John F. Mitchell


John F. Mitchell is the Chief Scientist at the UK Meteorological Office, a visiting Professor at the University of Reading and an Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia. He has spent over thirty years on research to understand and predict climate change. He has been involved in all four IPCC reports, including being a convening lead author in 1990 and 2001. In 1997 and 1998 he shared the Norbert Gerbier-Mumm Prize with other colleagues, and in 2004 received the Hans Oeschger medal from the European Geophysical Union. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and a member of the Academia Europaea and of the Natural Environment Research Council.




Papers Published in World Economics:

Response to Carter et al.

This article has been written at the initiative of UK climate scientists, from both the academic sector and the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, in response to an article in the previous issue of World Economics by Carter et al., which was part of a ‘Dual Critique’ of the Stern Review of the Economics of Climate Change. The criticisms of Carter et al. concerning the Stern Review’s presentation of the climate science have been challenged and found to seriously misrepresent the current state of knowledge. Furthermore, the latest Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose Summary for Policy Makers was published in February 2007, vindicates the approach used in the Stern Review. The authors show in this paper that the Stern Review did not use an exaggerated response to increases in greenhouse gases nor did it overstate the certainty with which current warming can be attributed to human activities. They therefore conclude that the findings of the Stern Review with respect to the science of climate change are fundamentally sound and form a proper basis for the subsequent analysis of economic risk.

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