Tag: 2006

Categories
Economics of mitigation United Kingdom

October 30, 2006 – Stern Review publshed.

On this day, October 30 in 2006 the Stern Review was published. This had been commissioned by Gordon Brown, the United Kingdom “Chancellor of the Exchequer” (Treasurer) a year previously (see this blog post).

Nick Stern, a World Bank economist who could hardly be accused of being a swivel-eyed Luddite, argued that 

“This Review has assessed a wide range of evidence on the impacts of climate change and on the economic costs, and has used a number of different techniques to assess costs and risks. From all of these perspectives, the evidence gathered by the Review leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting.”

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 379.33ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this – 

Why this matters. 

We knew. And we knew there was a “business case” for saving life on earth (the very words are bizarre, aren’t they?)

What happened next?

Oh, arguments about the “discount rate” (i.e. Stern was too optimistic)

A variety of “mini-Stern” reports, and for a while everyone using the language. Then nothing.

Fun fact – when Stern visited Australia, Prime Minister John Howard basically dismissed him as “English.”

Categories
Australia

October 11, 2006 – “Climate Institute” begins tour of rural Victoria

On this day, October 11 2006 the then new “Climate Institute” began a tour of rural Victoria…

A group calling itself the Climate Institute has started a tour of centres across the eastern states calling for action on climate change.

A panel of four, two farmers, a scientist and a wind power expert, spoke at a public meeting in the south-eastern Victorian city of Sale last night.

The group was started by a Hamilton grazier financed by a trust linked with the Murdoch media empire.

Panel member and former CSIRO scientist Graeme Peerman says farmers will be the first and hardest hit by climate change.

“At the federal level we don’t have an energy strategy, we have a document called ‘securing Australia’s energy futures’ which is a grab bag of all of the bits and pieces that you might have together, but nowhere in there is a real clear strategy as to how we build the real balance,” he said.

Sale hears push for climate change strategy ABC, 12 October 2006

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2006-10-12/sale-hears-push-for-climate-change-strategy/1284712?pfm=ms

[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 379.33ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now,well, see here for the latest.]

The context was this –  Australia was waking up to climate change, thanks in part to the Millennium Drought, which seemed endless.  Internationally, things were moving. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had been released, the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report was coming.  

The Climate Institute had been set up the year before, and was beginning to make waves

Why this matters. 

We have tried.  We have tried and we have failed. Good to remember this…

What happened next?

The Climate Institute kept going, shutting up shop in 2017. See my Conversation piece on it going under

https://theconversation.com/so-long-climate-institute-too-sensible-for-the-current-policy-soap-opera-74360

Categories
Agnotology Science Scientists United States of America

Jan 29, 2006: Attempts to gag James Hansen revealed

Jan 29

On this day, the New York Times released a report, written by Andy Revkin, about how famed climate scientist James Hansen was being subjected to attempts at gagging him by some of George W Bush’s appointed goons. You can read all about it here. There’s a whole (very good) book about the campaign, called Censoring Science.

Hansen had already been up against this sort of stuff in 1981, when the incoming Reagan administration had cut his funding in retaliation to a previous front page story on the New York Times.

Why this matters? 

Because if scientists, charities, think tanks, civil trade unions, etc, are gagged and silenced, then the public don’t get a real sense of “what’s up” (though by now, it amounts to wilful ignorance, and anyway, information on its own counts for nothing). This is all part of the long war against impact science, usually by no means exclusively, on the part of the “ right “. You have to remember that when the “left” is in charge, it also doesn’t go particularly well for independently minded scientists.

What happened next

Hansen is still publishing. You can see his Google Scholar page here  because Hansen is in the old Yiddish term, a mensch.