The 700 page climate change document released yesterday by the British govenment has claimed coverage around the globe. We hope that means the sludge of uninterest among the political class gets stirred up too, though skimming down the links above will turn up quite a few who still doubt.

The lead author is Nicholas Stern, currently a senior British government economist, and former Chief economist of the World Bank. This means he has bonafides among the powerful, those whose financial interests will be threatened, and that he casts the dangers not only in biological and geographic terms but in money lost terms. Perhaps what he has seen will turn the tide of complacancy, something mere science has not yet done. [If only we could get the global warming to show up naked…]

I haven’t seen a link to the report itself. It would be good to get at some of the detail. Part of the story is that the British have also hired Al Gore as a kind of lobbyist to take the case the report makes to the American people. As he knows, he has his work cut out for him, what with salacious messages on Congressional cell phones and all.

The San Francisco Chronicle made it a front page, top of the fold story – though somewhat shouldered aside by a bigger, photo article on SF homelessness. The LA Times’ staff writer, Kim Murphy was the writer.

The NY Times buried it in a short article on page 8 by Heather Timmons. You wouldn’t know it existed from a perusal of the front page of the on-line edition.

Bob Zuber posted a piece from the UK Guardian, below.