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« Journos come running | Main | A letter to DECC's chief scientist »
Tuesday
Nov092010

Speechless

Some of you may remember Deutche Bank's amusing attempt to address "major sceptic arguments". I posted something on this back at the start of September.

Ross McKitrick has now posted up a back and forth between himself and the authors, Mary-Elena Carr, Kate Brash, and Robert Anderson. These three were joined by a fourth author, Madeleine Rubenstein, for the subsequent responses to McKitrick. McKitrick uses the shorthand "CABR" to refer to the four, and I've adopted the same style here.

There's quite a bit of reading, but it's certainly worth investing the time. The work of the CABR team is, quite frankly, extraordinary. It is so bad I'm going to refrain from further comment.

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Reader Comments (63)

Peter P - define 'proof'.

Nov 10, 2010 at 6:11 PM | Unregistered CommenterJEM

Foxgoose - I think someone over at WUWT also noted that it's next door to the Hansen cabal.

Nov 10, 2010 at 6:13 PM | Unregistered CommenterJEM

Let's see: CABR.vs McKtrick. 4 to 1. And still they appear foolish and outgunned.

Nov 10, 2010 at 8:19 PM | Unregistered Commentermbabbitt

Speaking of Deutsche Bank ... let us not forget their generous "contribution in kind", so to speak, by granting a 2 year sabbatical to Pavan Sukhdev:

A career banker [...] on a sabbatical from the Bank for two years to conduct his environmental projects, TEEB and the [UNEP's] Green Economy Initiative. He continues to be on the Board of Deutsche Banks Global Markets Centre Mumbai (GMC Mumbai), a company he founded and then chaired. GMC Mumbai, a dedicated global hub for global markets “front-office off-shoring” activity, was a market first of its kind which Pavan had set up for Deutsche Bank in February 2006.

TEEB (which could be considered the "new testament" to the IPCC's "Climate Bible"!) was, according to Sukhdev, "inspired by" the Stern Report. Sukhdev's "mantra" (his word, not mine): "What you do not measure, you cannot manage". His goal: "to put nature on the balance sheet" (no doubt using such innovative "mechanisms" as "biodiversity offsets or other schemes to mitigate and/or compensate ...")

TEEB ("The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity") strikes me as being a perfect marriage of faulty economics and zealous ecology.

Biodiversity loss … TEEB on the march

Nov 10, 2010 at 9:08 PM | Unregistered Commenterhro001

foxgoose -

first name on the Earth Institute Advisory Board is Kenneth J. Arrow.

turns out Arrow is uncle to Larry Summers, controversial Director of the White House National Economic Council for President Barack Obama (Summers is leaving at the end of the year and returning to Harvard). and a former Chief Economist for the World Bank.

Wikipedia: Kenneth Joseph Arrow
Arrow is brother to the economist Anita Summers, uncle to economist Larry Summers, and brother-in-law of the economist Robert Summers...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Arrow

Wikipedia: Lawrence Summers
In December 1991, while at the World Bank, Summers wrote a memo on trade liberalization that was leaked to the press. It included a section that promoted dumping toxic waste in third-world countries for economic reasons, which drew widespread criticism...
Indeed, as a member of President Clinton's Working Group on Financial Markets, Summers, along with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Arthur Levitt, Fed Chairman Greenspan, and Secretary Rubin, torpedoed an effort to regulate the derivatives that many blame for bringing the financial market down in Fall 2008...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers

Summers resigned from Harvard 2006 following the scandal over the financial looting of Russia:

2006: Time: Why Harvard's Summers Flunked the Presidency
Abernathy thinks that although Summers had weathered many storms before, the suggestion of impropriety, and his obduracy in responding to it, was simply too much: This may well have been, he says, the final nail in the coffin.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1161877,00.html

"final nail in the coffin"! LOL.

whilst this lengthy piece accepts CAGW, there are some hometruths in it, and the citizens of the undeveloped countries would do well to make sure their leaders do not accept "bribes" to participate in the CAGW scam:

(3 pages) 9 Nov: AllAfrica: Climate Debt Deferred, 2
(This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains excerpts from the civil society statement cited above, as well as a summary analysis from the Brookings Institution of the report from the UN High-level Advisory Group)
Worse still, Annex 1 countries intend to emit considerably more pollution domestically through the use of loopholes in current rules and proposed carbon markets. These would allow them to make cuts on paper but not in practice and to claim they are providing climate finance by buying carbon offsets while shifting the climate change burden further to developing countries...
Developed countries are recycling old pledges made before Copenhagen as new financing under the Convention. They are re-labeling other funds, such as those for agriculture and water, as "climate-related". Many countries intend to double-count climate finance and Overseas Development Assistance, inflating their support on paper, but leaving adaptation, mitigation and other urgent priorities for development, such as health, education and sanitation, underfunded.
Through these and other sleights of hand, discussions of climate finance are beginning to resemble a shell game in which the industrialized countries of the North offer money, then shift their pledges rapidly from one container to another, only to leave the purported recipients short changed...
Furthermore, most carbon offsets are sold as derivatives, and as such are poorly regulated. As carbon markets become dominated by financial speculators, the risk of shoddy offsets that fail to deliver promised reductions, as well as fraud and corruption, increases...
http://allafrica.com/stories/201011101033.html

as for the obnoxious Bono, the tax dodger who wanted other people's taxes spent on Africa, the less said the better.

scamsters, one and all.

