Wat Tyler: BBC Business Editor on the Stern Report

When the Stern Review on climate change was published last October, the BBC’s Business Editor, Robert Peston - along with the rest of the BBC - immediately gave it a big thumbs up:

"The Stern Review says that climate change represents the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen. And on the basis of this intellectually rigorous and thorough report, it is hard to disagree."

Peston had clearly not read the same 700 page dodgy dossier I had, shot through as it was with gross exaggeration and laughable bias (see this blog for some numbers). Luckily he's now been fisked by his BBC colleagues Simon Cox and Richard Vadon, ably assisted by some of the world’s leading climate change academics.

"Intellectually rigorous and thorough"? Professor Richard Tol gives us the real assessment:

"If a student of mine were to hand in this report as a Masters thesis, perhaps if I were in a good mood I would give him a 'D' for diligence; but more likely I would give him an 'F' for fail. There is a whole range of very basic economics mistakes that somebody who claims to be a Professor of Economics simply should not make."

For your information, Prof Tol (both Hamburg and Carnegie Mellon Universities) is one of the world's leading environmental economists. He’s so important, the Stern Review itself cites his work 63 times. Peston goes on:

"If you take the present value (the value in today's money) of the benefits over the coming years of taking action to stabilise greenhouse gases by 2050, then deduct the costs, you end up with a "profit" of $2.5 trillion (£1.32 trillion). Any way you look at it, the financial case for tackling climate change looks watertight."

Watertight. Professor Tol again:

"Stern consistently picks the most pessimistic for every choice that one can make. He overestimates through cherry-picking, he double counts particularly the risks and he underestimates what development and adaptation will do to impacts,"

Then Peston says:

"So here's the winning formula: Stern says spend 1% of world GDP to be 20% richer than we will otherwise be. It looks like a no-brainer."

No brainer. Yale University Economist Robert Mendelsohn says the 1% cost estimate is far too optimistic and the figure could easily be much higher.

"One of the depressing things about the greenhouse gas problem is that the cost of eliminating [it] is quite high. We will actually have to sacrifice a great deal to cut emissions dramatically."

Peston has no time for such tedious detail: we’re talking Biblical truths here: why worry about cost accountancy when you’re staring straight down the barrel of The Apocalypse?

"…droughts… floods… devastating storms… famine… the grotesque market failure that is currently taking us on a path to poverty… How do we start to pay a price for carbon that reflects its true economic and social costs… a price that includes the present value of future climate change?"

Professor Mike Hulme, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, is rather less hysterical. He says that when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report comes out next week, there will be a big difference between the science it contains and the climate debate in the UK.

"The IPCC is not going to talk about tipping points; it's not going to talk about 5m rises in sea level; it's not going to talk about the next ice age because the Gulf Stream collapses; and it's going to have none of the economics of the Stern Review. It's almost as if a credibility gap has emerged between what the British public thinks and what the international science community think."

There’s certainly a gap between what serious people think and what Robert Peston thinks. Why is he the BBC’s Business Editor again? Anyone would think they didn’t want properly informed business commentary.

Comments

[Bishop Hill]

Look, it's the BBC, OK?. It's propaganda, not news.

[Serf]

Why is he the BBC’s Business Editor again?

Membership of the Priesthood is only open to believers.

[adam]

Peston is a f**king scumbag, lying, globalist, propagandist, he is way out of his depth and im fed up of seeing his ugly stupid mug on a news trailor lying to the idiotic bbc viewers about how he predicted the Northern Rock crisis and 'broke' the story, he didnt. He then claimed these economic crisis were a "headache."
Like F**K it is Peston! more like a Heart Attack, and real economists cant sleep due to fear, but not airhead pillock Peston.