‘Nobody Really Knows What’s Happening With Climate Change. They’re Just Guessing’

Watts Up With That | Apr 3, 2014 | Anthony Watts

The IPCC Just Agreed With Nigel Lawson 

Nigel Lawson was right after all. Ever since the Centre for Policy Studies lecture in 2006 that launched the former chancellor on his late career as a critic of global warming policy, Lord Lawson has been stressing the need to adapt to climate change, rather than throw public money at futile attempts to prevent it. Until now, the official line has been largely to ignore adaptation and focus instead on ‘mitigation’ — the misleading term for preventing carbon dioxide emissions. That has now changed. The received wisdom on global warming, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was updated this week: the IPCC emphasised, again and again, the need to adapt to climate change. –Matt Ridley, The Spectator, 5 April 2014

Take this climate matter everybody is thinking about. They all talk, they pass laws, they do things, as if they knew what was happening. I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess. And a whole group of them meet together and encourage each other’s guesses. –James Lovelock, BBC Newsnight, 2 April 2014

Influential scientist, inventor, and environmentalist James Lovelock is having some second thoughts about the whole climate change thing. In the context of a doom-and-gloom United Nations climate science report, Lovelock, 94, described the environmental movement as becoming “a religion, and religions don’t worry too much about facts.” He added that “It’s just as silly to be a denier as it is to be a believer. You can’t be certain.” –Inquisitr News, 2 April 2014

The latest United Nations report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is something of brain twister. The IPCC report is at odds with global economic and political realities. There are, in effect, two different worlds. At the IPCC, the objective is to fan fears of fossil-fuel-induced global crises brought on by rising carbon emissions. In the rest of the world, demand for fossil fuels continues to expand, regardless of the carbon risks. It surely has not escaped the IPCC’s policy leaders that as they try to drum up support for reduced carbon emissions and policy action, the leading powers are in an escalating battle for fossil-fuel supremacy. –Terence Corcoran, Financial Post, 1 April 2014

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Working Group II has concluded that global warming of 2.5˚C would cost the equivalent to losing between 0.2-2.0% of annual income. This seems in sharp contrast to the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change, which found it would cost 5-20%. How can that be? The Stern Review was prepared by a team of civil servants and never reviewed (beforepublication) by independent experts. Some argue that the Stern Review served to bolster Gordon Brown’s credentials with the environmental wing of the Labour Party in preparation for his transition to party leader and prime minister. And in fact next weekIPCC Working Group III will conclude that the Stern Review grossly underestimated the costs of bringing down greenhouse gas emissions. –Richard Tol, The Conversation, 2 April 2014