The impacts of climate change according to the IPCC

Richard Tol

Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School

Abstract: I assessed five statements in the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM) of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of Working Group II (WG2) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC’s assessment of the impacts of climate change on agriculture all but ignores human agency and human ingenuity. The statement in the SPM on violent conflict is much stronger than in the chapter and indeed the literature. AR5 ignores the literature on the impacts of climate change on cold-related mortality and morbidity. On poverty traps, WG2 reaches a conclusion that is not supported by the cited papers. The total impacts of climate change were assessed in four subsequent IPCC report. Although there are no statistically significant differences between the assessment periods in the underlying literature, the subsequent SPMs reach very different conclusions. In sum, the IPCC has yet to reach the quality that one would expect from a gold standard.

Keywords: Climate change; impacts; IPCC; agriculture; health; poverty; violent conflict; total economic impact (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-ger
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE ACCORDING TO THE IPCC (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sus:susewp:7815

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