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.

Man's involvement in global warming might be disputed, yet the fact, that there is no endless supply of these resources is not. Considering that the very plastic of the keyboards we all use to post here is gained through the alteration of petroleum, a final shortage of fossil fuels will not just become an issue regarding house warming and transportation.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Cyrus XIII

Man's involvement in global warming might be disputed, yet the fact, that there is no endless supply of these resources is not. Considering that the very plastic of the keyboards we all use to post here is gained through the alteration of petroleum, a final shortage of fossil fuels will not just become an issue regarding house warming and transportation.

You're speaking like things like Carbon composites and Carbon Nanotubes don't exist. There are plenty of materials that don't involve petroleum based production methods. In fact, there's are fields of science and engineering devoted to this: Materials Science and Materials Engineering.

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Originally Posted by RAZGRIZ-2

It's true that human activity has increased global temperatures but it's hard to quantify this and separate it from what might be a natural occuring phenomenon.

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?"

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

Originally Posted by GRUN-1

You're speaking like things like Carbon composites and Carbon Nanotubes don't exist. There are plenty of materials that don't involve petroleum based production methods. In fact, there's are fields of science and engineering devoted to this: Materials Science and Materials Engineering.

Sure, they exist, but how do they fare in comparision with fossil based plastics in terms of production costs?

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

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Yeah! Goddamn oil companies. How dare they provide us with what we want? It's inconceivable.

FELIPE NO

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.

;__;

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.

Originally Posted by RABicle

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.

It's not their jobs to pay for that. They exist solely to provide a product at the lowest cost possible. It's not like they won't expend their profits in the pursuit of that though. Their very survival might depend on it. The oil companies have their infrastructure at risk. Billions, perhaps trillions at risk.

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

A little alarmist, don't you think? Guess not. Oh well, at least the future has never looked brighter if you're bacteria.

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.

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A well read scientist will tell you there is no real alternative (and by that I mean more efficient) to burning fossil fuels.

Huh? Nuclear Power is more than a thousand times more efficient per kilogram. Produces a hell of a lot less waste too.

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

Originally Posted by Arainach

Huh? Nuclear Power is more than a thousand times more efficient per kilogram. Produces a hell of a lot less waste too.

And yet the waste it produces is very difficult to get rid of safely and can take thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years for it to fully decay. Still, it's probably our best option right now.

What could happen is instead of an end all be all alternative, maybe employing many of the alternatives we have on a regional scale. Solar power wouldn't be ideal for places that have alot of rain and cloud cover, however an airid climate like the Southwestern United States and Middle East could benefit greatly from solar power. A place with alot of wind such as the Widwest U.S. would benefit from windpower. Then of course there's the alternative with ethonal.

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

Originally Posted by guyinrubbersuit

And yet the waste it produces is very difficult to get rid of safely and can take thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years for it to fully decay. Still, it's probably our best option right now.

The biggest issue with nuclear waste is separating its components. I don't mean being able to separate high level waste from low level waste so we only have a tiny amount of material to store (relative to the energy it's been used to produce), but I mean separating the actual high level waste into the various stuff it's made off. If we were able to do this, then there'd be a number of advantages: First of all, you'd be able to remove the stuff that's extremely radioactive but decays fast from the stuff that decays much more slowly. In other words, you might be able to reduce further the space you need to store your highly radioactive waste in the long term, since the stuff that decays fast could be kept for a few years until it literally disappears, and for that you wouldn't need underground storage. Second, and perhaps more importantly, there seem to be some fission by-products which are extremely dangerous, but which could actually be converted into harmless, or at least much less dangerous stuff, if it could be separated from the rest of the waste. If you can treat a large part of your waste that way, then you'll end up with very little stuff to dispose off, or you might even find actual uses for it as radiation sources, among other things. It might even be possible to completely get rid of it some day.

