In 2006, Professor Nicholas Stern produced a report on climate at the request of the British Government. It claimed that climate-related damage would dramatically increase in coming years and was hugely influential at the time. Two years later, Parliament passed the Climate Change Act, the seminal legislation that put Britain on its disastrous path to Net Zero. Seventeen years later, the U.S. economist Professor Roger Pielke observes that Stern’s predictions of climate and weather impacts were only true in one year – 2017 – and in dollar terms the cumulative overestimation in financial damage to date is about $1 trillion.
At the time, the economist Ruth Lea has probably never written a truer word. She told readers of the Daily Telegraph that “I have little doubt that the Government will use the Stern report as a political prop, under the guise of the moral case for saving the planet, for unilaterally raising energy costs”. In the years that followed, successive British Governments did just that, reducing a commitment to cheap local fossil fuel, and promoting unreliable green energy with massive subsidies paid by British consumers.
The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change was a major exercise in green scare propaganda highlighting an improbable increase in global temperatures of up to 5°C. Noted Lea: “In Stern’s worst case scenario, global GDP by the end of the century would be 20% lower than would be the case if climate change had been tackled.” She quoted Stern, who said “our actions could create risks of major disruptions to economic and social activity on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century”.
Professor Pielke noted that Stern reported correctly that weather and climate disasters over the decades leading to 2005 totalled around 0.2% of global GDP. Stern made two assumptions of future increases. A lower bound of constant 2% increases in the costs of extreme weather over and above changes in wealth and inflation, and an upper bound assuming a rate of increase of 1% each decade reaching 6% in 2045. Stern said that these values are “likely underestimates”, but the following graph shows that they were not.
In the lower bound example, the grey bars show the expected loss increase from 0.2% of GDP to about 0.35%. The actual losses are shown in black and the dashed linear trend line has hardly moved. Only the one year in 2017 was higher than Stern’s forecast, and Pielke computes the cumulative financial error over the 17 years at no less than $1 trillion. He notes that Stern’s failed prediction “is good news for the world”.
Pielke also compiles a second graph showing the results from the upper bound estimates. These guesses soar quickly but there is no evidence from current loss patterns that that reality will make its presence felt. But then with global warming slowing to barely a 0.1°C rise since the turn of the century, there is not a great deal of reality about Stern’s 5°C temperature hike. Pielke’s observations would seem to undermine the “simple conclusion” of the Stern review that, “the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting”.
These days Professor Stern is the chair of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at the London School of Economics. Grantham is a promotional research operation committed to accelerating the transition to Net Zero, and it is backed by numerous green billionaire foundations. Its main backer is the green billionaire investor Jeremy Grantham. Stern is still promoting his report, bizarrely telling an audience in October 2021 that his work, “contrary to being alarmist, underestimated the risks, the damage associated with temperatures increasing, and the probability of temperature increases”. It was said to be important to keep going down to zero carbon dioxide by mid-century. Renewables, with storage, he fantasised, now competed without subsidy or carbon price in much of the world. The fact that you can’t store renewables at any worthwhile scale does not seem to have occurred to Stern.
Back in 2006 when Stern’s report was first published, the environmental economist Professor Richard Tol observed: “If a student of mine were to hand in this report as a Master’s thesis, perhaps if I were in a good mood I would give him a ‘D’ for diligence; but more likely an ‘F’ for fail. … Stern consistently picks the most pessimistic for every choice that one can make. He overestimates through cherry-picking, he double counts particularly the risks, and he underestimates what development and adaptation will do to impacts.”
But does any of that matter? Stern was important green nudge propaganda at the time paving the way for a radical collectivist transformation of society through the Net Zero project.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Actually, she shows up in the dictionary under “deluded t**t”.
Who are these mysterious downvoters? And why do they never have the courage to say why they are doing so?
‘liberty’
VARIABLE NOUN
Liberty is the freedom to live your life in the way that you want, without interference from other people or the authorities.
Collins English Dictionary.
Presumably Martha Spurrier and her gang of layabouts and chancers have taken an extended furlough these last three years.
They are despicable.
Oh dear. How worried should we be? Is it time to panic buy the loo rolls yet? Actually I’m using the Royal ”we” given I don’t even live in the UK now…Just forewarning you guys though!
”UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace confirmed today that the government has provided the Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine’s military.
