Updating Climate Beliefs Based on Latest IPCC Report Points to Increased Willingness to Act

Mark Freeman, Ben Groom, Frikk Nesje and Gernot Wagner

No 11668, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We assess how changes in the scientific consensus around equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), as captured by the IPCC’s Fifth (AR5) and Sixth (AR6) Assessment Reports, impact policymakers’ willingness to take climate action. Taking the IPCC’s reports at face value, the ECS estimates in AR6 would have lowered a policymaker’s willingness to act on climate relative to AR5 due to a narrower “likely” range. However, Bayesian updating may reverse this conclusion. An accuracy-motivated policymaker who was not convinced to take greater climate action by the evidence in AR5 may be more likely to strengthen their policy views by the evidence in AR6.

Keywords: equilibrium climate sensitivity; Bayesian updating; climate policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 H51 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-inv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp11668.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11668

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().