Stern mocked - temperature of scientific debate rises

Anyone with a sincere interest in studying the arguments over "climate change" could usefully examine the responses to Sir N Stern's remarkably heavy document at the entertaining , extraordinarily well informed, lucid and independent Climate Audit website.

The following comments seemed apposite and useful to the more sceptical and rational amongst us ;

” The accuracy of climate predictions is limited by computing power. This, for example, restricts the scale of detail of models, meaning that small-scale processes must be included through highly simplified calculations. It is important to continue the active research and development of more powerful climate models to reduce the remaining uncertainties in climate projections.” [page 8, HS stuff on page 6]

This sounds like a reasonable explanation for why there should be more funding for modellers (Assumes, of course, that physics are modelled correctly..), but I get the sense that the author believes it would be possible to predict what the Queen will have for lunch on her birthday - if only we had a big enough computer to do the calculation.

Comment by Jim Edwards
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From Stern: a tiny footnote on clouds (See Lord Patel's previous remarks on Stern) on the bottom of p. 9:

An increase in low clouds would have a negative feedback effect, as they have little effect on infrared radiation but block sunlight, causing a local cooling.

Planet Earth might have powerful mechanisms, such as nonlinear negative feedback from clouds, to keep a lid on warming. There is alot of talk about runaway postive feedback. Not much talk about negative feedback.

Comment by bender —
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Here’s another “O RLY” comment from the Stern Report (page 23, Chapter 4):

Gender equality

Gender inequalities will likely worsen with climate change. Workloads and responsibilities such as collecting water, fuel and food will grow and become more time consuming in light of greater resource scarcity. This will allow less time for education or participation in marketbased work. A particular burden will be imposed on those households that are short of labour, further exacerbated if the men migrate in times of extreme stress leaving women vulnerable to impoverishment, forced marriage, labour exploitation and trafficking.112 Women are ‘overrepresented’ in agriculture and the informal economy, sectors that will be hardest hit by climate change. This exposure is coupled with a low capacity to adapt given their unequal access to resources such as credit and transport. Women are also particularly vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters with women and children accounting for more than 75% of displaced persons following natural disasters

So let me understand: climate change (the Orwellian contraction of “human-caused climate change”) will cause:

- more gender inequality
- men being forced to work abroad
- female impoverishment
- forced marriage
- labour exploitation
- ‘trafficking’ (is this a synonym for slavery?)
- fewer credit cards and loans
- less transportation (overcrowding on buses, or will they be forced to car-pool?)

There’s no end to the horrors caused by climate change!

Of course, the real reason behind all of these things is poverty, which the carbon trading system will do nothing to solve, and probably exacerbate by reducing the amount of money available for investment and trade with developing countries.

Comment by John A

...and lots more including the letter from Professor Paul Reiter, of the Institut Pasteur in Paris in the Daily Torygraph on Tuesday.

"I am reminded of Trophim Lysenko, who used pseudoscience and myth-making to establish ‘scientific proof’ of Marxist genetics. Lysenko dominated Soviet science for more than two decades by propaganda and ruthless liquidation of his opponents. When he was finally discredited, the Soviet Nobel Laureate Nicolai Semyonov wrote: ‘There is nothing more dangerous than blind passion in science. Given support from someone in power, it can lead to suppression of true science, and… to inflicting great injury on the country’.

Popular knowledge of scientific issues is again awash with misinformation. Alarmists use the language of science to manipulate public perceptions by judgmental warnings. Scientists who challenge them are branded as a tiny minority of ‘sceptics’. One of the few geneticists who survived the Stalin era wrote: ‘Lysenko showed how a forcibly instilled illusion, repeated over and over at meetings and in the media, takes on an existence of its own in people’s minds, despite all realities.’ To me, we have fallen into this trap. A genuine concern for mankind demands the inquiry, accuracy and scepticism that are intrinsic to science. A public that is unaware of this is vulnerable to abuse.”

Or as Lancelot Hogben that maverick mathematician and great scientific educator said in his essay "Science and Authority" in 1957 ...."No society is safe in the hands of so few clever people".

To return to the Climate Audit comments ...

At the launch of the Stern report Tony Blair said ....

"It is not in doubt that if the science is right, the consequences for our planet are literally disastrous. And this disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future, many years ahead, but in our lifetime.”

Brilliantly subtle caveat or just mangled logic?

Hint: He studied law at Oxford

Comment by Proxy

Go to Climate Audit, you will learn more about the debate there than by reading Stern.

Pic is of an angel, St James's Roman Catholic Church, Rochdale today