Wednesday, January 24, 2007
MAN PAUSES, STARES
Sir Nicholas Stern’s report on climate change estimated that action to combat globble worming would only cost one per cent of the planet’s economic output. But, as the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson reports, there is a problem:
While conducting the report, Sir Nicholas and his team knew something they even now cannot admit. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the recognised world authority on whose work the Stern review was itself based, is preparing its own review on climate change economics. It calculates that the 550 ppm target would cost up to 5 per cent of economic output, five times the loss Stern suggests. I ask Sir Nicholas how he intends to persuade the world that he is right and the IPCC is wrong.
‘The IPCC has not reported yet,’ he says. This is technically true: it will not publish until later this year. But its draft report has been sent to all policymakers, I say. He must have seen it. ‘I think if you wait and see what the report does actually say...’. I produce a leaked copy of the UN draft, and show him the page where it disagrees with him. What’s more, the IPCC declares it has found a ‘high level of agreement and much evidence’.
So when this is published, won’t it blow the Stern review out of the water? He pauses, and stares at the document ...
(Via Pommygranate, now permalinked.)