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The economic impact of global warming has been grossly underestimated and scientists must warn that inaction will spell disaster says top economist and climate change expert Nicholas Stern.
Stern told 2,000 climate scientists meeting in Copenhagen that they had failed to clearly tell humanity what it faces if global temperatures reach the upper range of forecasts made by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).
“There has been lots of scientific information on 2.0 and 3.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 and 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), but you have to tell people loudly and clearly just how difficult 4.0 or 5.0 would be,” he said.
New findings show that these projections were vastly understated, scientists here said…
Stern, whose 2006 Stern Review has become the benchmark for calculating the economic cost of tackling climate change, conceded that his report had also fallen short in assessing the potential consequences of global warming…
Katherine Richardson, head of the Danish government’s Commission on Climate Change Policy and a co-organiser of the meeting, agreed that scientists had not done a perfect job in getting the message out.
“Most of us have been trained as scientists to not get our hands dirty by talking to politicians. But we now realise that what we are dealing with is so complicated and urgent that we have to help to make sure the results are understood,” she told AFP.
Of course, college basketball may demand more of your attention, eh?
pedro…could that be Gary, Indiana?
# 25: It sounds like you are big on making large statements but short on specifics.
That’s one unsightly photo there. Reminds me of my business trips to China. I love swimming at the beach but I wouldn’t step foot in those water over there, especially when I see tons of garbage floating around, smells awful just being near it and looks like green puss.
I can’t imagine anyone would use the beach but they do, tons of people. I wanted to go out there and tell them the water isn’t safe but who am I to say anything like that 😛 I’m not PhD scientist. Those garbage floating about might be on purpose, that smell might be from people farting and the green color might be because of coloring to make the beach look “nicer.” Shrug.
The wackiest part of all this experience was when there were some actual good swimmers that had to plow through the garbage just to be able to get far enough to be able to use swim! 🙂
Hhhmmm, the same right wing nuts that defended Bush, Boss Limpdick, and Bill O’Rielly are attacking this report. No evidence except some stupid video. Nothing peer reviewed or remotely scientific. Just the usual blather about commies, totalitarian governments, and stupid Al Gore. Yup. A lot of real intelligent thought there. Some real hard hitting comments.
#33: I used to live near Gary. It’s probably US Steel, with the pic either taken at Gary’s Marquette Park, or maybe from nearby Ogden Dunes. It’s probably taken with a telephoto lens and maybe using a brown filter or Photoshopped.
The effluent from that mill is mostly cooling water that is treated and goes into the lake, with some converted to steam when cooling the iron or steel. There was little air pollution from the steel mill even 25 years ago when I lived in the area.
>Nothing peer reviewed or remotely scientific.
There you have it. Fusion declares the IPCC is not peer reviewed or remotely scientific.
It’s a shame that no one seems to want to quote the facts but rather concentrate on the fiction!
The FACT is that the world, long term temperature trend has risen by about 0.7 degrees in total. There is absolutely no trend over recent years to suggest it will ever get to 2.0 let alone 4.0 degrees. The second FACT is that over the last few years the world temperature has FALLEN not risen. Yes, let me say that again – the temperature has fallen – that is a FACT.
The other FACT is that whilst both temperature & CO2 emissions have risen there is absolutely NO proof of any correlation between the two. Yes, it could be true but the truth is that there are other far more probable explanations that are just ignored by the media. However it is not politically correct to debate or discuss these issues as they are natural phenomenon and not much we can do about them.
Unfortunately there is a huge industry out there that is rewarded by perpetuating the myth that only CO2 could cause the long term temperature to rise.
If you say something long enough & to enough people they simply believe it. Remember we once believed the world was flat! Can I suggest you do a little research yourselves?
Nansy Pansy.
I love it when people spout “this is a FACT” as though one journal is more accurate than another. What is FACT is what is only reported on and how it is reported. That FACT could be twisted, one sided or manipulated to receive the outcome.
Unless you know what the hell your talking about and/or doing in regards to the environmental issues surrounding us, I take reading journals a little less seriously.
And yes, I’m a green guy. Not fanatic or anything like that.
I’m on the side of science. While science doesn’t always predict the weather to dvorak’s liking, it’s the best we’ve got.
The issue is too serious to rely on the usual conservative remedy of “do nothing and pray the problem goes away”. I will not remain passive and watch the these important decisions that impact the future of my family rest on a hunch that all is just dandy.
I disagree. Have a nice day
As long as you don’t have an SUV or live in the suburbs or eat meat or use electricity. You wouldn’t want to impact the future of your family after all…
Meanwhile, tropical cyclone activity falls to a 30 year low.
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
Yea, modelling weather is real easy. It’s not hard like developing a new operating system to follow Windows XP. Or hard like monitoring national and global financial systems. Or hard like picking winners in college football.
Yea, modelling and predicting weather is really, really easy. That’s why we can all make flippant comments about what idiots these scientists are.
If only they’d let me and my Excel spreadsheet do the work and create simple little line graphs then I’d show everyone who is right.
