The answers, in brief, are: Probably two-thirds of the warming in the 1990s was due to natural causes; the warming trend already has stopped and forecasts of future warming are unreliable; and the benefits of a moderate warming are likely to outweigh the costs.
For months, Mr. Bloomberg has stopped short of forecasting all-out fiscal doom, arguing that with $600 million in givebacks from the unions, the city may be able to solve of some of its problems.
The government's own aviation commission has stopped using its official oil price forecasts, worrying they are too low and flatter future demand for air travel – an issue that must then exist for road transport and other policies too.
11.07am It has stopped raining, so the clean-up business has started, but there is more rain forecast and, as yet, no scheduled resumption.
"The music has stopped playing," said Frederic Neumann, a co-head of Asian economics at HSBC, which on July 9 cut its growth forecasts for Asia outside Japan to 6.1 percent for this year and 6.5 percent next year.
Although RIM had stopped giving investors financial forecasts, largely because it consistently failed to meet them over the last year, it took the unusual step of issuing a statement late Tuesday saying that it might lose money in the quarter, which ends Saturday.
"After three big downgrades in a year" of estimates for ad spending in 2001, "our forecasts have stopped growing gloomier," said John Perriss, chief executive at the Zenith Optimedia Group in London, a media services agency owned by the Publicis Groupe and the Cordiant Communications Group.
"I wouldn't forecast any radical recovery yet but things certainly have stopped getting worse," said Tomoyuki Ota, an economist at Fuji Research Institute.
Word of Mr. Holden's dismissal emerged several days ago, and many analysts had already stopped believing DaimlerChrysler's forecast of a quick recovery at Chrysler.
Investors had been forecasting $48 million.
