Bishop Hill The weaselly ways of Lord Stern
May 1, 2015 Climate: WG3 Greens Some delicious weasel words from Lord Stern over at the Guardian this morning. The great man purports to be explaining the state of the climate debate, and invites us all to believe that extreme weather is getting worse.
More frequent and severe extreme weather, rising sea levels and acidifying oceans are already posing threats to homes and businesses across the world...
But read that again. It's a sentence of striking ambiguity. Is he saying that extreme weather has become worse? That would be untrue, of course. But perhaps he is saying that there is the threat of increased extreme weather. The question that one would then have to ask is why, if the threat of extreme weather has gone up, hasn't the number or intensity of extreme weather events gone up too.
As for the suggestion that a marginal decrease in alkalinity in the oceans is "already posing a threat to homes and businesses", you have to wonder what threat precisely he is thinking of?
Reader Comments (26)
Think what chicken little would have been like on bad acid trip , and you understand the approach Stern is taken.
Oddly despite it failing time and again the alarmist have failed to learn that going 'full-doom' is actual counter productive, which is the good news.
The bad new is there is still quite a bit of time before the shopping trip, opportunity to enjoy some nice hotels/means at public expense, creation of paper mounting of BS , that will be Paris . Therefore there are many opportunities to see the same thing again .
Perhaps the best news is that the reason there is so much alarmist BS so soon is that they feel the ground slipping away from them and Paris really may be their last chance to make 'the cause ' the one true faith that all most follow. Like 'the Team' is is worth asking that without CAGW what is Stern , and like them the answer is not a lot at all for like any parasite without its host they die out .
Clever man, that Lord Stern. He shames used car salesmen.
I cannot find any ambiguity in the above quotation.
It is rather an assertion, a statement of fact which Lord Stern has generously shared with the
rest of the world.
Alternatively, and far more likely is that it is a figment of the said gentleman's imagination, like
fairies at the bottom of ones garden.
I see the Guardian is deleting a number of posts on their article
‘England faces major rise in record hot years due to climate change – scientists’
Such innocuous posts as this from Maida Comment
“Disagree and be deleted” can no longer be found.
Apparently it violates “community standards.”
And interestingly the deletions are not noted. It seems the moderators are working over time to get rid of any dissent.
This is also gone.
“ieclark 1m ago
I see some comments by climate change sceptics are being removed.
Which raises the interesting point, now that the Guardian is running a campaign related to fossil fuels and climate change, can it be relied on for objective reporting of the subject?”
The Grauniad is only read by the Green Blob and the BBC, so it is best ignored as being full of nothing but lies and propaganda.
Nice of the Wet Office to "officially" advise us that winter rainfall & thus winter now ceases on 24th February in the link. Isn't Mother Nature wonderfully precise in her dates! How amusing it is that we know they are lying, they know that we know, we know that they know that we know, they know that we know that they know that we know! Sorry Bish I forgot Panto season is over!
In attacking fossil fuels, they forget, or don't know what will be consequences.
Rain is the forgotten determinant of climate.
https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/here-comes-the-rain-again/
Lord Stern was a member of Ban Ki Moon's "High Level Climate Finance Panel" after Copenhagen, charged with bringing in the $100 billion per annum from Western nations for the "Green Climate Fund." It also included George Soros, Chris Huhne, Christine Lagarde, then French Finance Minister, now head of the IMF and Ciao Koch-Weser of Deutsche Bank, amongst others, including the odd dictator from developing nations.
You can read all about it here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/high_level_climate_finance.html
The main idea was global "carbon" taxation, something which Lord Stern has been pushing for some time. Check here, although it seems that Lord Stern has now moved on from his role with IdeaCarbon:
http://sppiblog.org/news/a-nest-of-carbon-vipers
You might also check this out, http://www.environmentalleader.com/2008/05/02/stern-outlines-global-deal-on-climate-change/
"Inspired by a number of discussions with international policymakers, financiers and academics, “Key Elements of a Global Deal” has several contributors, with participants from HSBC, IdeaCarbon, and Lehman Brothers.
It suggests a set of proposals to advance the climate change debate on the road to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 15th Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen in December 2009."
