossil fuels.
They also blame inefficient home insulation and appliances for high energy costs — again, missing the point that those on pensions are least able to afford these upgrades.
“Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. The findings also reveal that deaths due to moderately hot or cold weather substantially exceed those resulting from extreme heat waves or cold spells.” — Science News citing a stud in The Lancet, May 20, 2015
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2815%2960897-2/fulltext
BBC reported that their info was from grid load website.
I looked for it and found this:
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
From the graph it can be seen that yearly demand exceeded 40 GW only on one occasion in January.
On the daily demand graph it can be seen that for the couple hours today demand was 45 GW.
I have no idea what is critical demand, I would assume to be around 80% of the total capacity of the greed (both UK generated and imported)
Click on the French flag in the top left corner to see French usage
French demand is about to hit red
http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/france/
UK imports about 1.5 – 2 GW from France, Could they shut down the link when their domestic consumption hits critical ?
To add to Vukcevik (above), it’s a ‘given’ that the French will look after themselves first (what else wd we expect of the French, esp’lly as they’d like to ‘stick-it’ to the Brits over Brexit) and the feed to UK will be tripped in order to meet *their* demand.
Can you imagine ‘brown-outs’ in France ‘cos the Entente Cordiale(??!!) requires continuing power exports North over the Channel? Nah! Dream-on!
Now, y’all get out there and start blowing at them windmills and lighting candles over the solar panels. Lord Stern as Cheer-Leader, of course …. “Come on chaps! Harder….! More matches!
The aliens are coming. The risk is real. We must put 100% of our resources into fighting the aliens. Only a crazy person would wait until they arrive. We estimate they will arrive at least 50 years from now, so we must act now. Fifty years may not be enough time to stop the invasion. Deniers will be ridiculed, then feed to the aliens when they arrive—and they will. They are coming. We know they are. All our models say they are. Absolutely. Send money now.
You’ll need someone with political or religious authority to make that official, RC. A consensus and a bureaucratic commission are also handy.
A well constructed analogy, though.
“It’s worse than we thought” is the predictable refrain of the failed prophets of climate.
Here’s a organisation which announced recently it was going to do more to reduce its CO2 output and increase its use of renewable energy:
http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/3000113/walmart-buys-into-game-changing-science-based-emissions-targets-with-host-of-new-green-goals
(note link gets paywalled after a couple of days)
Sainsbury’s, one of the largest UK supermarket chains, have also signed up for foolish virtue-signalling energy targets. But earlier this year they revealed that they don’t really believe it either: They’ve just built a set of new (fossil-fueled) power plants to avoid disastrous grid failure events.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/sainsburys-go-diy-on-power-generation/
When it comes down to reality, i.e. real money and real profits, not imaginary ‘Stern Economics’, all these large “green” corporations only jump one way. They know the truth but are reluctant to publicly admit it in the current scaremongering political environment because they don’t want to attract the ire of the green blob.
Sainsbury’s, one of the largest UK supermarket chains, have also signed up for foolish virtue-signalling energy targets. But earlier this year they revealed that they don’t really believe it either: They’ve just built a set of new (fossil-fueled) power plants to avoid disastrous grid failure events.
https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2016/05/05/sainsburys-go-diy-on-power-generation/
When it comes down to reality, i.e. real money and real profits, not imaginary ‘Stern Economics’, all these large “green” corporations only jump one way. They know the truth but are reluctant to publicly admit it in the current scaremongering political environment because they don’t want to attract the ire of the green blob.
Sainsbury’s, one of the largest UK supermarket chains, have also signed up for foolish virtue-signalling energy targets. But earlier this year they revealed that they don’t really believe it either: They’ve just built a set of new (fossil-fueled) power plants to avoid disastrous grid failure events.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/04/sainsburys-builds-its-own-power-plants-amid-energy-shortage-fear/
When it comes down to reality, i.e. real money and real profits, not imaginary ‘Stern Economics’, all these large “green” corporations only jump one way. They know the truth but are reluctant to publicly admit it in the current scaremongering political environment because they don’t want to attract the ire of the green blob.
