Bishop Hill Peter Lilley comments
Sep 5, 2012 Economics I noted in an update to the the "Stern Exposed" thread that Chris Hope said that he had found an error in Peter Lilley's article about the Stern Report. Lilley has now added a comment pointing out what has happened. I'm reproducing it here.
I have posted this response to Chris Hope's query on his website:
Dear Chris
Thank you for querying the figures I attribute to the PAGE2002 Impact Assessment Model.
In fact the figures I quote do come from your model – Figure 5 on page of your explanatory article The Marginal Impact of CO2 from PAGE2002: An Integrated Assessment Model Incorporating the IPCC’s Five Reasons for Concern. They are line 7 and refer to India so my paragraph should have read:
“The model is given a range of assumptions of impacts on the GDP of each geographic area for a 2.5°C rise in temperature. Thus, IN INDIA a 2.5°C temperature rise is deemed to reduce GDP by between 1.5% and 4% - with a median 2% loss. The loss is then set to increase as a power of temperature ranging between linear and cube – averaging 1.3.”
The words IN INDIA somehow got erased and I will reinstate them in future versions especially as it then makes more sense.
You also single out India in your excellent presentation to the Yale Symposium – page 48 where you point out that though “adaptation reduces impacts by 90% in OECD countries” it reduces it by only “50% in India”. That was the point I was referring to in the second quote to which you refer. Please correct me if I have misinterpreted your model, but as I understand it, even when India and other poor countries which constitute the bulk of the world reach current OECD levels of development they will still be deemed to adapt only by 50% not by 90%?
I am sorry if you thought I was trying to misrepresent your model. Far from it. The clarity and transparency with which you present all your assumptions and equations stood out as a model which I only wish others on all sides of this debate would emulate. So I regret all the more that a proofing error – mea culpa – led to that impression.
Best regards
Peter Lilley
Reader Comments (22)
And that's a model of a quick and comprehensive apology, plus correction, another thing 'all sides of this debate' would do well to emulate.
I thought Hope was being a bit silly, because it wasn't obvious how Lilley had carried the putative error forward, and the point -- rather than calculation -- being made was that "these assumptions are all essentially arbitrary". Hope's comments on Twitter ( http://twitter.com/cwhope ) betray the same attitude we're used to from environmentalists: extraordinary defensiveness in the face of criticism. Rather than taking criticism on the chin, and in an academic spirit, Hope speculated that Lilley's report reflected some other political manoeuvring, rather than simply a challenge that could be read at face value:
Hope: ".@rogerharrabin You have to wonder why he published this now, 6 years after Stern review. Any thoughts?"
I pointed out that this was in the realm of the tin foil hat, and that the report was the challenge. Hope replied;
"Yes@clim8resistance but there would be no point unless there is some political challenge going to come from it. Lilley is a politician."
He also speculated that Lilley wasn't the author of the report:
"@rogerharrabin Call me cynical, but I don't think Lilley knows enough about #climate economics to have written that paper. Wonder who did."
Which is an irony, given that Hope's analysis seemingly forms such an important part of the Stern Report.
It would seem that the best defence Hope has of his work is that Lilley's report contains a typo. On the blogsophere, we are used to this level of argument -- the childish nonsequiturs, the trivial deviations, the rumour and innuendo. But it seems the arguments get no deeper as you move further up the tree. Aggressive defensiveness characterises any response to any attempt to subject environmental science, politics or policies to any scrutiny, as though their authors actually were entitled to everybody's obedience and deference.
Lilley's politeness in response to Hope's overthetopness should be an example to us all.
Dear Peter, your comment states in line 3 "Figure 5 on page [seem to have omitted mentioning the page number, which I'm sure you intended to include} of your explanatory article"
Might want to edit to add the page number.
TW
Indeed it is a model apology, and a model of courtesy. Unfortunately it is not correct.
The figures to which Peter Lilley refers are actually the multiplicative factors for India, not the absolute impacts. So they are the amount by which you have to multiply the % of GDP impacts in the EU to get the impacts for India. The most likely value is 2, so as a rough guide that can be used to multiply the median value for the EU which is 0.5% of GDP, to get 1% of GDP in India as a median value.
The interpretation of adaptation in India in the default model is correct. It stays at 50% even when India becomes rich.
See journals.sfu.ca/int_assess/index.php/iaj/article/download/227/190 for the source article.
It'a a shame that Peter didn't have a quick chat with me before publication, when I could have explained this. Perhaps my writing is not always as clear as he has been kind enough to say it is.
Chris Hope
@cwhope
Chris, it is possibly a shame, also, that you didn't have a quick chat with Peter before you speculated with journalists on Twitter that Peter was organising some kind of political conspiracy, and that he might not be the author of the report.
Richard writes
Might not the same be said for the GWPF report? Having looked through the acknowledgements section, it's not clear that it has been subjected to any sort of formalized peer review process either. Peter Lilley simply thanks people for their "help and comments". So was it peer-review or pal review or what?
