Source: BBC Radio 4: Today
URL: N/A
Date: 11/08/2017
Event: Peter Stott: "We are indeed seeing more extreme weather..."
Credit: BBC Radio 4
People:
John Humphrys: We had two climate change protagonists on the programme yesterday - the former American Vice President Al Gore and the former Chancellor Nigel Lawson. Inevitably they had very different views, so let's take two of the big issues where they disagreed - one was subsidies for energy, the other was dramatic weather events. Joining us on both of those issues, Roger Harrabin, our environment analyst and Professor Peter Stott who leads the Climate Monitoring and Attribution Team at the Met Office. Roger, this question of subsidies - the former Chancellor said that it is not true to say that fossil fuels are subsidised, the former Vice President said they were subsidised. Can they both be right?
Roger Harrabin: Ah, well that's an interesting question, John. I looked at it with our Reality Check team and the thing is, they are both right, because Al Gore's talking about a global picture and Lord Lawson about the UK. Let me just talk about the global picture first. I mean, it might surprise a lot of people that global subsidies to fossil fuels tot up to $320 billion, and that's more than twice as much as subsidies for renewables, and clearly is crazy, given that we're trying to get off fossil fuels because of climate change. But the subsidies were given to encourage economic growth, in the first place - they go to coal and they go to petrol, and there is a worldwide picture with subsidies, that once you started to subsidise something you can't get the money back, because the people who are receiving this subsidy scream blue murder. And that's what's happened, as countries have tried to cut their subsidies. So those subsidies are being cut but very, very slowly.
John Humphrys: And specifically in this country?
Roger Harrabin: Well specifically in this country, we don't see that picture, I mean the picture here is subsidies, generally speaking, going to renewables and historically to nuclear, which has had a lot of money for decades. Support for renewables and Warm Homes runs to about 7 billion quid a year. But the latest report from the Committee on Climate Change said onshore wind and solar power, now they are apparently now broadly competitive with gas-fired power, because the volumes have gone up and the costs have come down. Offshore wind is still expensive, still getting a subsidy into the future of £100 per megawatt hour, but even on offshore wind costs are plummeting far faster than anyone expected, and it's expected to stand without subsidy - can't be certain when, but possibly in the late 2020s. We mentioned the other day that so far, the extra costs imposed by subsidies - and not many people know this - they've said to have been counterbalanced by measures to save energy, like new gas boilers and LED bulbs. And that means that energy prices for domestic consumers are about in the middle of the EU league table - industry impose much more - and subsides for fossil fuel generation in the UK - there is none, so long as you interpret the word "subsidy" in a very narrow sense.
John Humphrys: All right, thanks for that, Roger. Professor Stott, this thing about dramatic weather events - are we seeing more of them, more great storms because of climate change, specifically?
Peter Stott: We are indeed seeing more extreme weather, as a result of climate change. In fact, there was a big report came out only yesterday, compiled by over 450 scientists from more than 60 countries, and they looked at the latest data. We know that 2016 was the warmest year on record, over a degree warmer than late 19th century levels, so this claim that we heard from Nigel Lawson that there's been cooling is simply not true. And the other claim that was not true was to say that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had not found evidence of changes in extreme weather - well, we can look at what they found and they say very clearly that we have seen changes in many extreme weather and climate events, since the -
John Humphrys: Such as?
Peter Stott: - late 1950s. Well, for example, if you look at heatwaves, we did an analysis at the Met Office that looked at the UK actually, looked at temperature records, and you see that there have been about ten times as many hot weather records as there have been cold weather records. So we're seeing a clear increase in the number of heatwaves and we're also seeing the effects on heavy rainfall events, as well.
John Humphrys: Right, and you can attribute that to climate change, can you? I mean, it is cause and effect, is it?
Peter Stott: If you take the global picture - and again, the IPCC said very clearly that, you know, it is very likely that human influences contributed to observed global-scale changes in the frequency and intensity of daily temperature extremes - if you take the global picture and you look at the global fingerprint, yes you can attribute that.
John Humphrys: So people would say "But hang on a minute, we had a great ice age, we saw the Thames freeze over, a few centuries ago - we're always seeing very dramatic things happening around the world".
Peter Stott: Well, if you take the very long-term view, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have reached unprecedented levels now. In 800,000 years they stayed above 400 parts per million for the first time, for the entire year, in 2016. It's very clear that temperatures are now changing much more rapidly than we've been seeing on these very, very long time scales.
John Humphrys: All right.