‘The donation of these weapons systems gives Ukraine the best chance to defend themselves against Russia’s continued brutality, especially the deliberate targeting of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, which is against international law,’ he told the House of Commons.
‘Ukraine has a right to be able to defend itself against this.’
Storm Shadow, the Royal Air Force’s (RAF) long-range cruise missile, has a sprawling range of up to 190 miles and could reach deep into occupied territory.
Wallace said the missiles will only be used ‘within Ukranian sovereign territory’.
The UK prime minister Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman said earlier today: ‘The Prime Minister announced (the UK) would be the first country to provide long-range weapons to Ukraine.
‘That has not changed.”’
https://metro.co.uk/2023/05/11/russia-vows-adequate-response-after-uk-supplies-cruise-missiles-to-ukraine-18766189/
Providing Ukraine with Really Expensive Shit[tm] that’s therefore only available in Really Limited Numbers[tm] is a token measure. Presumably, the idea is that the Ukrainians can do some field testing to determine if these missiles can actually be used for something.
These ar#eholes have no damned right spaffing our money like this. Who the hell gave them the right to declare war?
I am not at war with Russia but apparently we have to give money and weapons, which we haven’t got, to a wholly corrupt, gangster government so that more people can be killed. We are fighting a war by the back door then.
Doubtless everything we do is wholly compliant with International law so that’s alright.
It’s a bit like the situation of the USA in the first world war until 1917: Formally neutral but in the really big business of lending money to England and France so that they could buy loads and loads of weapons and ammunition from American companies. Except that there’s no money to be made here and hence, nothing has been privatized here so far.
There’s also a second aspect here people with no military experience are probably not aware of: The shelf-life of ammunition is limited. This means Ukraine is probably getting a lof of stuff which would otherwise need to be destroyed in a more expensive way in order to get rid of it.
With no environmental impact at all ! NOT
I really only know this for the German navy but the usual method to get rid of old shells or rockets is fire/ start them in an area of the ocean where all other ships are a safe distance away and let the remains fall into the sea.
From fighting against compulsory ID cards to campaigning for trans equality – Liberty stands on the side of freedom and justice.
What’s the meaning of trans equality? All men must be forced to put on lipstick and dress in miniskirts so that the few who do so voluntarily no longer stand out?
I had to look up the meaning of “gender critical feminist”!
Honestly, I’m so out of the loop and getting left behind, it was always just plain old “feminist” in my lifetime. It’s like the term has evolved and now there’s spin-off versions fgs! I’m a 
It’s like the “men who have sex with men” thing though. It was always just “gay/homosexual” up until now. To my mind, if it’s not broke don’t fix it. And stop highjacking a term such as “feminism” and bastardizing it to suit your own ends. Truly unnecessary. Stupid labels and terminology man…
‘Feminism’ is broke, hugely split over the trans issue and the definition of ‘woman’.
Yes it feels almost like a meaningless term nowadays. Especially as I certainly don’t identify with the loony, fringe-radicals. Good old-fashioned equal rights and opportunities is what I signed up for and now that has been accomplished it seems, due to society being remolded into something altogether crazy, warped and sinister, I think I’ll take a rain check on the current edition. You shouldn’t have to label yourself as anything in order to be against this trans activist lunacy that threatens our kids and society as a whole. Any decent, compassionate person with an ounce of common sense would prioritize children’s welfare above all else, especially above the pseudo-rights of a bunch of crazy, screaming banshees dressed as pantomime dames.
Can’t fault you there Mogs.I
In the UK and countries like it women do have equal rights and have had so for years – which I hasten to add is a good thing.
Do we still need feminism then?
Well not that I’m very up to date on it all, as previously stated, but I’d say two things. Firstly, feminism seems to have evolved so much that it’s now basically unrecognizable from what it was intended to be at the outset. I think a lot of women are not comfortable aligning themselves with something which has forgotten its roots and has basically lost sight of its most fundamental objectives. Said objectives have been achieved in the main and so it could be argued, especially given the direction the movement is going, that many want to get off the bus because it’s been highjacked and we didn’t sign up for this. Is feminism now irrelevant in most countries where equality of the sexes has been recognized for years? Very possibly, but I’m not remotely a scholar on the subject so I’ll leave it to others who are more well-read than me.
