Lord Stern - profiteer of doom

Letter to the editor of the NZ Herald, by the Viscount Monckton of Brenchly

11 September 2010

Sir, – Lord Stern (September 11) menaces New Zealand with “trade barriers” unless she agrees to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. This rank neo-imperialism, overlaid with overtly Marxist rhetoric about “market failure”, should be treated with contempt.

Stern’s ludicrous report on the economics of climate change reached its erroneous conclusions on the basis of an insupportable near-zero discount rate and an indefensible doubling of the IPCC’s wildest projections of future CO2-induced warming.

The IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity to CO2 are now known to be prodigious exaggerations. At most, we shall see not 3-4 Celsius degrees of warming this century, but a harmless 1-2 degrees. Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is a naturally-occurring trace gas that was once present at 750 times its present atmospheric concentration – yet here we all are.

Stern’s demand that New Zealand should shut down 90% of her carbon-fuelled economy over the next 50 years is scientifically baseless. His spurious justifications for dubious “investments” of British taxpayers’ money in fashionable but hopeless boondoggles have bankrupted the United Kingdom. Do not let him wreck your economy too. – Monckton of Brenchley