These Humanist control freaks have got to keep as much of the public in blind panic as they can so Obama can pretend to ‘save the world’ by signing laws that bring a new level of control to the proletariat. Oh yes, and denying global warming will be hate speech. Stifling websites like this will result.
Climate change is.
Anyone who has looked at what climates where like in the past has to to know that at times the Earth has been vastly warmer than now and at times it has been vastly cooler.
That’s the first thing you need to know. Climate change is and nothing we can do will change that. Those who talk like if we do this or that the climate won’t change are nuts.
The addition of carbon dioxide to the air most likely is warming things up a nd the planet clearly has warmed up a tad but I read something a few days back about some bug spray being upteen thousand times better at this than CO2 so maybe the bug spray does as much as fossil fuel burning?
I keep running into this sort of crap.
I wouldn’t bet two cents that next winter won’t be much colder than this winter or much warmer. To many factors vary to much and we don’t even know what some of them are much less being able to modal it accurately.
So it`s (a)worse than expected, (b)it can`t be stopped, (c)anything we do up to and including simply shutting down our society will make virtually no difference….YET we have to hurry up and destroy what`s left of the economy with crippling carbon reduction plans anyway?
If it`s this bad, what`s the point? We have to put money into how to help people adapt as well as they can, not trying to stop the unstoppable.
If you are in a sinking lifeboat, and your choices are to learn to swim or bail with an eyedropper, which is the best course?
You know that when the commenter uses words like “proletariat” they are on a political agenda and not a scientific agenda.
All you liberal, tree hugging, euphoric pukebags just keep drinking the kool aid, don’t you? The Earth is NOT your mother. Get over it.
The arctic ice pack thickness mid January this year was reported as the thickest it has been in the past 70 years. That doesn’t prove anything but interesting.
The real purpose of “global warming and the IPCC” is to transfer money from wealthy to poor nations in the form of carbon credits. As with everything the explanation comes by following the money.
$54, Canuck, no the real purpose is to keep the poor nations poor, while simultaneously giving them money. Foreign aid works that way too. Give them free food, and put their farmers out of business.
http://tinyurl.com/co28k8
Global Warming is Creating a Climate of Fear
#18 – MikeN,
Regarding sea level rise, the uber-conservative IPCC does not account for glacial meltwater. The truth is that we don’t know just how much of the glaciers will melt by the end of the century. Most estimates I read are for around 4 meters.
IPCC is only considering the sea level rise from the expansion of water as it warms. The problem with that is that the glaciers are melting far more quickly than anyone expected.
#18 MikeN,
Also, I missed your point about a five degree rise in temperatures. Keep in mind that a five degree rise melted all of the glaciers over north america. At just five degrees cooler than today, New York was under thousands of feet of ice.
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broadbased support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
Scientist Stephen Schneider, admits to alarmism
#24 – Paddy-trOll,
I don’t know why the global warming alarmist won’t listen to scientists…
So … for once … you are going to provide us a link to some peer reviewed paper stating that global warming is not happening. Yay!! I await your next post, with link, with baited breath.
#29 – Benjamin,
If policies are changed due to global warming fears, it will cause economic chaos. It does matter if the fears materialize or not. The only important thing is to use global warming to wrest control away from the people.
Exactly how much control do you think you have now as ExxonMobil controls your brain?
People do not need to drive to work when the global warming laws are put into place. Their jobs will go to China where there are no global warming laws.
As opposed to all the jobs already there? Or, perhaps you haven’t noticed that container ships burn fuel. Appropriate pricing of carbon may help to bring some jobs back. More importantly, it may spark a whole new renewable energy economy that actually gives the U.S. more jobs, if we can first play catch up with all of the countries that already have a higher level of renewable energy technology because A) they listened to science and B) they actually have science in their schools.
Communism failed due to people not wanting to give up freedoms to a totalitarian regime. The Green movement is trying to take our freedom in a different way. Remember, Green is the new Red.
What are you talking about? What freedoms is anyone taking away by giving you fuel efficient cars and lighting that uses less electricity, thus costing you less.
It is not about the planet. It is about control. Some commission will have veto authority on every decision you make, unless you are on the commission.
Wrong on all counts. It’s not about the planet. The planet will be fine until the sun engulfs the planet in 4.5 billion years.
It’s about life on the planet. This may be important to those of us who recognize that we are A) alive and B) part of a complex web of life without which we will not survive.
My point is that whoever wrote the article referred to in the post is not basing his work on science. They project a sea level rise of 50m. The IPCC does mention glaciers melting, as I said in my post, they added 7m for Greenland.
Same with the 5 degree change they project. It is out of range of most IPCC forecasts.
#18 – MikeN,
Excellent point. Stern is writing about the economic disaster that is global warming. For scientist opinion, one should pay attention to this paragraph.
More importantly though, one should really stick to peer reviewed work. Much has been said in the peer reviewed pubs for a while now about how much the IPCC has underestimated the problem.
#38 – pedro,
#37 So, did you buy your carbon offsets for that reply before or after clicking “Submit”?
Don’t know what point you think you’re making. I’ve been buying my carbon offsets for about 4 years now.
http://terrapass.com/