We got climate change wrong says IPCC - global warming estimates revised down; Global temperatures less sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than previously thought
November 13, 2013 - 8:48PM Tom Arup Environment Editor
Global temperatures are almost half a degree Celsius above the long-term average so far in 2013, putting this year on course to be among the 10 hottest since records began, the world's leading meteorological agency says.
In a provisional statement on the global climate in 2013, the World Meteorological Organisation says the first nine months of this year tied with 2003 as the seventh hottest such period on record.
In Australia, temperatures are on track for the hottest year on record. Australia's temperatures from January to October were 1.32 degrees above average, which annually is 21.8 degrees. The same period was 0.24 degrees above the next highest record – which occurred in 2005 – for January to October temperatures.
The meteorological organisation's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, said all the warmest years across the planet had occurred since 1998, and 2013 once again continued the underlying long-term trend of warming.
"The coldest years now are warmer than the hottest years before 1998," he said. "Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases reached new highs in 2012, and we expect them to reach unprecedented levels yet again in 2013. This means that we are committed to a warmer future."
Global land and ocean temperatures are recorded by the organisation as about 0.48 degrees higher in January to September than the 1961-1990 average. The temperatures so far this year are the same as the average for 2001-10, the warmest decade on record.
In other areas the extent of Arctic sea ice recovered slightly from record rates of melting last year, but 2013 was still one of the lowest years on record.
How much money do we need to spend per degree of temperature reduction?
Should we just write a blank cheque? Should we cut all other funding... education, healthcare, infrastructure etc for the next 50 years and throw all available resources into a black hole to prevent the climate from changing?
Then in 50 years time we can measure the global temperature again and still be completely clueless as to whether or not all that money and effort had any impact to the climate.
I don't think so. There are better ways to allocate resources, rather than wasting them in a futile attempt to prevent the global climate from changing.
Shadow, you might also be interested in this report which concluded that the costs of not acting would far outweigh the costs of acting.
The Stern Review has received various critical responses. Some economists have argued that the Review overestimates the present value of the costs of climate change, and underestimates the costs of emission reduction. Other critics have argued that the economic cost of the proposals put forward by Stern would be severe, or that the scientific consensus view on global warming, on which Stern relied, is incorrect. By contrast, some argue that the Review emission reduction targets are too weak, and that the climate change damage estimates in the Review are too small.
General criticisms
In an article in the Daily Telegraph (2006), Ruth Lea, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, questions the scientific consensus on climate change on which the Stern Review is based. She says that "authorities on climate science say that the climate system is far too complex for modest reductions in one of the thousands of factors involved in climate change (i.e., carbon emissions) to have a predictable effect in magnitude, or even direction." Lea questions the long-term economic projections made in the Review, commenting that economic forecasts for just two or three years ahead are usually wrong. Lea goes on to describe the problem of drawing conclusions from combining scientific and economic models as "monumentally complex", and doubts whether the international co-operation on climate change, as argued for in the Review, is really possible. In conclusion, Lea says that the real motive behind the Review is to justify increased tax on fuels.[23]
Yohe and Tol (2007) described Lea's article as a climate sceptics 'scattershot approach' aiming to confuse the public by questioning the causal role of CO2, by emphasising the complexity of making economic predictions and by attributing a motive for Stern's conclusions.[24]
Miles Templeman, Director-General of the Institute of Directors, said: "Without countries like the US, China or India, making decisive commitments, UK competitiveness will undoubtedly suffer if we act alone. This would be bad for business, bad for the economy and ultimately bad for our climate."[19]
Prof. Bill McGuire of Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre said that Stern may have greatly underestimated the effects of global warming.[16] David Brown and Leo Peskett of the Overseas Development Institute, a UK think-tank on international development, argued that the key proposals in relation to how to use forests to tackle climate change may prove difficult to implement:[25]
Radical ideas are needed not only at the level of understandings but also of forward strategies. The Stern Review is much stronger on the former than the latter, and leaves a lot of questions unanswered on implementation, particularly the downstream practicalities of bringing avoided deforestation into climate mitigation efforts.
Soon after publication of the Stern Review, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson gave a lecture at the Centre for Policy Studies, briefly criticising the Review and warning of what he called "eco-fundamentalism".[26] In 2008, Lawson gave evidence before the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, criticising the Review.[27]
Environmental writer Bjørn Lomborg criticised the Stern Review in OpinionJournal:[28]
Mr. Stern's core argument that the price of inaction would be extraordinary and the cost of action modest [...] falls apart when one actually reads the 700-page tome. Despite using many good references, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is selective and its conclusion flawed. Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalized, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off.
Reason magazine's science correspondent Ronald Bailey describes the "destructive character" of the Stern Review's policy proposals, saying that "Surely it is reasonable to argue that if one wants to help future generations deal with climate change, the best policies would be those that encouraged economic growth. This would endow future generations with the wealth and superior technologies that could be used to handle whatever comes at them including climate change. [...] So hurrying the process of switching from carbon-based fuels along by boosting energy costs means that humanity will have to delay buying other good things such as clean water, better sanitation, more and better food, and more education."[29]
Commenting on the Review's suggested increases in environmental tax, the British Chambers of Commerce have pointed to the dangers to business of additional taxation.[30]The Business, a British magazine, reported that cost estimates for reducing emissions in the Stern Review are wrong. This is based on a leaked United Nations report obtained by the magazine, which says that mitigating climate change could cost up to 5% of global gross domestic product.[31] Journalist Fraser Nelson argues that "if the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change figures are right, they open up the possibility that the British proposals would cost as much as they save, making them redundant."
Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute, a United States libertarian think-tank, criticised Stern's conclusion, taking a calculation by himself:[32]
Stern's investment advice makes sense only if you think that warming will hammer GDP by 10% a year. You don't gain much at all from emission cuts, however, if you think GDP will only drop by 5% a year if we do nothing. And if you think warming will only cost the global economy 2% of GDP every year, [...] then Stern's investment advice is [sheer] lunacy.
In the BBC radio programme The Investigation, a number of economists and scientists argued that Stern assumptions in the Review are far more pessimistic than those made by most experts in the field, and that the Review's conclusions are at odds with the mainstream view (Cox and Vadon, 2007).[33]
In his paper on the Jevons' Paradox, which states that improvements in energy-efficiency of technologies can potentially increase greenhouse gas emission, Steve Sorrel concludes with "A prerequisite for all the above is a recognition that rebound effects matter and need to be taken seriously. Something is surely amiss when such in-depth and comprehensive studies as the Stern(2007) review overlook this topic altogether."[34]
John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York in "the Ecological Rift" (2010)[35] give considerable attention to the Stern Review, noting that the targets of 550 ppm imply a global temperature increase of at least 3 °C "well beyond what climate science consider dangerous, and which would bring the earth's average global temperature to a height last seen in the middle Pliocene around 3 million years ago" (p. 154). They posit that the basis for such high targets is 'economics, pure and simple' (p. 155), that is, lower emissions cuts were seen by the Stern Review authors as "prohibitive, destabilizing capitalism itself" (p. 155). "All of this signals that any reduction in C02 equivalent emissions beyond around 1 percent per year would make it virtually impossible to maintain strong economic growth—the bottom line of the capitalism economy. Consequently, in order to keep the treadmill of accumulation going the world needs to risk environmental Armageddon" (p. 156).
Scientific consensus is incorrect or does not exist
A paper by Carter et al. (2006) sets out a scientific critique of the Review.[36] Martin Livermore, of the Scientific Alliance (a British industry-friendly organisation that promotes biotechnology, genetically modified food, and climate change scepticism), has said that "climate is not driven primarily by human use of fossil fuels" and that the money to be spent is unlikely to have much effect: it would be better spent on the world's poor.[37]
Stern report misused climate change study
According to the Sunday Times article "Climate change study was 'misused'",[38] the Stern report 'misused' disaster analysts research by Robert Muir-Wood, head of research at Risk Management Solutions, a US-based consultancy. The Stern report, citing Muir-Wood, said: “New analysis based on insurance industry data has shown that weather-related catastrophe losses have increased by 2% each year since the 1970s over and above changes in wealth, inflation and population growth/movement. […] If this trend continued or intensified with rising global temperatures, losses from extreme weather could reach 0.5%–1% of world GDP by the middle of the century.". According to Muir-Wood "said his research showed no such thing and accused Stern of "going far beyond what was an acceptable extrapolation of the evidence".".[38]
Game theory has pretty much been debunked as an economic tool. Mostly because small variance in the unknown probabilities of future events occurring have such a huge effect on the outcome.
PS I studied game theory a bit.
“You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means” - Inigo Montoya
So marges 5 kids are not only going to be rich in housing equity but they will also be living in a perfectly climate controlled world.
The reality is they could have at least owned a family home but it was lost because the bubble burst and their parents IP's caused it to be repo'd........ theyll be walking to their underground school on a planet with no trees and 65 degree celsius average daily temperature.
Shadows views on housing- DUMB Shadows views on climate change- DUMBER
So marges 5 kids are not only going to be rich in housing equity but they will also be living in a perfectly climate controlled world.
The reality is they could have at least owned a family home but it was lost because the bubble burst and their parents IP's caused it to be repo'd........ theyll be walking to their underground school on a planet with no trees and 65 degree celsius average daily temperature.
Shadows views on housing- DUMB Shadows views on climate change- DUMBER
That makes you DUMB and DUMBER
Cool story, love it! Can you write me another one? (have me eating cold beans from a can by the end of it, with a stick because I can't afford a spoon).
Quote:
Shadows views on housing- DUMB
Yet, strangely, my dumb views over the past 8 years or so have proved to be correct.
While the silly crash spruiking bears have got it all completely wrong.
Yes, well that may be the opinion of Nicholas Stern, but his report has been widely criticised...
No one is saying there's no debate. It's all about probabilities.
Probability that your house will be burgled - very low. But you still insure it, at a pretty high cost give how unlikely it is to occur.
Probability that climate change is worsened by human activity - very high now according to academies of science of most major economies. So, then we take out insurance.
Yes it's complex. People will disagree. But we shouldn't just walk away from this problem and say "nobody knows".
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