Which brings me on to the second point; I don’t like labels or being labelled. I don’t think it’s appropriate to pigeon-hole people, as if they stay neatly defined within rigid borders and never move. For instance, I’m not religious but I don’t call myself an atheist. I believe equal rights for all are a basic human right in this day and age but I don’t think I need to choose a camp and wave a flag to signal my allegiance to that particular group. I’m just sick to the back teeth of labels everywhere tbh, like everybody has to choose a team, a cause, then defend it like some hostile, rabid dog just because that’s how it’s done nowadays. It just seems insane and entirely unnecessary to me. Just be a decent, compassionate person who’s in possession of integrity and let no label place limitations on you.
Anyway, you didn’t ask for an essay but I gave you a mini-essay, in true wind-up toy style anyway! lol I’ll leave it at that I think.
I applaud and share your dislike of being labelled and hanging labels on people.
I’m cautiously optimistic you won’t be calling me a misogynist again any time soon
Can’t beat a huge split !
Never sink to the level of using our oppressors language because that allows them to control the argument.
You are so right and it is more important that most people realise.
I never ever let anyone refer to the last three years as a “pandemic” without asking what they mean.
it’s tiring and if I’m honest tiresome, but language is the arena on which so many battles are lost.
Stop it, I’ve smudged me nail varnish now
“The strange kind of Left-progressive managerialism-cum-authoritarianism of our ‘new’ governing elite”
Interesting article, and one of the best descriptions (however clunky) I’ve seen yet for something with no accurate precedent, so no accurate way to define. Though I wonder if ‘class’ might not be a better word than ‘elite’.
Totalitarianism has been defined partly as a state in which a growing number of people, disaffected with their lot and disconnected from each other, find a sense of purpose in an intertwined set of ideological beliefs. The nature of the individual beliefs, or even the whole set doesn’t matter; they’re subject to the whims of the totalitarian bloc as a whole as well as its governing class. But the sense of purpose in holding and actualising them takes on a total power of its own when, crucially, this sense of purpose is shared by a significant group of people. The significance can lie in the size, or degree of influence of this group.
As the this sense of purpose located in the holding of a shared ideology, rather than the components of the ideology spreads amongst a population, it becomes to the advantage of the bloc to stoke the disaffection and disconnection in the wider population that can act as a recruiting tool – hence the primacy of the more disruptive and divisive elements that make up its belief system (envy was traditionally its chief emotive weapon, though nowadays shame seems to have taken precedent). This phenomena looks from the outside like it is driven by the elite of this bloc. As chief beneficiaries of the bloc’s expansion, it is, but not exclusively: the whole body of the bloc perpetuates it, consciously and unconsciously.
This sense of purpose without conscious direction, apart from a belief in belief itself, is easy to see in smaller groups like communal cults. Its psychological grip is obvious. It subordinates to itself all other governors and regulators of behaviour, including relational rules and individual reason. Honesty to others, but particularly the self (which always takes some effort) can be more easily shelved with the reassurance this shared purpose provides, filling the vacuum it leaves. This manifests as a subjectivist mindset, where reality becomes whatever adherents need it to be; where there is no objective truth, just an endlessly mutating series of relativistic relationships based on a liquid moral ground defined by the needs of the group. Postmodernism and cultural Marxism were both products of this subjectivist mindset on a societal level.
Here lies the other reason, not covered in the main article, why the dominant class this nascent totalitarianism creates is so prone (to the point it can use it as a tool) to projection of its own behaviour, fears and neuroses onto outside groups. Loss of the core sense of self is a consequence of the pathological self-deception of subjectivism. It leaves you with no reference point for reality. Where a need to believe takes precedent over what is believed, the individual components of a belief system become too circular, shifting, irrational and externally defined to provide any solid ground to act as a reference point.
But some sort of objective reference point is always necessary to relate to the world in any practical way. Where to find it? Because it can no longer be found in yourself, you naturally start locating it in others. You’re more likely to start seeing other people’s struggles; other people’s experience of unfairness or triumph as your own (as we see in Gender Ideology / Critical Race Theory). In relation to the main article, you’re also more likely (and find it easier) to locate the negative consequences of your behaviour towards others in yourself. Therefore others become containers for all the negative parts of your behaviour which under totalitarianism can go unacknowledged and unexamined. Hence historical and current censorship, bullying, purges, support of policies with devastating consequences for vulnerable people and ultimately murder, all with the glowing feeling of a noble, shared cause.
