At https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2018/10/11/ipcc-sr15-report-lacks-cost-b… … the 2018 IPCC Report lacks cost analysis according to Bjorn Lomborg. He says the costs involved are not worth it – a theme he has repeated endlessly for several years. He calls it goldilocks thinking as it fails to actually illustrate the economic impact on Europe and Europeans of cutting emissions by 80% by 2050. The Friends of Science Society say much of the push for climate action comes from billionaires who seek a global cap and trade system along with their vested interests in renewables. According to a Wikileaks document this small group of very rich people have spent $600 million dollars a year for the last ten years, funding influential environmental non-governmental organisations (the kind of NGOs that pop up every year at climate conference bean feasts). Cap and trade will have a devastating impact on Europe's less well paid – and that is not even taking into account the inability of renewables to create enough electricity to power grids. In addition, IPCC reports are unduly influenced by the likes of Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, and not actually by scientists. Lomborg has a beef and is rattling his cage – but one does have to wonder what drives the CAGW alarmism as the doom mongering far exaggerates what is happening in the real world. It relies of course on the models – which extrapolate data into infinity. Climate changes, we all know that – and over here in the UK the change is daily (one day warm and nice and the next day, wet and windy, but was ever thus). To think it is simply going to keep getting warmer and warmer seems to be an act of faith.
At https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/09/richard-lindzen-lecture-at-gwpf-g… … which begins by quoting CP Snow on the two cultures. 'A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredibility at the illiteracy of scientists …' and later, 'the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it (science in general from his point of view but climate science in particular from Lindzen's point of view) as their Neolithic ancestors would have had'. Probably less so as the Neolithic people were farmers and climate was important for their existence. Better to have said Mesolithic or Palaeolithic. CP Snow probably didn't appreciate the difference – archaeology was a different field – and in a way this sums up the climate debate as it is not only other scientists in different fields that accept the climate science as reliable but the educated class in general. It is the people lower down the food chain that sussed out the motives from the out-set – an excuse to extract more money from the masses in order for politicos to fling around and waste. The billionaires of course have tax loop holes – and one of these is to set up charitable organisations to distribute some of what they should have been contributing to the exchequer (which is what Lomborg is referring to). So, firstly they are robbing the lower orders in society of money that could finance health and other issues of people at large, and secondly, they are financing cap and trade which will rob people at the point of their paypackets. Just what do the NGOs get out of this – apart from lots of money to push for change that they hope will have a political bonanza. An unholy alliance one might say.
The lecture by Lindzen continued by him saying that little has changed since CP Snow was writing 60 years ago. Whilst some might maintain that an ignorance of physics does not impact poltical ability it most certainly impacts the ability of non-scientific polticians to deal with science issues (which alludes to their understanding of CAGW). Belief and Faith replace understanding. Lindzen then says that he begins his lectures by inviting the scientists in the audience to come to grips with the central nature of the climate system in order to help the non-scientists in the audience. He then goes on to describe the climate system and how it works (or what is currently known about how it works), combining the atmosphere with the oceans etc. Full talk is available at link.