Off Target: An Evaluation of the Stern Review’s Climate Disaster Predictions
March 9, 2023
By Paul Homewood
Roger Pielke Jr casts an eye back to Lord Stern’s Review:
It seems like ancient history today, but the 2006 report on climate change by Nicholas Stern, produced at the request of the British Government had a significant impact on discussions of climate policy. The “Stern Review” as it was called focused on the economics of climate change and climate policy.
Among the report’s conclusions was a prediction of how climate and weather related disasters would increase in coming years and decades. Now, 17 years later, we can take a look at how well that prediction has fared.
In short, not so well.
Read Roger’s full post here.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The report explained its methodology as follows: Based on simple extrapolation through to the 2050s.
Assumption problem.
If you assume it makes an ASS/U/ME a.k.a. an ass out of you and me
Actually, two assumptions, so assumption problem squared.
Somewhat appropriate that the grisly trio are wearing poppies to commemorate the poor bloody infantry that suffered from an earlier monstrous cock up (leaving the General Melchetts to carry on unperturbed).
Even if Stern had been anywhere near correct the growth in world GDP will make any negative effects insignificant (most likely benefits anyway from increased plant growth and fewer deaths from cold). Lomborg makes this point as do Tupy and Pooley in ‘Superabundance’. Blair et al. are doing their best to turn triumph into catastrophe but I doubt that even they can manage it.
Stern was fairly reasonable relative to today’s utter nonsense but in being reasonable he then had to use an extremely low discount rate to value future losses. Otherwise the losses in today’s terms were significantly outweighed by the near-term benefits and meant we shouldn’t spend anything at all to avoid them. His use of such a low rate spawned a cottage industry of “experts” determined to prove he was right but they were all simply fallacious as they ignored why you discount in the first place.
What became clear because of Stern’s work was that costs had to be increased significantly and brought forward by decades – lo and behold, science discovered “extreme events”.
Only climate change zealots (the Greenblob), the corrupt MSM and idiotic, ignorant politicians believed the Stern report. They were all paid well for their ignorance and corruption.
Net Zero has taken over even our greatest science/engineering university, Cambridge. No ambitious academic can make progress without using that shibboleth. Its implausibility only adds to its power like Soviet propaganda and its most malevolent offshoot PC designed to break the spirit by its blatant lies.
The hand of Gates, methinks.
A major donor certainly
Academics have predictably responded to the incessant drumbeat of CliSciFi propaganda, the extreme social and career pressures of widespread official cancel culture and the corruption of vast amounts of government and crony capitalist money. In “1984” George Orwell described how Winston Smith was made to sincerely believe in things he still knew were lies.
Every scientifically trained individual, having looked at the UN IPCC Assessment Reports and other extant data, knows the truth that extreme weather is not worsening. Yet they still support the lies promulgated by Leftist politicians, Deep State denizens, NGO fanatics, crony capitalist profiteers and media hysterics.
The Stern Report was the last somewhat honest analysis done. The activists learnt from it that they had to (i) increase the scale of future costs and (ii) bring costs forward by many decades. And that’s exactly what the “science” delivered.