Economic models significantly underestimate climate change risks

Economic models significantly underestimate climate change risks

6 years ago
Anonymous $2WKDXfy9lA

https://phys.org/news/2018-06-economic-significantly-underestimate-climate.html

The paper's authors, Thomas Stoerk of the Environmental Defense Fund, Gernot Wagner of the Harvard University Center for the Environment and Bob Ward of the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, draw attention to "mounting evidence that current economic models of the aggregate global impacts of climate change are inadequate in their treatment of uncertainty and grossly underestimate potential future risks".

They warn that the "integrated assessment models" used by economists "largely ignore the potential for 'tipping points' beyond which impacts accelerate, become unstoppable, or become irreversible". As a result "they inadequately account for the potential damages from climate change, especially at moderate to high levels of warming", due to rises in global mean temperature of more than 2 Celsius degrees.