The Stern Report: Global Warming to cost $7 trillion dollars

One of the multitude of sources reporting this

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A powerful report on the effects of climate change on the world economy today warns that global warming could cost the Earth 20 per cent of its wealth if the problem is not dealt with soon.

The Stern report, conducted by the former chief economist of the World Bank, Sir Nicholas Stern, and commissioned by chancellor Gordon Brown, urges the world to spend one per cent of the global gross domestic product (GDP) in combating climate change now.

This spending would amount to around £184 billion [US$350 billion,] but is said to be able to prevent a drastic shrinking of the world's economy by a predicted £3.68 trillion [US$7 trillion.]

Stern's conclusions warn that unabated climate change risks raising average temperatures by over 5C from pre-industrial levels, leading to a transformation of the physical geography of our planet.

The report also warns of mass migration of the world's population as 200 million could become refugees with their homes destroyed by rising water levels.

What shits me the most, is that it's the private sector primarily responsible for this. The oil companies, energy companies, logging companies, all heavy industries, yet you can bet they won't be footing the bill.

And if you have some time on your hands. The full, 700 page report can be found here.
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/indepe...iew_report.cfm

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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I've been hearing a lot about global warming possibly being caused by a naturally occuring cycle. Considering the stakes, isn't it dangerous for scientists and regular people who side with that theory to assume that it is 100% correct? Since it's our planet that is on the line, wouldn't it be better to play it safe and start cutting back on emissions and stuff rather than jeopordize the future with a "maybe?"

Precisely right mate. If we act like it matters and it turns out it doesn't, oh well. If we act like it doens't matter and it does, FUCKED.
Anyway, anyone siding with the whol "natural occurance" line, could you provide some kind of link or soemthing to an oil company sponsered research paper? It'd be nice to see.
Personally I don't unerstand how it COULDN'T be our fault.
We know that greenhouse gasses keep our Earth warm
We know what the gasses are
We know that we are constantly pumping them into the sky
We know that we are cutting down or worse, burning entire forests who would normally turn these gases back into oxygen.

Originally Posted by nabhan

It's depressing because I know that the country most likely to be flooded will be Bangladesh, and that means all my relatives will be displaced.

Yeah one of the things the report mentions is taht it's the poorer nations who will be hit hardest and hit first. It's pretty disgusting. Esepcially when you have Vanuatu, a nation who had to AIRLIFT ENTIRE VILALGES to higher ground a few years back due to rising water levels, meanwhile, Australia who bullys then entire oceania region is just next door and also the highest per capita polluter in the world.

Originally Posted by mindOverMatter

I think that people still have the wrong idea if they are worried about the economic costs they have to suffer from global warming

This is true. Unfortunately we have to speak in what I like to call "Conservative Terms", you know, make them fear a flood of refugees and economic meltdown.

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I wonder how they come up with numbers like that. Not to mention the per-person break down cost of that if we factored in every person living in the industrialized world. Oh yeah, and how do we know we haven't already started paying down on that?

Too many questions, so few answers.

Somehow with 700 pages in the report. I think they might go into those details for you.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

For starters... If you are a believer in global warming, things won't flood overnight. It'd take decades for changes to effect things.

Well duh.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

Plus, you can't predict these values. You know what that article is, right? Just another fear-tactic that keeps getting poured down peoples' throats.

Ahh the conspiracy argument.
What would anyone have to gain by predicting environmental catastrophe? Yet there are plenty of people who would continue to gain maintaining the status quo.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

There have been ice ages at points in the past when CO2 and other greenhouse gases were at their peak.

Really?

Originally Posted by Gechmir

Let's also not forget that increasing CO2 does not necessarily perpetuate global warming. Shoddy computer models have run this along and they don't take into account a number of causal mechanisms that arise once certain parameters are met. For example, once enough water vapor is in the atmosphere (most effecting greenhouse gas), the atmosphere becomes a literal shield from sunlight and causes things to cool down very fast.

Incorrect. Suns rays intially penetrate the greenhouse gases becuase they are a much higher frequency than that which resonates with the gases. Heat radiated back from the earth is a lower frequency, this is what the greenhouse gases trap and re-radiate back to earth.

Originally Posted by Gechmir

Our combustible engines have become much more efficient and emission levels are down. As for countries like China, they don't have the luck with that yet. Still, let's not forget how many "emissions" are unloaded into the atmosphere from every volcanic eruption. It's naive to think that we're melding the atmosphere like play-dough. The atmosphere has evolved over BILLIONS of years. And very, very, VERY slowly. What makes you think that a little over 100 years of burning fossil fuels will suddenly spell doomsday?

Volcanic eruptions have not been this nice and gradual. Call me naive but something is going on here.



Here's something which doesn't seem to have any effect.


This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

That's a nice theory Gechmir but how do you suppose scientists managed to convince the global temperature and polar ice caps to conform to their greedy money grab?

Also I looked up this guy and your University. I poked around the site some more and then in Donor Salutes I found something interesting.

Originally Posted by A&M Donor Salute

As a former student, Huddleston has seen tremendous success in the petroleum engineering field. He is founder and chairman of Huddleston & Co. in Houston, which provides petroleum engineering consulting services. His other venture, Peter Paul Petroleum Co., manages joint venture and partnership interests in more than 2,500 producing oil and gas properties.

Now there's a conspiracy!

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Edit: Rab, could you also explain what http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ure_Record.png means? I'm not too up on my climatology, so what does "Temperature Anomoly" mean in the graph's context?

How much the temperature deviates from the historical average. For example, in 1860 the average global temperature was .4 degrees below the historical average.
Last year was 0.5 above the average.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I'm aware that temperature flucuations are a regular occurance. Normally I wouldn't suggest that donor funding reaches further and is controlling university research but you brought up such a hiliarious propisition; that scientists are blaming humanity for their own personal gain that I couldn't help it.

My real problem with your post is this

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CO2 rises are in fact due to heating. There is a heating effect going on right now, but it is not man-caused Global Warming.

As if smokestacks and car exausts didn't exist while we systematically deplete the world's forests. I really don't buy your idea that CO2 levels are increasing BECAUSE ice is melting, releasing it and water vapour into the atmosphere. Releasing so much in fact that it's overiding our own contributions.

I was speaking idiomatically.

The Kyoto Protocol is at least a start. I agree that it won't make much of a difference because the Kyoto targets in terms of emission reduction are so low but ratifying it would at least show an interest by Australia, the US and other countries in the wellbeing of the planet. "Economic hardship"? Get real. The so called hardship we'd go through developing cleaner technologies and cutting emissions barely compares to the real hardship faced by billions of the planet's inhabitants when the polar caps melt and their cities sink into the sea.

Did you goto today's rally zergkiller? I was at the Perth one.

How ya doing, buddy?