The Millennium Irritant.

Tuesday 31 October 2006

Stern Report – Preliminary Comment.

I will almost certainly be responding in detail to the findings of the Stern Report. However, I have a number of other commitments in the short term so it may be a week or two before I put finger to keyboard.

In the meantime my readers could do a lot worse than to read the relevant leaders on the subject in the Daily Telegraph of both 30 and 31 October.

I also reproduce in full below the press release from The Scientific Alliance issued on 30 October. This gives the most balanced comment on the Stern Report that I have seen so far.

“Too Stern a view of climate change

Today, Sir Nicholas Stern has published his review of the economic implications of modelled climate change. Not surprisingly, his conclusions are those which the government wanted: high levels of expenditure now will prevent much greater economic damage arising from the projected influence of Mankind on the global climate.

The Scientific Alliance believes that Sir Nicholas’s talents have been misused. His calculations are based on the output of complex computer models, all constructed on the assumption that average global temperatures are directly linked to atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases - in particular carbon dioxide. His estimates are doubtless correct for the scenarios presented, but we question the validity of the starting point.

Martin Livermore, director of the Alliance, said 'Evidence is building that climate is not driven primarily by human use of fossil fuels, as most people have been led to believe. There have been significant temperature changes during the last millennium, well before industrialisation, and the major influence of fluctuations in cosmic rays from the Sun have been under-represented in the work of the IPCC. The billions which this review says it is necessary to spend are likely to have little positive effect, and could be put to much better use in helping the world’s poorest people to create better lives for themselves.'

Despite rising levels of carbon dioxide, 1998 remains the warmest year on record. Although hurricane Katrina caused catastrophic damage in 2005, it was not an especially intense storm, and 2006 has been a particularly quiet hurricane season. While the Western Antarctic ice shelf is breaking up, more snow is falling over a much greater area in Eastern Antarctica. Climate changes all the time, and humans undoubtedly have some influence, but to believe that drastic reductions in our use of fossil fuels will necessarily have any real effect on a climate system which we don’t understand is to distract our attention from the current needs of the majority of the world’s population.

According to Martin Livermore, 'Gordon Brown’s recruitment of Al Gore as an advisor - perhaps the world’s leading propagandist for a one-sided and alarmist view of Mankind’s role in climate trends - shows how much a single analysis of the evidence currently dominates policy. The government still has time to bring cooler heads into the debate, look at the evidence in a more balanced context and develop policies which can make a difference to people’s lives in the here and now.'”

Adding my own comment to the above – we have just got to the end of the month of October, which is often notable for Atlantic hurricane activity. However, this October has seen a total absence of hurricanes, tropical storms or even tropical depressions forming in the Atlantic with the exception of Hurricane Isaac which formed in September but continued until 02 October.