I remember reading about this a few years ago in a science magazine. One of the biggest problem is that research is somewhat difficult due to the fact that not too many labs are equiped to handle nuclear waste and perform experiements on it ranging from testing chemical processes to stuff involving lasers. No private industry could justify the cost, and very few government really have an interest in funding that research. I believe that the french were working on it, not so surprisingly, but they were stuck at the separation part. And since I haven't heard about this in some time, I have to idea if they've made much progress.

In the meantime, I suppose we'll have to be content with burying our waste. Unless black gold and its cousins somehow last forever, something unlikely, there isn't that much other choice since all sun-based energy sources (in which I include wind, hydro, solar, fossil fuels, ethanol, which all ultimately get their energy from the sun) have various problems in costs (which often means efficiency), scalability or simply the fact they won't last long enough. And then there's the whole pollution thing which a lot of them produce.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by RABicle

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

Not hardly. I don't think that this report or the people who wrote it are omnipotent. The report just by reading the relevant chapters footnote's is disappointing, nor much different then other estimates.

Chapter V, (which is only 21 pages long) which is what should probably be the most important to people living in the industrialized world has no accurate grasp of how much it could cost. Many times it states that higher temperatures will possibly lead to higher costs with no real attempt to elaborate. They don't even bother guessing. If that's even possible to accurately guess. It just states the obvious in all of it's vagueness.

So really, this is just an alarmist piece for the British government. And a wake-up piece for the rest of us.

How ya doing, buddy?

Isn't the cost-per-kilowatt for nuclear power somewhere around $4-5K? I heard solar and wind power come in at about 1-2K.

FELIPE NO

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

Secondly, there is such thing as a scatter plot. There are times when things are heating up, there are times when things are cooling down. There have been on-and-off cycles of global warming blame games for decades. You even had the earliest ones in the 20's-30's.

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. Show me a fucktard who thought that the pessimist's "worst-case-scenario" scene of global warming would be cheap. Either way, I don't buy into the fact that mankind is causing this.

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

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?

Blaming oil companies for this is just juvenile. There is a demand for energy and they're getting it. High gas prices? Supply & Demand.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

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.


Jam it back in, in the dark.

*cracks fingers*

What would people gain from Global Warming pushing? Easy. Researchers get more money. If some climatologist or meteorologist is assigned to find out whether Global Warming is occurring or not along with how to prevent it if it is, then he will lean toward the result that will give him a better meal ticket. Global warming is very much politics-meets-science. If he says "no, it's false" then Doc loses grants, as folks will lose interest in it. "Oh, nothings wrong? Ok. Forget about it." But if he says "doooooooooom," people start throwing money at him saying "find out about it."

If you do not believe me, then you obviously haven't met enough "research-rats" as I call them. I went to an AGU conference last winter and I learned something: tons of folks doing research are just working to keep their head above water. They will eyeball the smallest most redundant points and even fib about data just to keep things rolling and obtain more grant money. I have this view formed from personal experience. Not everyone is like that, but the global warming crutch seems to be much the same. I lost my job in the Meteorology department due to funding being moved to elsewhere. Interest was taken away from aerosol particles that form rain clouds and put into global warming research funding. As a result, my boss lacked the money to continue his research and has been sitting on his hands somewhat ever since. And this was all due to that Day After Tomorrow movie scare. Folks were pressing more and more for research on it and it all got sucked up.

Now. To counter your pictures...

Yes. There are points where CO2 is at max and glaciation is occurring. It is when water vapor (the big player in greenhouse gases) disrupts the albedo effect. As a result, sunlight cannot get into the atmosphere. You can see CO2 as an insulation that heats things up, this is true. But enough water vapor forms a shell per se that sunlight can't get through very well.

You say incorrect, but there is a Dr. North here at A&M who would beg to differ. I suggest you look up on him if you doubt me. I've had long discussions with him about global warming in the past. I'm not talking out of my ass on this issue.

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. Every couple years folks say it's getting hotter. It's getting colder. It's brightening. It's dimming. They're like scared chickens. Do you want the big picture of things here?