Same old, same old, but desperation is setting in.
The not so good Lord Stern is thinking of the threat to his purse and reputation, having no interest whatsoever in the world of reality
In six days time Od will be PM with the fishwife pulling the strings, then you'll really have something to worry about.
Stern has lost all credibility with the thinking population. Clearly the man is nothing but a charlatan, famed for one utterly biased paper. The trouble is that no one is likely to take him to task over this latest distortion of fact. But if such a retort did emerge, the Guardian would refer to it.
In the article linked to above they have a classic statement:
"Without sound economic policies, fossil fuels are badly underpriced."
You just can't make this stuff up!!!!
I wonder how many lives, homes and businesses, have already been wrecked, by reliance on Stern's word.
But it is ok, because Stern has been paid by Jeremy Grantham, and they are both happy about it.
"rising sea levels and acidifying oceans"
So not only will the advancing waters inundate your home, but they will dissolve it as well!
I hope Al Gore knows...
May 1, 2015 at 11:12 AM | Unregistered CommenterPeter Stroud
Unfortunately, it's the non-thinkers who continue to call the shots.
"acidifying oceans"
Can somebody please call him publicly to cite his sources on this?
AFAIK his other assertions are readily dismissed by much that is already widely available.
Well when was an economist ever right about anything at any time. What do you expect?
Throwing acid about is wrong for so many reasons.
Unfortunately, the Green Blob seem to enjoy throwing acid about, even when they know it is completely unjustified.
Yes, it's amazing.
Carbon dioxide will dissolve your home and business without even making your eyes water. The other downside he forgot to mention is that you will also have to mow the lawn more frequently. But the carbon dioxide will probably have dissolved the lawnmower too.
michael hart,
I think the message from Stern is that everything above sea level is destroyed by CO2, and everything below sea level is eaten by acid.
Sea level is not described, or defined, but it seems immune to attack from both CO2 and acid. Stern tells us that this thing called sea level is rising, so how do we invest in sea level.? It seems more reliable than the FTSE, Dow Jones, gold or oil.
With Stern, an economist, constantly talking up the rise in sea level, Grantham must have a lot invested in sea level, however publicly available information does not show any significant change, in the rate of rise. Is there some kind of fraud going on involving insider dealing?
"acidifying oceans" : not banned yet.
It's another NGO inspired concoction with the help of people describing themselves as scientists. The background to where it came from is here, "Acid Seas – Back To Basic". http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/acid_seas.html
Jane Lubchenco, former head of NOAA and longtime colleague of John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich, used to have a video on the NOAA website showing how a stick of chalk started to dissolve in a flask of vinegar! The implication being that that is what is happening in the oceans. Clever stuff....
Making sense of anything Lord Professor Sir Nicholas says is a bit of a lost cause, I'm afraid. Take this, also from the Guardian, transcribed by Alex Cull at
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/2015/20150420_gn
What is 'severe extreme' weather?
I believe the Met Office has some classifications for weather, viz:
a. light extreme weather
b. moderate extreme weather
c. severe extreme weather
d. very severe extreme weather
e. intense extreme weather
f. extremely extreme weather
g. intermittent [a to f above]
h. periods of [a to f above]
i. frequent [a to f above]
j. continuous [a to f above]
k. light extreme weather day
l. heavy extreme weather day
and for radio and TV forecasts:
n. bits and pieces of extreme weather
o. spits and spots of extreme weather
Lord Stern may wish to avail himself of these further descriptive categories of 'extreme weather' when pontificating in future.
Billy Liar, you forgot the "mixed bag" of extreme weather.
Michael Hart,
I shall remember it in future! I don't really pay much attention to the radio forecasts anymore since they are so dumbed down as to be almost worthless. The UKMO used to have well-defined terms in verbal forecasts which I found very useful.
Hunter,
When I was much younger, some of my mates sold used cars. The stories they told me about the things the general public would do to present a 'dog' as a nice car would curl your hair, while the used car sales blokes had all sorts of legal barriers to being a cheat...
But perception is everything; the good Lord Stern knows that most sentient people regard him as a charlatan, but suficient useful idiots still abound to serve his purpose.