Nov 10, 2010 at 9:15 PM | Unregistered Commenterpat

Re François GM

And speaking of Lord Oxburgh again, the boy certainly seems to have played a blinder. Latest Private Eye mentions a DECC briefing paper 'buried on p.94' saying that there'll be an amendment to the Climate Change Act regarding the level of subisidies involved. Private Eye says it says the amendment "will permit the Secretary of State to exclude information" about the assistance scheme "if it would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the Secretary of State)"

So possibly how the 'Honorable' President of the Carbon Capture and Storage Assosciation plans to get around those pesky FOI requests he was supposed to have been investigating previously. I can't find the doc or quote Private Eye refers to, but did see the RFQ for trial projects, where the CCS lobby have done a bit of a nuclear trick. We'll be paying up to 100% of the capital costs to build them (subject to state aid consent), CCSA members will get paid to manage pumping CO2 into holes in the ground, then once full, or 'at the end of their commercial life', will be transferred to the State. Whoever ended up buying those old gas storage fields when Enron went bust has finally found a way to monetise and offload them it seems.

Nov 10, 2010 at 10:47 PM | Unregistered CommenterAtomic Hairdryer

Atomic Hairdryer - I think you are referring to NER300:

http://www.ner300.com/

From today's Guardian:

"Funding is also set aside for eight CCS projects that will be required to have a minimum capacity of 250MW and the ability to capture at least 85 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/green-project-eurobillions-eu-funding

Nov 10, 2010 at 11:03 PM | Unregistered Commenternot banned yet

btw - It might be worth somebody sending Ross's papers to Cambridge Uni:

http://www.theclimategroup.org/_assets/files/Businesses-call-for-EU-policy-move-to-30-per-cent-GHG-emissions-cuts-by-2020_5.pdf

Nov 10, 2010 at 11:12 PM | Unregistered Commenternot banned yet

despair not :the great hadron collider (abbreviated to GHC) is finally coming with results. soon all our problems are history. yesterday they showed a working screensaver, allready. Champagne all around.

finance minister Schauble seems actually an interesting character, he was shot half dead in the 90s? maybe that pisses him off so easily. anyways the saga with his assistant Offer before the cameras is painful.

Nov 10, 2010 at 11:56 PM | Unregistered Commenterphinniethewoo

Sadly the Columbia University bias as been included in the New York Climate Action Plan (http://nyclimatechange.us/InterimReport.cfm) that includes this paragraph in the Executive Summary:
“Climate change has already put in motion certain environmental impacts in New York, and further changes are likely. According to the latest assessment from a team of scientists at the NASA Goddard Institute, Columbia University, Cornell University, and the City University of New York—the average air and water temperatures in New York and the region are projected to increase significantly over the coming decades and heat waves are expected to become more frequent and more intense. Summertime rain is expected to fall more often as heavy downpours, leading to more flooding; at the same time, the periods between these rainstorms are likely to be drier, leading to droughts. By the year 2100, sea levels along our coast and the Hudson River estuary are projected to rise between 12 and 55 inches, increasing storm-related coastal flooding. The projected rate of change in our climate is unprecedented in our human history. And only through aggressive global action will we be able to change this path.”

Be grateful you are not in a location where this science is being used to justify making New York “a hub of the new clean energy economy and by making policies and investments that bring low-carbon choices to our citizens and future generations.”

Nov 12, 2010 at 1:14 AM | Unregistered CommenterNY Climate Boondoggle

The GWPF have a column today on the Deutche Bank's 'Climate Change Advisors' by David Henderson

http://www.thegwpf.org/opinion-pros-a-cons/1847-david-henderson-deutsche-banks-green-politics.html

Nov 13, 2010 at 8:02 PM | Unregistered CommenterPharos

There are indeed a fair number of ex-bankers in various environmental organizations. For example, there are about 8 people who have worked at major banks or for the Federal Reserve:
http://www.wri.org/about/board

There's somebody else there who is a member of Socialist International as well as a member of the Club of Madrid.

Quite a collection I'd say...

Dec 25, 2010 at 10:19 PM | Unregistered CommenterCosmic Ray

Re: Nov 10, 2010 at 11:03 PM | Unregistered Commenter not banned yet

Seven years on, NER 300 is back in the news:

http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/875213/European-Union-EU-wasted-green-project-carbon-capture-zero-results

H/T WUWT - https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/11/09/the-eu-blows-683-million-520m-on-a-carbon-capture-project-that-captured-nothing/

Nov 9, 2017 at 7:56 PM | Unregistered Commenternot banned yet

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