20191228_R4
Source: BBC Radio 4: Today
URL: N/A
Date: 28/12/2019
Event: Matt Ridley: "we should be careful not to overreact and not to shut down civilisation"
Credit: BBC Radio 4, also many thanks to Craig at https://isthebbcbiased.blogspot.com/ on whose transcript of the Charles Moore interview I have based this one.
People:
- Professor Michael Kelly: Physicist and GWPF board member
- Sir David King: Former Chief Scientific Adviser to H.M. Government, UK
- Charles Moore: Journalist, former editor of The Daily Telegraph
- Matt Ridley: Lord Ridley, science writer and Conservative peer
- Nick Robinson: Presenter, BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
- Justin Webb: Presenter, BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
Nick Robinson: Can the UK achieve the government's Net Zero Emissions target by 2050 without major social disruption? Our guest editor Charles Moore, the former Telegraph editor, is sceptical of that, thinks we should hear more from those who share his doubts. I've been speaking to Professor Michael Kelly - he sits on the board of trustees of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, along with Charles Moore. The Foundation describes itself as, quote, "open-minded on the contested science of global warming". Professor Kelly says he accepts that the planet is warming and that humans are contributing to that, but he told me he thinks the models which predict climate change decades from now simply aren't good enough to show what policies government should be pursuing.
Michael Kelly: It's no good looking at a model today and saying it's done well for the last 30 years - you look at a model made 30 years ago and look how well it's done in the 30 years since. And if you look at the data for the last 30 years, on average the models have been heating twice as fast as the data.
Nick Robinson: I know the focus that you have, that your Foundation has, is largely on what policies to recommend, but plenty of people would say: look, you're a scientist -
Michael Kelly: Yeah.
Nick Robinson: - you're not a climate change scientist - they would rather take the view of those people who are, who have overwhelmingly got one view. Why do you allow yourself to operate in a think tank with people who are climate change deniers?
Michael Kelly: They're not deniers - look, I was in the room when Paul Nurse sent five Fellows of the Royal Society to put Nigel Lawson right. And he agreed with them on everything, but when Nigel Lawson turned round and said the key word in our organisation was "policy", what would you do about it, they stood back and said: hey, but we're only scientists. All that I'm saying now is that the current renewables and the various other things we're doing are not going to deliver the expectations of the Zero Carbon 2050.
Nick Robinson: But we're hearing scepticism, scepticism about the science, scepticism about the measures for dealing with it, and I think what many people will not think they're hearing yet is any suggestion of what you would do, or are you just hoping for the best?
Michael Kelly: Well, I am hoping for the best - there's a long history of doom and gloom. The average size of the families in the world has halved, from five children to two and a half, that's coming down steeply -
Nick Robinson [interrupting]: So the population will fall again, and you think that will solve all the problem?
Michael Kelly: Exactly. The population in 2100 could be as much as 300 million less than the number that will peak somewhere about 2060, 2070. And that will be enough, by the way, to counter all the people who might have to move if the sea levels, at their very worst, were to rise by a metre.
Nick Robinson: But here, just to conclude, is the problem, isn't it, Professor Kelly - which is in your own words, this is hoping for the best. Who knows, you might be right about population falling, but the world's climate change scientists are telling us that we face a climate emergency, the world's policy makers are telling us that we face a climate emergency - they are having described to them the appalling consequences of that, for the loss of human life and quality of life. And you come along, as a Professor of Engineering and say: well, in the past people have got things wrong, maybe they'll get it wrong in the future. Why would you - why would you act on the basis of your hope for the best?
Michael Kelly: Well, I'll tell you what I wouldn't do - I wouldn't do something that I know in advance is futile. So, last year the reduction in carbon emissions in this country was undone 80 - 80 times over, by the rest of the world. I'd be spending a lot more money on research and development into the next, and the next but one, generation of nuclear energy. Because the real problem is in mega-cities. If you look at how we will power London in the year 2050, we know right now we could do it with a mixture of fossil fuel and nuclear - we know right now the whole of East Anglia converted to grass or solar would produce fractions of what London needs by way of electricity. And that's where we get our food from. So I want to make sure that what we do is not futile.
Nick Robinson: Professor Michael Kelly of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, thank you for joining us.
Michael Kelly: Thank you.
* * *
Nick Robinson: Climate change should not be presented as an emergency, and indeed it - like all alarmist claims - should be open to debate. That's the view of our guest editor today, Charles Moore, the Telegraph columnist and biographer of Margaret Thatcher. He sits on the board of trustees of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which describes itself as, quote, "open-minded on the contested science of global warming". One of those who've written for the Foundation is the science writer and Conservative peer Matt Ridley, Lord Ridley, who joins us in the studio - good morning to you.
