To ask Her Majesty's Government why table 5.2 on page 138 of the Stern review on the Economics of Climate Change has been erased or altered in archive copies of the report on government websites without an acknowledgement that this has been done or a statement of the reasons for doing it. [HL1658]

The change referred to was a typographical error which appeared in the original ring-bound version of the Stern review. The error did not have any implications for any other parts of the report such as the overall estimate of the cost and risks of climate change. When it was spotted, it was corrected in the electronic version of the report on the HM Treasury website and the subsequent version of the report published by Cambridge University Press. The change was also flagged in the “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQs) document. This was available online before 9 December 2006, less than six weeks after launch on 30 October 2006. It is currently accessible at http://www.occ.gov.uk/activities/stern_papers/faq.pdf).

In specific terms, on page 139 of the original ring-bound version that was launched in October 2006, table 5.2 lists 1.3 per cent (0.6 per cent) for costs as per cent GDP for hurricanes in the USA. These figures should have been 0.13 per cent (0.06 per cent) as they were obtained from a paper by Nordhaus (2006). This was a typographic error. Indeed the text on page 130 of the ring-bound version in box 5.3 stated the correct figure: “Nordhaus (2006) shows that just a small increase in hurricane intensity (5-10 per cent), which several models predict will occur 2-3°C of warming globally, could alone double costs of storm damage to around 0.13 per cent GDP”.