20100201_JB

Source: NERC

URL: http://www.nerc.ac.uk/press/features/2010/beddington-transcript.asp

Date: 01/02/2010

Event: John Beddington: climate change "happening faster than the original predictions"

Attribution: NERC

People:

• Sir John Beddington: UK Government Chief Scientist
• Sue Nelson: Writer, journalist and radio presenter

Sue Nelson: These are difficult times for environmentalists. It was reported recently that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report contained an error and that glaciers in the Himalayas were not going to disappear by 2035. And you recently highlighted that scientists have a problem communicating the uncertainty relating to climate change and that they ought to release the source data wherever possible – and a day later it emerges that scientists at the University of East Anglia have broken the Freedom of Information Act by deleting emails and refusing to hand over raw data. Do you think scientists are losing the public's trust on climate change?

John Beddington: Well, I think there are some really important issues here. I think the first issue is that we have to recognise that some aspects of climate change are certain. CO2 emissions into the atmosphere warm up the globe, that's unassailable. What isn't unassailable is a whole series of things to do with the prediction of how fast climate change is happening and what are the regional differences. So let's take the prediction that the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035. That's a profoundly silly thing to do. Clearly there is uncertainty about melting of glaciers, clearly there's uncertainty about the time it will take, and the idea that there should be some sort of fundamental prediction like that seems to me to be incorrect – it's a misunderstanding of science.

Sue Nelson: Isn't that worrying then, that it actually made it into the IPPC report?

John Beddington: It's a small portion of a very large report and I think it's unfortunate that it was in there, absolutely no doubt about that.

Sue Nelson: Do you think the damage has already been done though, because of people worrying about the accuracy and whether the science is right? Because China has now said that it wants the IPCC report to contain the opinions of sceptics. China also says it's open minded about whether climate change is man-made or natural.

John Beddington: I wasn't aware of the Chinese commentary and so I'm slightly surprised by it, because I think that the fundamental physics are quite clear and unchallengeable. So if the Chinese government is raising that point I would disagree with it, because I think the fundamental physics is well understood and has been understood for over 100 years. Having greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means that the Earth is warmer than it should be and there is no doubt that humanity has been producing vast amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases since industrialisation. Those things are unassailable and the physics is correct. If I saw a "sceptic" saying that they did not accept that, I would be extremely surprised if they were a credible scientist. What is of issue – and indeed I think this is where scientists have actually been probably unsuccessful in getting over to the general public – is the importance of uncertainty. And uncertainty is definitely there but not in the fundamental physics. The uncertainty is how fast climate change is happening; what is going to happen in particular parts of the world? These are the sort of issues where there is clear uncertainty and that uncertainty is ineluctable.

Sue Nelson: How do you think scientists can regain the public's trust?

John Beddington: Well, first of all I would disagree with your premise that the trust is lost. I think there's been some recent problems but I think that there is no doubt that scientists are actually trusted in general. I think the issue we have to address is how to get over that a lot of this is clearly certain – the general principles of the physics – but that in the individual cases of predictions using computer models, and indeed in terms of some of the underlying data, there are going to be uncertainties. But, the overall balance is, that it seems highly likely that certain predictions are by and large correct, but they won't be correct in the fine details. So, going back to glaciers, there is no doubt that glacier melt is happening, but the glaciers are not going to disappear by 2035.

Sue Nelson: Copenhagen has been seen by many as a disappointment; can the UK take anything positive out of the meeting?

John Beddington: Yes, I think you stray there away from my role as chief scientific adviser into political commentary and I'll sort of put on a slightly different hat. I think the things that are positive about Copenhagen are, first of all, that there was universal agreement that a two-degree target should be adopted. What wasn't achieved were binding agreements, but what was also was achieved was that countries signed up to actually providing plans of how they intend to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That's positive. I also think – and this strays completely out of my domain – that the agreement on financial help from the developed to the developing world, to address mitigation and adaptation to climate change, is an important step as well.

Sue Nelson: In November the Natural Environment Research Council, the Royal Society and the Met Office published a statement, an urgent call for action on climate change. Do you think that call has been softened because of recent reports challenging the accuracy of the IPCC report, or is that call just as important as it was then?

