Pielke Jr. : ‘The Stern Review’s $2.8 Trillion Miss’ – ’20 years ago it projected rapidly escalating disaster losses. They didn’t happen’

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/the-stern-reviews-28-trillion-miss

By ROGER PIELKE JR.

Excerpt:

On Friday, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change turns 20. Last night the London School of Economics marked the anniversary with Nicholas Stern and a keynote given by Miatta Fahnbulleh, the current Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.

Yesterday in The Guardian, Fiona Harvey wrote that Stern’s analysis,

“has been found sound – if anything, he underestimated both the rapidity of heating and economic consequences.”

Actually — as this post shows with evidence — no, neither sound nor underestimated.

The Stern Review dramatically over-predicted economic losses from extreme weather events, and that flawed prediction was based on the misreading of a white paper that I had commissioned for a workshop on extreme weather and climate change.

I explained Stern’s errors in a peer-reviewed paper soon after it was released (an ungated copy of this paper is available at the bottom of this post for paid THB subscribers):

Pielke Jr, R. (2007). Mistreatment of the economic impacts of extreme events in the Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change. Global Environmental Change, 17(3-4), 302-310.

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