EDHEC: debate over climate figures does not negate risks

Climate economics isn’t broken, and debating the true damage figure does not negate the threat, wrote Nicolas Schneider, senior research engineer and macroeconomist at EDHEC Climate Institute, in a recent article.

December proved to be a challenging period for climate economics. The Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a climate-focused forum for central bankers and financial supervisors, had only just updated their scenario estimates of the potential effects of climate change on the economy, when the scientific credibility of a paper from practitioners at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research was thrown into question. The seriousness of the critiques was such that Nature, the journal that published the findings, required the paper to be retracted rather than corrected through a corrigendum.

EDHEC is keen to put this retraction in its wider context, because it has been used to discredit not only this paper but climate economics more broadly. Amid heightened climate-related tensions across the Atlantic, the integrity of the field can only be safeguarded by holding firmly to a fact-based perspective.

First, the retraction itself reflects Nature’s exceptionally high editorial standards. Second, the debate over the exact magnitude of the damage estimates must not obscure the major scientific contribution of this study. Third, the larger lesson is that there certainly is uncertainty in our understanding of the true macroeconomic cost of climate change. (...)