Climate Change Propaganda (UPDATED)

Old joke:

A mathematician, an accountant and an economist apply for the same job.

The interviewer calls in the mathematician and asks “What do two plus two equal?” The mathematician replies “Four.” The interviewer asks “Four, exactly?” The mathematician looks at the interviewer incredulously and says “Yes, four, exactly.”

Then the interviewer calls in the accountant and asks the same question “What do two plus two equal?” The accountant says “On average, four – give or take ten percent, but on average, four.”

Then the interviewer calls in the economist and poses the same question “What do two plus two equal?” The economist gets up, locks the door, closes the shade, sits down next to the interviewer and says “What do you want it to equal?”

As a lawyer, I am quite familiar with the power that “experts” can hold over a jury of one’s peers or even a judge. Subjects of a technical nature encourage abdication of thought and analysis to those dedicated to said subjects. Consequently, conclusory reports based entirely on unsupported assumptions are passed off as unassailable pronouncements as if shouted from the heights of Mt. Olympus by Zeus himself. Unfortunately, the failure to regard such reports with skepticism and scrutiny enables propaganda masquerading as science to be heralded without proper questioning about the agenda being advanced. The “Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change” is just such a report that demands our skepticism and scrutiny.

The Associated Press summarizes the Stern Review (via NYT):

Unchecked global warming will devastate the world economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression, a British government report said Monday, as the country launched a bid to convince doubters that environmentalism and economic growth can coincide.

[...]

Stern’s 700-page report said evidence showed ”that ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth.”

”Our actions over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century,” he said.

The report said at current trends average global temperatures will rise by 3.6 to 5.4 degrees within the next 50 years or so, and the earth will experience several degrees more of warming if emissions continue to grow.

It said such warming could have effects such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels, declining crop yields, drinking water shortages, higher death tolls from malnutrition and heat stress, and widespread outbreaks of malaria and dengue fever. Developing countries often would be the hardest hit.

Pretty alarmist to say the least. To be fair, the AP report does include this bit of a disclaimer:

The report acknowledged that its predictions regarding GDP relied on sparse data about high temperatures and developing countries, and placed monetary values on human health and the environment, ”which is conceptually, ethically and empirically very difficult.”

And indeed, the Stern Review itself includes some rather revealing quotes such as the following (emphasis added):

Basic physical and biological principles indicate that impacts in many sectors will become disproportionately more severe with rising temperatures. Some of these effects are summarised below, but are covered in detail in the relevant section of the chapter. Empirical support for these relationships is lacking. Hitz and Smith (2004) reviewed studies that examined the nature of the relationship between the impacts of climate change and increasing global temperatures. They found increasingly adverse impacts for several climate-sensitive sectors but were not able to determine if the increase was linear or exponential (more details in Box 3.1). For other sectors like water and energy where there was a mix of costs and benefits they found no consistent relationship with temperature.

(SR, p. 60 “Box 3.1: The types of relationships between rising damages and sectoral impacts”). So if the report is based on empirically unsupported theories and analyses that have no relationship to temperature, how is it possible that it can conclude with such certainty that “[u]nchecked global warming will devastate the world economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression”? As you may have guessed already, the Stern Review can make no such reliable claim since it is based on highly dubious “science” and unquestioned theory.

For example, consider this choice quote dismissing critics of the infamous “Hockey Stick” graph (emphasis added):

Climate change arguments do not rest on “proving” that the warming trend is unprecedented over the past Millennium. Whether or not this debate is now settled, this is only one in a number of lines of evidence for human induced climate change. The key conclusion, that the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will lead to several degrees of warming, rests on the laws of physics and chemistry and a broad range of evidence beyond one particular graph.

(SR, p. 6 “Box 1.1: The ‘Hockey Stick’ Debate”). Now I ask you, if the bolded claim is true, how can we possibly discern natural temperature cycles from human-induced ones? In addition, why would such “evidence” of a trend be tirelessly flaunted to settle the debate on anthropogenic climate change, if it were unimportant to the debate? The answer is that the bolded claim above is an outright lie. In order to bully the world into “doing something” about climate change, one must necessarily presuppose that we have anything significant to do with such change in the first place. That the Stern Review parades such nonsense about in a report intended to be the end of all scientific debate on the matter, not only smacks of puerile arrogance, it signals the pre-ordained nature of this “report.” Proponents of climate change don’t have to “prove” anything to you. You are just required to sit back and take orders from your betters. It’s much easier that way, after all, and obviates the unnecessary step of actually finding the truth through actual scientific analysis.

In fact, the Stern Review is not scientific in the least. It is a review of some published studies, using broadly defined “economic analysis” to support the conclusions reached by the purveyors of this nonsense. Calling this science would imply that there is evidence being reported on. Instead, the Stern Review employs models that rely on faulty assumptions:

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.”

Moreover, the Stern Review does not employ any sort of cost-benefit analysis of climate change that one would expect based on the title of the report alone. The only costs and benefits encountered are those associated with mitigating the assumed damage caused by global warming. Nowhere is there any discussion of the benefits from such climate change, such as longer growing seasons, opening of the Northwest Passage, or reduced heating costs. Instead, the worst case scenario is assumed (e.g. see how often this phrase or an analogue is used and relied upon to support conclusions: “The latest science suggests that the Earth’s average temperature will rise by even more than 5 or 6°C if feedbacks amplify the warming effect of greenhouse gases”), and the effects on the poorest and least adaptive populations of the world are the sole measures taken. Accordingly, the results of unabated climate change as predicted by the Stern Review assume only personal, and unaggregated responses from humans, that have little to no effect on the welfare of mankind as a whole. The failure to consider a dynamic human response will tend to exaggerate the effects of the already distorted climate change models. It would be a bit like placing someone in a hot tub, raising the temperature of the water, and expecting that person to just sit there and do nothing. The idea is absurd on its face. When considering the whole of human history and our proven ability to adapt to whatever changes are thrown at us, it positively ludicrous to make such assumptions and even more so to try and pass them off as science.

The bottom line here is that the Stern Review should receive an incredible amount of scrutiny based on the bold claims it makes and the rather dubious “evidence” upon which it relies. I have not read the entire 700 page report, but in my brief review I was able to pick out several suspicious assertions and one blatant falsehood. What will happen when a real scientist delves into this meaty analytical offering? I expect it fall fall apart like the meat from a rack of Memphis ribs.

***UPDATE***

Philip Chaston ponders the motivations behind the Stern Review:

Since the science and the scenarios are still so uncertain, climate change has been adopted as the vanguard for further taxation and a curb on British consumerism. Using the expansion of the state and taxes, rather than market mechanisms, our politicians will dampen our economic growth, steal our wealth, and wrap us in their parasitical hairshirt. The only light in this gloom is that the British electorate may reject such alarmism and the example of our political stupidity will lead India and other natiosn to seek technological and free-market solutions that do not curb their march away from poverty.

[tags] global warming, climate change, Stern Review, junk science, “Hockey Stick” graph [/tags]