verdades inconvenientes — das taxas de desconto (8)

No seguimento de verdades inconvenientes — das taxas de desconto (7)

A stern rebuttal to the Stern review por Anthony Watts:

A member of the UK parliament, MP Peter Lilley, has written a scathing rebuttal study to the 2006 “Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change” which has been used a a basis for UK government to move forward with climate policy. The number of errors and distortions he has uncovered is quite extraordinary and brings the validity of the Stern report into serious question, if not outright falsifying it.

The substantial study .. is the most thorough analysis of the Stern Review so far undertaken. It takes the IPCC’s view of the science of global warming as given, but points out that Stern’s economic conclusions contradict the views of most of the world’s leading environmental economists and even the economic conclusions of the IPCC itself. The study also catalogues a series of errors and distortions in the Stern Review “any one of which would have caused it to fail peer review”.

Executive Summary (PDF):

The government relies on the Stern Review to justify its policies to combat global warming – possibly the most costly programme since the welfare state. But the Stern Review was not fit for purpose.

• Comparing apples and pears
• Describing future centuries as “now”
• Hidden economic assumptions
• Inconsistent discounting of costs and benefits
• Peculiar ethical assumptions.
• Not discounting for uncertainty
• Clutching at catastrophes
• Denying scientific certainty
• Cherry picking unreliable studies
a) Hurricanes and storms
b) Food and famine
c) Water supplies
d) Rising sea levels
e) Disease
• Neglecting adaptation, reduced vulnerability and technological
advances
• Reliance on models to predict damage
• Underestimating cost of reducing emissions
• Sacrificing today’s poor for tomorrow’s rich

Full report: What Is Wrong With Stern? (pdf) Lilley-Stern_Rebuttal 2 (PDF)