Matt Ridley: Good morning, Nick.
Nick Robinson: The risks, you've argued in the past, have been greatly exaggerated. But I imagine the simple question, for many people is: why listen to you, rather than the climate change global, international, scientific consensus?
Matt Ridley: Well, the consensus says that there's going to be a range of outcomes, anything from 1 to 4 degrees - 1 is harmless, 4 is very harmful. So, actually the consensus says there's going to be a range. Now, the problem is the BBC, for example, and a lot of other media, have decided to let themselves be bullied by climate activists into dividing this into goodies who believe in climate change and baddies who don't, which is actually very inaccurate because of all these people at the lukewarmer end of the spectrum, where I sit, and where proper climate scientists like Judith Curry also sit. To say that -
Nick Robinson: To be clear, though, that one and a half degrees is described by governments, not by climate change activists - by governments, including the UK Conservative government - as very serious for the globe. So that's not a question of bullying, it's international policy.
Matt Ridley: Well, that's a policy question, but at the other end of the spectrum you've got people who are effectively doomsday cultists, now, who say that we're going to have six billion people dead in a few short decades - that's Roger Hallam of Extinction Rebellion - or Kevin Anderson, the scientist on whom Greta Thunberg, your next guest editor, heavily relies, and he says we're going to see 4 degrees by 2050. No responsible scientist agrees with that, and yet those people are given a hearing on the BBC, whereas the lukewarmers are denied a place on the BBC, people like me and -
Nick Robinson: That is your own description of yourself -
Matt Ridley: Exactly, we're not allowed on the BBC -
Nick Robinson: Well here you are, being allowed on the BBC -
Matt Ridley: But only because Charles Moore is the guest editor.
Nick Robinson: Well, not only because Charles Moore is, in fact, because you've been on the programme before and [inaudible] I've interviewed you before. Just to focus, though, on the scientific debate, one and a half degrees - not 4 - is the international consensus for very serious global harm -
Matt Ridley: No, that's not true -
Nick Robinson: - adopted, forgive me, just finish [inaudible] and therefore why shouldn't that be taken seriously, on what is often referred to as the Precautionary Principle. We can't be certain, it could be very bad, so we act, with care.
Matt Ridley: Well, one of the reasons for being careful about not overreacting to climate change - and I'm not saying we shouldn't- we should do nothing, I'm saying we should do things - but I think we should be careful not to overreact and not to shut down civilisation. One of the reasons for that is because some of the measures we're taking are doing real harm already. We're denying fossil fuels to Africa, so as a result they're burning wood to feed themselves - that's killing their children, it's also destroying forests. And another example is the diesel scandal, which came directly out of climate change policy - and I know you've got Sir David King on later, and he was Chief Scientific Advisor at the time, when they pushed for switching to diesel because it had lower carbon dioxide emissions, even though it had other huge air pollution problems.
Nick Robinson: Now, I know the focus of your argument is largely about policies that you think are counter-productive at best and maybe positively bad at worst - isn't your thinking, though, underlain by the fact that you're a Conservative, like many of the people on this Foundation, you're a free-marketer, and your real fear is that socialists have grabbed hold of the green agenda and they are managing to get support for things that you are fundamentally opposed to, on a new basis? That's your worry, that's your -
Matt Ridley: That's not true about the Foundation - the Chairman is Lord Donoughue, he's a Labour peer. So this - there are LibDems on the Foundation, there are bishops on the Foundation, this is not a Conservative thing. I think - quite the reverse, actually, that most of the people who are worried about what we're doing in the name of climate change are worried about the effect it's having on poor people. It's costing nearly 9 or 10 billion pounds a year to the British consumer and most of that is going from poor people to rich people. Conservatives love this stuff, because they get to build wind farms -
Nick Robinson: I say Conservatives, of course, because there's you, there's Charles Moore, there's Nigel Lawson, who are prominent, in terms of having a voice on this subject. Just briefly, if you would, you say you're concerned about hitting the poor, and you say you do want to do something. Briefly - we'll have you back and then you can tell us more - what "something" would you do?
Matt Ridley: Well, first of all, open up the debate more - and I think it's a problem that the BBC and people like Roger Harrabin, your Environment Editor, talks much more closely and takes his instruction from the environment lobbies -
Nick Robinson: He doesn't take his instructions from anybody. I know Roger Harrabin - he's a journalist. You're a journalist, he's a journalist, he reports what he thinks is true.
Matt Ridley: Well, his Twitter account very strongly reflects that.