John Beddington: It's just as important, and I think the idea that because the glacial work was shoddy undermines the actual very detailed and comprehensive work by hundreds of scientists that go into the IPCC report is just frankly unacceptable. The call by NERC, the Royal Society and so on, for urgent action to climate change, is one that I would echo myself. There is absolutely no doubt climate change is happening; that the evidence indicates that, if anything, it is happening faster than the original predictions that the IPCC made in their last report; that the evidence which was reviewed in March 2009 by a large group of scientists working in Copenhagen – all of that pointed to saying, not only is climate change happening but it is happening faster than even some of the more pessimistic predictions that came out of the IPCC. So no, I would not change my views whatsoever.

Sue Nelson: How can scientists convince the sceptics? Even among scientists themselves there was a survey in 2009: 65% of scientists said they thought that the IPCC report they'd got it bang on, it was right; 17% of scientists thought they'd underestimated it; 18% thought they'd overestimated it.

John Beddington: This points exactly to the issue that we have got to recognise that there is fundamental uncertainty in climate projections. But I think in terms of the views of scientists, we've got to distinguish between what I would call proper sceptics and those who are producing arguments which actually have no credibility. It is proper to be sceptical about the level of uncertainty, about particular aspects of physical processes, about data sets where there are gaps in those data sets, and so on. That's a proper degree of scepticism, and indeed that scepticism is what the whole business about doing science is about – science grows by looking in an appropriate way at critical comment on theories and various developments.

What is not credible is where fundamental laws of physics are challenged, or that in fact the criticism that is generated is a criticism that, when you come to look at it, is not appropriate: it's not using scientific method – it's actually more opinion or polemic. And I would distinguish very importantly between scepticism which is proper in scientific debate, and in debates involving engineering, but improper when in fact one is just using scientific facts and manipulating them to generate an opinion.

Sue Nelson: This is the difficult bit isn't it, not letting the uncertainty overshadow the science, the hard facts?

John Beddington: Yes. The first thing to say is, in the case of climate change the uncertainty is absolutely no reason or justification for inaction. Because the uncertainty is pointing very clearly that there is a real danger that the uncertainty could go both ways; the situation could be significantly worse than the predictions but it also could be better. There is no doubt that the balance of evidence is indicating that there is an increasing tendency that the situation is worse than had been previously thought – I think there's a lot of evidence to indicate that.

But getting over the uncertainty to the public is fundamentally quite a different issue. Let's take a different example. Suppose that scientists were 90 per cent certain that climate change was occurring at an increasing rate. It could be argued that if we're only 90 per cent certain why on earth do we need to address climate change? Let's wait until we're 100 per cent certain. That's nonsense – we'll never be 100 per cent certain. But I would also focus it in terms of a plain man's question: if we're 90 per cent certain that climate change is happening, would you really get on an aeroplane if you thought there was a 10 per cent chance of landing safely?

Sue Nelson: Moving on to a slightly different aspect – although we are talking about aeroplanes – the emissions targets that were agreed have been delayed. For the EU they were 30 per cent, 42 per cent for the UK, but they're still short of what's needed to keep the temperature rise to less than two degrees. What do you think about this, I mean isn't this still a problem?

John Beddington: Well there's manifestly a problem. We didn't get agreement in Copenhagen to agree a set of reductions that would be legally binding on states, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a rate which would be compatible with the two-degree target. So no doubt about that, there's a problem. And I think the point about that is, the longer reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are awaited – so if they don't start to come in relatively soon – the chances of meeting a two-degree target are going to be less and less.

Sue Nelson: Going back to the uncertainty issue, the Met Office has had problems with this because they had an uncertainty risk of saying we were going to have a barbeque summer or a mild winter. Do you think the fact that people are seeing floods, they're seeing hot summers, they're seeing wet summers, we've had the recent snow and those conditions, is making people question again in terms of have we got the science right?

John Beddington: Well, I think there's an important distinction to be made between weather and climate. Weather varies every year; lots of events occur that determine how weather is occurring and what the patterns of weather are. It's fundamentally difficult to predict weather on anything other than a very, very short timescale. So, distinguish between weather events, single-year events and the climate; there is no doubt that the climate is getting warmer and there is no doubt that we will continue to have cold spells.

Sue Nelson: So again, it's all about communication, and communication of the science itself so that people understand.

John Beddington: Yes. The science needs to be characterised properly and make certain that, where there is clear certainty, that is characterised, so that any scepticism about that is really perverse. But when we come to detailed predictions we've got to hedge those round, saying, "these are associated with different levels of uncertainty". And in fact the Met Office do that. Their predictions have that association – I think their prediction for a warmer winter was that there was a one-in-seven chance of it not being, and one-in-seven, well – it didn't happen.