Climate-Sense

Debat i Engelske Underhus 16 juli/debate in House of Commons
A very pointed question recently asked in Britain’s House of Commons

The skeptical Peter Lilley [LilleyP@parliament.uk], an economist and energy analyst who is also a member of Parliament on behalf of the Conservative party:

The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Edward Miliband): “Today’s debate is held at an appropriate time — a week after the 17 countries of the Major Economies Forum met in L’Aquila in Italy and accepted the long-held scientific consensus that we should seek to prevent dangerous climate change above 2° C…”

Peter Lilley: “The average temperature in Cornwall is more than 2° C higher than the average temperature in the north-east of England. Is it really dangerous for someone to move from Newcastle to Cornwall? Would it be dangerous if the north-east of England became as warm as Cornwall? Would it be dangerous if Cornwall became as warm as the Loire valley? That is what a 2° C increase would involve.”I believe that the claims that the scientific evidence is overwhelming and that the debate is ended are incorrect and exaggerated, that the damages supposed to result from rises in the global average temperature
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are exaggerated and that the cost of mitigating that rise in temperature is almost certainly understated.
I wish to say a bit about the science, and the argument that it is settled and that there is no dissent. As far as I know, only one comprehensive study has been undertaken on the views of climate scientists and it was carried out by Professor von Storch. He received replies from 570 climate scientists—members of the international bodies of climate science across the world—to his asking them whether they agreed or disagreed that climate change is mostly the result of man-made causes. More than half of those scientists—56 per cent.—said that they agreed, but 14 per cent. were unsure and 30 per cent. disagreed. So if the Government were to say that a majority of scientists agree with them, that would be correct, but to suggest that none disagrees is simply factually incorrect. In any case, it is absurd to suggest that science is carried out by majority opinion. When Einstein was told that 100 German physicists had—probably as a result of Herr Goebbels getting them together—signed a statement saying that his theory of relativity was wrong, he said that if it were wrong it would require only one scientist to prove that. The fact that uncertainty remains means that the science is still unsettled. Yesterday—I think that was when this was—the Prime Minister said that the science is irrefutable. If a theory is irrefutable it is not scientific. Scientific theories must be capable of refutation. If a theory is not capable of refutation, we are dealing with metaphysics rather than science.
Over the past decade, despite the predictions of the climate models and the fact that the amount of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere has exceeded expectations, no global warming has taken place—indeed a slight global cooling has occurred. I accept that one decade of the absence of global warming and of a slight decline is not sufficient to refute the notion that CO2 is having a substantial impact. However, I must ask the Government a question: how many decades will be required before they are prepared at least to consider the fact that their climate models may be somewhat exaggerated? Clearly there must be other factors that they are not taking into account, which are at least masking and suppressing the global warming over the past decade. Of course, those factors might have been operating in the opposite direction in the previous three decades, when we did observe global heating.
The second issue is that of damaging climate change. I believe that the Secretary of State—although it might have been the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—proudly told us that it was an historic moment when the G8 agreed to define a 2° C rise in average global temperature as “damaging climate change”, that that would be caused by the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increasing from the current 380 parts per million to 450 parts per million and that we were to prevent that from happening. The idea that we have got our fingers on a global dimmer switch and we can determine the average temperature is an example of human hubris that has rarely been matched in this Chamber.
It is also rarely stated that when the Government talk about a 2° C increase, they are not talking about an increase from now; they are talking about an increase of that order from the early 18th century—from before the
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industrial revolution. We have already had about two thirds of that increase in CO2 since then. [Interruption.] Well, the increase has been from 280 parts per million to 380 parts per million, which is an increase of 100 parts per million out of a rise of 170 parts per million. The impact is logarithmic, so that should account for about 64 per cent., or about two thirds, of the global heating that would be expected to be induced by a rise to 450 parts per million. Thus, a rise of 1.3 ° C ought already to have appeared, whereas in fact only a rise of 0.8° C has done so. That leaves us with a rise of about a further 1.2 ° C to occur.
The Government are saying that a further one and a bit degrees centigrade rise in the average temperature of the world would be hugely damaging and that we must be prepared to sacrifice billions of pounds to avoid it. I pointed out the other day that the average temperature in Cornwall is more than 2° C higher than the average temperature in the north-east of England. Is it really dangerous for someone to move from Newcastle to Cornwall? Would it be dangerous if the north-east of England became as warm as Cornwall? Would it be dangerous if Cornwall became as warm as the Loire valley? That is what a 2° C increase—let alone a 1° C increase—would involve. It is not such a big deal. I accept that for poor and tropical countries a rise of that order is more serious, whoever causes it, and we ought to be prepared to help them. However, we ought not to kid ourselves that we are really facing Armageddon if this happens.