Ben,
Yes, you're right.
@cwhope
Chris Hope: thank you for that short but significant post here.
On peer review of GWPF reports: surely this incident shows how quickly open review on the Internet works. The difference with Stern is that it was commissioned by government and has been cited across the world by policy makers as they make vastly expensive decisions. More review in that case before publishing was essential. We're disappointed by mistakes in any public document but we also note the speed and grace with which they're acknowledged.
Am I following this correctly - this is a model which attempts to quantify the average cost of a tonne of CO2 over the period 1990-2200?
If so, do we have evidence of the feasibility of such a model under testable circumstances?
E.g. if we went back 200 years from today - could we accurately compute the marginal cost of a typical energy production by-product? (If a suggestion for such an example is needed - and perhaps continuing the Indian theme - elephant dung might be a suitable commodity to study. Based on information available in 1812 (only) can one accurately compute the marginal cost of elephant dung over the next 200 years?
I'm sure that the experts can immediately point to such validation studies.
Personally, I'm expecting energy production to change somewhat over the next couple of centuries. But then, I'm not a sophisticated modeling expert. (Mind you, a flutter on elephant dung futures might prove remunerative, given the UK's energy policy planning team. No doubt Lord 'Deben' and family have cornered the market).
I'm afraid I'm less forgiving than Richard Drake, Chris.
Yes, the admission is welcome, but the damage has been done, especially since the recipient of your tweet was Harrabin, who in the best tradition of BBC "science" journalism will have lapped it up with eyes wide shut. I expect it to be used as a stick to beat Lilley with for some time to come.
I find this mildly amusing: Lilley is a politician, therefore this must be some form of political conspiracy, and by the same token someone else must have written the paper for him.
And it's us that are the conspiracy theorists? The mind boggles.
[snip] Richard Drake
If short journal articles are peer-reviewed, why not longer GWPF pieces?
I have experience of journal peer review but don't find it easy to imagine how Stern could have been formally peer-reviewed. However, that's not to say it couldn't have been. Is there any precedent, I wonder, for formally peer-reviewing a government report of that size?
When one looks at the acknowledgements at the front of Stern, there was clearly one heck of a lot of informal peer (pal?) review. However, this is clearly different from a formal process.
RichieRich: I've never argued against the peer review of GWPF reports. But I am aware of the very poor quality of some papers that pass peer review in climate related areas. Peter Lilley's report seems to be of good quality, with one acknowledged mistake. As I've said already, open review on the Net seems perfectly OK for this level of document. And it's recently done well even when peer review hasn't. I won't bore you with examples.
RichieRich
Stern concurs with those who have suggested that his report was not peer reviewed. IIRC he said that this is not normal for government reports.
Bish
According to Wikipedia
Re pre-publication review of the GWPF report, I'd certainly have been very impressed if, in the acknowledgements section, I'd seen that it had been offered for comment to some on "the other side" - for example Simon Dietz, Simon Caney, Chris Hope, Kevin Anderson. Not, of course, that those from the consensus seek comment from those on "the other side" too often!
I suspect that Peter Lilley (qualified in Economics and Physics, a former Economic and Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Cabinet Minister in the Thatcher and Major governments, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer under Hague, contestant for the 1997 Conservative Leadership) was well aware that his ministerial prospects in the Cameron era would be seriously impaired by his lone resistance to politically-motivated climate mischief.
A sign of honour and integrity.
Peter Lilley on Newsnight BBC2 soon.
Excellent performance by Peter Lilley on Newsnight. Admittedly he was up against an incoherent Green woman. Well done especially for drawing attention to the Greens' vicious desire to destroy airfreight vegetable, fruit and flower imports from Third World countries thus denying the citizens of those countries the opportunity to become wealthy.
@Mike Post - That "incoherent Green woman" is the new leader of the Greens - Top Cabbage or whatever they call themselves. Scary eh ?
A single mistake has been found in the Lilley report. The mistake was in an example. It has been acknowledged and will be corrected. It does not affect the overall finding that Stern exaggerated the impacts of climate change, a finding supported by a number of other papers.
Contrast that to the Stern Review. Arithmetic errors were found in the spreadsheet, but never publicly acknowledged. An FOI request for the email exchange between David Anthoff and Simon Dietz would reveal that Stern's impact estimates were 25% off (if you accept his assumptions).
Morph:
"That "incoherent Green woman" is the new leader of the Greens - Top Cabbage or whatever they call themselves. Scary eh ?"
Very scary for the Greens if that is the best they can do!
Detailed economic reports can have mistakes in them the same as blog comments can have msitakes. As long as they are acknowledged and reported then no harm done.
As long as the mistakes are raised before hand and corrected over a cup of tea no problem, I'm guessing the Stern report run out of tea.