{"id":47358,"date":"2019-09-20T00:01:20","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T23:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lse.ac.uk\/granthaminstitute\/?post_type=news&p=47358"},"modified":"2024-08-16T10:18:54","modified_gmt":"2024-08-16T09:18:54","slug":"researchers-warn-that-world-leaders-are-being-misled-by-economic-assessments-of-future-climate-change-impacts","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.lse.ac.uk\/granthaminstitute\/news\/researchers-warn-that-world-leaders-are-being-misled-by-economic-assessments-of-future-climate-change-impacts\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers warn that world leaders are being misled by economic assessments of future climate change impacts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An international group of researchers today (20 September 2019) warn that policymakers have been receiving economic assessments of future climate change impacts which omit the biggest risks.<\/p>\n

The researchers on science, economics and policy from the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom are publishing a joint report<\/a> identifying major risks that are being documented by scientists, but excluded or downplayed by economists.<\/p>\n

The report has been produced by the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science.<\/p>\n

The authors, which include Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, Professor Sir Alex Halliday, Professor Johan Rockström, Professor Ottmar Edenhofer and Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, state: “Economic assessments of the potential future risks of climate change have been omitting or grossly underestimating many of the most serious consequences for lives and livelihoods because these risks are difficult to quantify precisely and lie outside of human experience.”<\/p>\n

They add: “Scientists are growing in confidence about the evidence for the largest potential impacts of climate change and the rising probability that major thresholds in the Earth’s climate system will be breached as global mean surface temperature rises, particularly if warming exceeds 2°C above pre-industrial level.”<\/p>\n

The impacts highlighted in the report include:<\/p>\n