The Stern Report on the alleged Global Warming certainly hit the headlines, and gave that C*nt McGordon McBroon an excuse for another dig at the government's two favourite targets, motorists and holiday-makers (i.e. 99% of the population, in fact) in the forms of increased fuel tax and a doubling of airport tax.
But now the dust has settled a few people are beginning to draw attention to the shoddy work and less-than-logical conclusions in the Report.
For an example of shoddy workmanship, we need look no further than this phrase: "irreversible melting of ice". Now, unless Professor Stern has discovered some hitherto unknown branch of science, what every schoolboy knows is that when it gets warmer, ice melts. And when it gets cold - lo and behold, ice again! Not completely irreversible, then.
What Stern has omitted to notice is that the present-day polar ice sheets are a comparatively recent phenomenon, geologically speaking. Earth has spent quite a large part of its history without any polar ice-caps at all. For instance, a warm climate period melted them completely 250 million years ago, and they didn't form again for another 220 million years.
Around the world, pundits are starting to speak out and condemn the Report. James Taylor, senior fellow for environment affairs at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of "Environment and Climate News" called it "A biased British study that exaggerates costs, neglects science of climate variance, is fatally flawed and a microcosm of all that is duplicitous regarding global warming alarmists and their political propaganda".
Ruth Lea of the Institute of Directors called it "Just another excuse for higher taxes", and the Secretary-General of OPEC said "The report on climate change published by the British government on Monday has no basis in science or economics".
Richard Tol of the Economic and Social Research Institute of Hamburg said "In sum, the Stern Report is very selective in the studies it quotes on the impact of climate change. The selection bias is not random, but emphasizes the most pessimistic studies. The discount rate used is lower than the official recommendation by HM Treasury. Results are occasionally misinterpreted. The report claims that a cost-benefit analysis was done, but none was carried out. The Stern Report can therefore be dismissed as alarmist and incompetent".
The Australian Government didn't mince its words: "We do not accept the British report".
One has to wonder why among all those MPs who think they're worth £100,000 a year, there isn't one who has dared to think, let alone point out in parliament, the fact that man-made emissions constitute only 3.4% of the total annually-cycled carbon dioxide according to the IPCC. Of that 3.4%, cars are responsible for 15% and aviation 7%. Centrally-heated buildings produce twice as much CO2 as the transport sector, yet central-heating fuel is taxed at 5% while petrol is taxed at 300%, making it plain that when McBroon says he's increasing taxes for environmental reasons he's lying through his teeth.
The whole concept of trying to fight climate change (which many/most proper scientists believe is an entirely routine and natural occurrence which has happened before and will happen again - so live with it, for God's sake) is absurd. Al Gore and his ilk try to suggest that because we know about it, we have a responsibility to do something about it. But then we also know things like HIV, diarrhoea and malaria cost 15 million lives a year; malnutrition affects more than half the world's population; 800 million people lack basic education; and 1 billion people don't have clean drinking water.
On the other hand, global warming has so far cost no lives at all. Granted there were deaths caused by the 2003 heat-waves, but those will be more than offset by the drop in deaths caused by the cold. In the UK alone it is estimated that by 2050 we could see 2,000 more heat deaths, but 20,000 fewer cold deaths. Global warming seems set to be quite good for us, really.
As in so many instances in the last hundred years, it's actually the House of Lords that can be relied upon for a bit of common-sense. The House of Lords Select Committee recently pointed out that the government has done nothing with the £30 billion "ecotaxes" already collected. It also said "We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations … there are significant doubts about some aspects of the IPCC's emissions scenario exercise … there are some positive aspects to global warming and these appear to have been played down in the IPCC reports" (IPCC is the United Nations' panel of scientific experts on climate. It ought to be the most respected body of opinion on the planet, but has done and said some very silly things like denying the existence of the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age, and supporting the now-discredited "hockey-stick" version of historical climate statistics).
The GOS predicts that the Stern Report will go the way of many others: having served a brief purpose as an excuse for increased taxation, it will be quietly forgotten lest its failings become embarrassing to the government.
Pity the same isn't likely to happen to McGordon McBroon.
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