Under a subjectivist mindset, which is a natural, organic endpoint of totalitarianism, and what I think we’re seeing in the mishmash of dishonest, relativistic, nihilistic, divisive, regressive set of convictions that seem to have become a unified motivational force in the culturally and politically influential class, life and reality become and endless, disorienting hall of mirrors.
Oops, in the penultimate paragraph, I meant ‘In relation to the main article, you’re also more likely (and find it easier) to locate the negative consequences of your behaviour towards others in them rather than yourself’.
That’s cleared that up then.
I finally get to the point, then sausage fingers engage!
Great points extremely eloquently put. Liquid morality is a great way of putting it.
I think this might even more simply boil down to basic narcissism and the fact that it’s almost become a mainstream virtue these days. And it doesn’t matter how ludicrous or removed from reality the stuff you’re spouting, as long as involves ‘feeling good’, ‘fighting injustice’ and ‘being kind’, anything goes if it keeps you in the club.
I don’t think it’s ever been this bad. Narcissism is a modern day global brain cancer that has been allowed to grow and fester like a fungus through the death of proper social interaction and people spending vast amounts of time under the illusion that they’re king shit of turd mountain but ultimately they’re staring at a slim brick of plastic and rubber that they can use to manipulate their perceptions of the world to suit whatever they want to feel like or whatever they see as fashionable and making them look good at the time. As opposed to real life social interactions round a table in a pub for example, where their junk science fear mongering Nostradamus shtick or pompous race baiting would automatically be met with any number of uncomfortable floor staring indications that they’re being an obnoxious bore or a hectoring prick. And our global ruling class and their corporate gimps put billions into cynically nurturing this behaviour to suit their agenda and they feed it like a giant pet Medusa. The returns on their investments are enormous.
All reason, judgement and critical perception have been overwritten by the desire to be in an anti-human cult of moronism called ‘Be Kind’ and it suits our global cartel to a tee.
I find few people actually believe in free speech really.
Most people would prefer to draw the line somewhere before the actual right to say anything you like, literally anything.
I find that is for two reasons.
First people tend to equate saying something with the consequences that follow. For example, shouting fire in a crowded theatre that leads to a stampede that injures people.
Second, some things are so completely objectionable that one struggles to imagine how anyone in their right mind would think otherwise and so limiting speech in relation to that couldn’t be a problem For example, someone standing up in defence of rape.
Seems sensible but shouting fire in a crowded theatre may not always cause a fatal stampede, so the problem is not the speech in and of itself. And as far as the highly objectionable goes, the problem is that drawing the line of what is highly objectionable eventually gets highly subjective, There are people out there who appear to be convinced that CO2 is going to destroy humanity…
As I already wrote in a past comment: Human communication can functional or informative. The Shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre is an example of functional communication: The audience is not supposed to be informed about the fact that there’s a fire in the theatre but urgently asked, if not ordered, to do something to avoid falling prey to the fire. It’s perfectly sensible to limit such functional communication.
OTOH, someone standing on a soapbox and holding a speech about gender as social construct or the manifold advantages of gas heaters doesn’t plan to accomplish anything as direct consequence of his words save influencing the opinions of whoever listens to him. It’s this kind of purely informative communication freedom of speech applies to.
The woke pseudo-argument against freedom of speech is usually to deny that informative communication exists, ie, to claim that merely seeking to influence the opinions of an audience is already a potentially harmful real-world effect which thus needs to be limited to prevent such harm.
I’m not sure that the distinction you make between those two types of speech is useful.
When someone says that covid jabs are dangerous and should be avoided, is he being informative or is he just trying to influence opinion?
If you ask people, they will say they do, and then when you quote more and more taboo examples of speech the number who stay with you tails off and you’re left with the lunatic fringe represented by people like us.
Liberty doesn’t believe in Liberty
************************************
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
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It´s a shame that the environmentalist lobby and the climate doom lobby are so often conflated. They are quite independent of one another.
Few dispute the impact of humans on the environment. The reduction in animal species and numbers is well known, as is the tearing down of jungles for mass cash-crops.
But the alleged warming of the climate is just another blip in the earth´s ever-cycling climate and it has at times been far hotter without disaster. Nor is CO₂ the demon it´s claimed to be. In fact plant life flourishes in high CO₂ levels.
I´m for care and attention to the environment and our natural world.
But I´m unconvinced that there´s unprecedented, human-caused climate change.
It´s worth distinguishing between the two issues.
Thanks for this very interesting and informative article. I shall have to reread it a couple of times to let it really sink in.