Nick Robinson: Fine, you disagree, it doesn't mean that he takes instructions.
Matt Ridley: But the other thing is that a lot of what the BBC and other media tell us to do, like stopping eating meat, wouldn't make a blind bit of difference -
Nick Robinson: He's never told anybody to stop eating meat, Matt Ridley, I mean this is preposterous!
Matt Ridley: No, it's not preposterous -
Nick Robinson: We report people who say that you shouldn't eat meat and we interview people who say you should. We're not telling people to do anything!
Matt Ridley: What we need is an insurance policy against this problem, and we shouldn't pay more in a premium than the risk we're running.
Nick Robinson: More open debate - that's what we've had, and thank you for helping us have it. Matt Ridley, Lord Ridley, thank you for coming on.
* * *
Justin Webb: Well, let's continue at 20 to 9 with Professor Sir David King, the former Chief Scientific Advisor, as Matt Ridley was saying, to the UK government and the UK's Climate Envoy between 2013 and '17 - morning to you.
David King: Good morning.
Justin Webb: Can you deal with that diesel point, first of all, because it is quite fundamental, isn't it? That was a case, your critics say, of damage being done to the health of real, living people by the green lobby, because they didn't fully understand what they were calling for.
David King: First of all, I don't think it's very fair to say that this was due to the green lobby - I was advising government, I was Chief Scientific Advisor to Tony Blair at the time when this was being discussed in Europe. And I took a lot of trouble over the issue of diesel, and what we generated - and we were in the discussion in Europe, so we were party to it - was a process in which tests would be conducted, and every few years the stringency of the tests of emissions from diesel-driven cars would be improved. And this was agreed with all of the car manufacturers. What we did not anticipate - and this is critically important - was that car manufacturers would cheat on the testing. You will know that Volkswagen have paid a pretty heavy fine -
Justin Webb: They have indeed. But it wasn't just about the cheating, was it - I mean, the fact is that we should not be using diesel, particularly for short journeys. And we - the whole idea was - and this is why they say it was something that came from the green lobby - was that the government wanted a kind of green hit, didn't they, the governments of Brown and Blair wanted to be able to say we're reducing carbon emissions, and didn't care too much, didn't think too much about the other noxious things that would come from diesel.
David King: Let me say: no, that is completely distorting what actually happened. First of all, did I think too much? I spent a lot of time on this, and I talked to car manufacturers about it, I talked to the people who were building the car exhaust systems to prevent noxious fumes going into the air. What you've just said is not correct, because basically we were in the European Union, we were a party to that discussion and this was an EU decision. And I'm not saying we were against it, but to suggest that we were pushing this because of the green lobby would be completely wrong.
Justin Webb: All right, let me go to another thing that Matt Ridley was just talking about, the sort of wider point that we tend - and he mentioned the BBC, but there is a tendency in the wider media as well - to portray climate crisis rather than talking calmly and thoughtfully about the various things that need to be done. Do you accept that there is sometimes a hysteria in these debates that shouldn't be there?
David King: So here's the worry - are we doing enough on climate change, at the moment? And the answer can simply be demonstrated, because: let me say, the Arctic ice has melted far more rapidly than any of the climate scientists predicted 20, 30 years ago. So what we have is the Arctic Ocean exposed to sunlight in the Arctic summer for significant periods of time, which means that the entire Arctic region is now heating up at something like two and a half times the rate of the rest of the planet. Why is that a worry? Because Greenland sits in the Arctic Ocean and Greenland ice, if it all melts, gives rise to a 7-metre sea level rise. So what- and we are now concerned that the melting of Greenland ice is also going to take place more quickly than was predicted.
Justin Webb: So we should be scared and we should be talking about fear.
David King: I think we should be fully aware of the risks we're facing. When I talked to the people in the City of London, working in the reinsurance and insurance sector, there's no concern about this discussion - they are worried about climate change because of the number of risks it gives their own business.
Justin Webb: But can I give you one other brief example. We've talked on this programme quite recently about wildfires, and we give the impression, I think, sometimes that the whole world is going up in flames - it's actually just not the case. If you look at the NASA data, there is less of the world covered by wildfires at the moment than there has been in years previously. It's things like that that worry those who, like Matt Ridley, are not deniers of climate change but just say we have the wrong discussions about them.
David King: When you suggest that we have the wrong discussions - for example the fires in California and in Australia are linked to higher temperatures but also to humans consuming water from aquifers, fresh water from aquifers. So trees are dying out for two reasons - one is rising temperatures and the other is the shortage of water. Now what I fear though is that you're missing the point, or people are missing the point, that rising sea levels is the single biggest challenge we're faced with. If we get a sea level rise of one metre, two metres, which is quite likely now by the end of the century, then cities like London, cities around the planet that are sitting at risk from rising sea levels, will no longer be liveable.