Dang — victim of the dreaded triple post.
I blame climate change. (Although, it is more likely that ridiculous rotating advertisement that locks everyone’s browser. It’s just easier to blame climate change.)
There is nothing wrong with a business choosing an approach which may improve it’s profitability (based on increased sales.) That’s how capitalism is supposed to work.
Personally, I think Wal Mart would be better served to pay their employees a living wage.
Wal-Mart is a funder of John Podesta’s Centre for American Progress. http://freebeacon.com/politics/wal-mart-bought-that/ and also a client: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podesta_Group
http://adage.com/article/campaign-trail/walmart-wendy-clark-apple-target-hillary-clinton-campaign-wikileaks/306287/
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/12/hacked-emails-show-hillary-clinton-repeatedly-praised-wal-mart-in-paid-speeches/
WHEN A GROUP of labor activists demanded in 2014 that Hillary Clinton use her influence with Wal-Mart — where she sat on the board of directors for six years — to raise workers’ wages, Clinton’s top aides turned to Wal-Mart’s former top lobbyist for advice on how to respond.
They are following the money. In 2010, Wal-Mart’s Robson Walton was present at a high-level meeting held at the Cancún IPCC COP and attended by then Mexican President Felipe Calderón, then World-Bank President Robert Zoellick, and George Soros, (also a Podesta CAP funder) among others, seeking to “express corporate and State approval for the REDD (Reducing Emissions from Forest Deforestation and Degradation) scheme, a proposal that has met with fierce resistance from many international NGO’s. WWF is heavily involved in what is yet another virtual carbon scheme, with the potential to generate billions, hence the involvement of corporates like Wal-Mart and financiers such as Soros.
There you go. Now, if only there was a reasonable opposition party in the United States. Unfortunately, we have become a single party nation.
There was a study of the flooding issue in South Miami that is the source of the claims that sea level rise has tripled there recently. That study says sea level rise there has been 9mm per year locally since 2006.
Since the world wide sea level rise rate has been 2 to 4 mm per year during that time, doesn’t that
mean there has been a local phenomenon there? Like land sinking or something?
Articles about the study don’t give an explanation, they just imply climate change effects are worse there for some undefined reason, and that has created higher sea level rise in that one region, which sounds impossible.
Correct. Land subsidence caused by building close to the shore where all the money is. It can also be caused by plate tectonics.
Yup. London sits in an area where the land has been known to be sinking for a long time. So, quite sensibly, they built the Thames barrier to reduce flooding risks. No need to appeal to global warming.
Most of the places in similar situations, that cannot bring themselves to do the sensible thing now, will probably still be blaming global warming when they get flooded in the future. Yes, I’m talking about you, New York.
And people like Lord Stern will still be around picking up a large pay cheque for contributing nothing useful.
Any significant changes in sea level rise in ten years is most likely due to ocean oscillations (the AMC & AMOC — which are the Atlantic equivalents of ENSO & PDO). Ocean oscillations act as a small sea surge like the front of a hurricane. In the Pacific it can be as much as 4-6 feet (which is why some islands disappear during El Nino years.) The AMOC is reported to have caused a sea level increase on the East Coast of 4-5 inches in 2009-2010 — I’m not sure about 9 inches over ten years. I would like to see that source.
In general, most people claim that Florida is sinking relative to the Northeast because of post-glacial isostatic rebound. However, the difference is ~2.0-2.5 mm/year compared to 1.5-2.0 mm/year in the Northeast and Canada. Over the last century, the difference is about 1.5-2.5 inches total sinkage of Florida. (These numbers come from bloggers rather than scientific studies, because I could not find one on short notice — but they seem reasonable.)
Miami is built too low. It is only 2-3 feet above sea level in most downtown areas. Normal high tide is 2 feet above sea level. King Tides are 3-4 feet above sea level.