The last major ice age ended 10,000 years ago. Following a glaciation period is a period of warming. Things heat up and melt ice. Water vapor gets into the atmosphere and disrupts the albedo effect, causing the surface of the Earth to get very, very cold. As a result of this, ice ages take place. Slowly throughout the ice age, the C02 levels lower (as the CO2 gets caught in ice deposits), and enough vapor freezes so that the atmosphere clears up. Albedo effect resumes, begins to melt ice, CO2 levels begin to rise. Wash, rinse, repeat.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

So this must be why you IMed me yesterday.

Originally Posted by GRUN-1

You're speaking like things like Carbon composites and Carbon Nanotubes don't exist. There are plenty of materials that don't involve petroleum based production methods. In fact, there's are fields of science and engineering devoted to this: Materials Science and Materials Engineering.

Just as a side note, carbon fiber reinforced polymers are considered roughly 4-5x more environmentally harmful than steel, twice as harmful as virgin aluminum (many more times if the aluminum is recycled), and anywhere from 2-10x more harmful than most common polymers (plastics, rubbers, and lots of other synthetics). CFRP also has one of the highest emission rates of CO2 per ton of any material out there, I believe.

But yeah, us MSE people are working on less costly/ecologically friendly methods of producing things, though it's usually pretty hard since you just have to replace one bad thing with something that (currently) is believed to be slightly less bad.

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?

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

Hey, that's funny! I was just reading about a report by some economists saying that dealing with global warming was a bad idea!

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Sure, agriculture would be negatively effected, but then [striek]having to eat[/strike] farming is really just a small part of America's GDP. Plus, summer tourism could last longer!

Sure millions might die due to changing weather patterns, stavation, and flooding, but that's still cheaper than fixing anything. Why? People that live on <$1 have a low "willingness to pay" for solutions, because they can't pay jack shit. So their deaths are cheaper than retrofitting the economy

---

As regards climate change debates, you know why so many of the anti-climate-change people turn out to be shell agencies with official-sounding names, parroting old and countered arguments? Some big industries took a page out of the tobacco playbook: create enough "argument" among "experts" in the public domain so that things will appear ambiguous. In ambiguity, the American people will prefer to do nothing.

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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 was speaking idiomatically.

By not mentioning that this is a regular occurrence. There are folks who are slapping the blame-game on burning of fossil fuels as if the atmosphere had never changed in the history of this planet. As I said, things are heating up but it is natural and not caused by mankind. If they mentioned it is natural, there won't be as much fear and research into it. All the "proof" of mankind causing this is full of holes.

Your "conspiracy" prod is laughable. A&M is a big supplier of manpower to the energy industry. And many former students from A&M feel obliged to donate money to the university. It's quite a good one, y'know.

Predicting Rab's next post: "you're going into the oil industry. You must be a conspirator."

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

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.

FELIPE NO

As far as I am concerned, without be arsed to go look up anything, is that at this point Global Warming still an unproven theory, regardless of how bad Al Gore want the world the think he his still relevant.

If I were to believe in global warming, it would mean that I would have to forget that when I walk outside today it is cool/cold autumn weather.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by nitsu

As far as I am concerned, without be arsed to go look up anything, is that at this point Global Warming still an unproven theory, regardless of how bad Al Gore want the world the think he his still relevant.

If I were to believe in global warming, it would mean that I would have to forget that when I walk outside today it is cool/cold autumn weather.

you may not notice an over all global 2 or 3 degree drop, but it effects the world enough. I think that people who say that everything is just a natural cycle (sugh as glaciers all over the world melting at an alarming rate) are just trying to justify what they know is wrong in the first place (like being in flat Miami beach and seeing huge SUVs). I'm not trying to say that it's going be dooms day or anything, and that we should all repent, but I think that it's a big issue that can't be ignored or pidgin holed for ever. I believe that soon we will see the effects.

Jam it back in, in the dark.