I'm just going to give you one example, and this is Calcutta, which is the city most at risk from flooding, and the climate scientists would agree the first major city that will have to be moved, in terms of its population. And just across the mouth of the Ganges from Calcutta is Bangladesh, where two thirds of the country is at risk. You're talking about 150 million people plus, as refugees.
Justin Webb: Right, okay, Sir David King, thank you very much for coming on the programme this morning. We have had at least the debate that some people wanted us to have, that we haven't for some time in the past. Thank you.
* * *
Nick Robinson: Now, your focus of this guest editorship, in many ways, seems to have been things you think the BBC either doesn't cover properly or doesn't cover at all because of what you described earlier in a conversation, of the BBC acting as a sort of nationaliser of the culture?
Charles Moore: Yes. When I came into the building this morning, you have a statue of George Orwell just outside, and he speaks about the importance of the liberty to tell people what they don't want to hear, and I feel that the BBC doesn't want to hear a lot of things which the wider population keeps telling them. And I feel that, in particular, the whole Brexit story is a test which the BBC has utterly failed and with, I think, permanent damage to its reputation, and I don't think it deserves to stand as it did before.
Nick Robinson: Isn't part of your objection, in part, not so much to the British Broadcasting Corporation but to Britain and the way Britain has changed? You're a climate change sceptic. You've talked about it on the programme. You're anti-women priests. You're pro-hunting. You have a series of views which are not the conventional wisdom of the day, and it upsets you that the country has changed in ways you don't like.
Charles Moore: Well, I think the country has changed in a way that I do like, which is that it's supported Brexit and this was -
Nick Robinson [interrupting]: That is one example. I gave you a whole series of others.
Charles Moore: Well, that's a very overwhelming example because it's a popular decision. It's the biggest vote for anything in our history, and the BBC refused to cover that fairly and tried to disparage it and to prevent the execution of Brexit, so -
Nick Robinson [interrupting]: During the referendum many Leavers praised the coverage. They were critical afterwards. But, you know, there were people on both sides. But just engage with my point, if you will, which is that you've made your point on Brexit but, it seems to me, in a series of areas you're highlighting and represent your views, you objection isn't to the BBC at all. You just don't like the fact that the Church of England's embraced women priests, hunting has been banned by law and your own party isn't going to change the law, it says, and that you're a climate change sceptic even though you're own party is in favour of climate change policy.
Charles Moore: I don't really know who you're bringing up women priests - a subject which closed in the Church of England 25 years ago, but the...No, what I am objecting to is preaching. The BBC has decided to be a secular church. And it preaches, and it tells us what we ought to think about things. So it tells us we shouldn't support Brexit and we should accept -
Nick Robinson: Er -
Charles Moore: Please let me answer the question - and we should accept climate change alarmism, and we have all to kowtow to the doctrines of diversity. And this is not right, that the BBC - all these issues should be aired, of course. Of course, they're very important, but they should not be preached. The difficulty I've had trying to get all this stuff about climate change onto this programme, even though I'm the guest editor, is very, very marked - obstacles coming every single time because of rulings and bureaucracy and the fact that Roger Harrabin, the environment analyst, is so biased...
Nick Robinson [interrupting]: Just to be clear, that's because of Ofcom regulations and the law, which applies to Sky and ITV News.
Charles Moore: No, it's not. It's because of the BBC's interpretation of, I think, a foolish ruling...
Nick Robinson [interrupting]: Let me raise a last point with you. We're running out of time, and I want to give you the chance to address it if you would. You talk about that. Isn't the danger of what you advocate though is that we all end up listening to news that reflects our politics and reflect our prejudice? In other words, the price of what you want may be too high?
Charles Moore: Well, I think that the BBC News coverage does reflect the politics and prejudices of the people who run it, and this is wrong. And this is what I'm objecting to.
Nick Robinson: But do you want a news, like in the United States, where, as it were, most Republican activists watch Fox News, most liberal people watch MSNBC or CNN? Do you want a divided country in terms of its news consumption? Isn't that what you'll get?
Charles Moore: This is a divided country in terms of our news consumption because the BBC has an artificial privilege which it abuses to put forward particular views.
Nick Robinson: Charles Moore, editor of the Daily Telegraph in the past, Margaret Thatcher biographer, guest editor today, thank you very much for coming in, and Greta Thunberg will be our guest editor on Monday.