Source: Al Jazeera
URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2013/06/201361311721241956.html
Date: 08/03/2013
Event: Head to Head: Climate change: Fact or fiction?
Credit: Al Jazeera
People:
[Transcript of a discussion at the Oxford Union, between Mehdi Hasan and Professor Richard Lindzen.]
[Introductory video footage of storms, wildfires, glaciers calving, polar bears swimming, etc., etc.]
Mehdi Hasan: Climate change is a fact of life. Weather patterns are getting wilder, glaciers are melting and sea levels are rising. Millions of people around the world are at risk.
Barack Obama: We will respond to the threat of climate change...
Mehdi Hasan: The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, has established that warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
Ban Ki-moon: The threat of climate change is severe...
Mehdi Hasan: And it's not just one study - 34 different national academies of science agree that climate change is man-made.
Hilary Clinton: We have no time to lose in tackling this crisis...
Mehdi Hasan: So where's the debate? A few sceptics - most of them not climate scientists - say all of this is alarmism. They're not bothered by rising carbon emissions.
Professor Richard Lindzen is perhaps the world's best known climate sceptic. He's a professor of meteorology at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. My name is Mehdi Hasan, and tonight I'll be challenging Professor Lindzen at the Oxford Union, going head to head over his controversial view that warnings about the dangers of climate change are just scaremongering.
* * *
Mehdi Hasan: Can you please welcome Professor Richard Lindzen. [Applause.] A hero to climate sceptics across the world. The professor has famously said that if he's wrong about global warming, we'll know in 50 years and can do something then. Professor Lindzen.
Richard Lindzen: Yes.
Mehdi Hasan: Are you a climate sceptic or are you a climate denier? Let's get our terminology straight, here. You've been called a lot of things. What do you describe yourself as?
Richard Lindzen: Well, probably neither. I mean, I would deny the alarmism. Certainly believe in climate change, think temperatures do change. Um, so I'm not sure. Labels are not always helpful.
Mehdi Hasan: So let's move beyond labels, and let's just get to the point of why it is, in many people's eyes, you are so controversial. Because the mainstream - if I can use that word, to use another label - climate science says the planet is warming, man is responsible for much of that warming that's going on right now, and we need to cut back greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible. What do you disagree with, in that?
Richard Lindzen: The first two are reasonably uncontroversial, although, as always, there are details. I don't think there's a lot of question as to whether temperature has increased a bit, over the last 200 years. Most of the temperature increase, in fact, has occurred before the impact of CO2 is very significant. Climate is always changing, so, you know, how one views that is, perhaps, a personal issue. Uh, that man is responsible for some of that is entirely possible. What we do know is: there is a greenhouse effect. We know that if you add CO2 - all other things kept constant - you should get some warming. The estimates are: if you doubled CO2 you might see a degree, roughly. Whether you could establish how much of what we have observed is due to man, that's -
Mehdi Hasan: Well, let me - on that specific point, then - the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, which was established by the UN - it said in its most recent report, its fourth report, which reflects the work of, I think, 600 scientists in 41 countries - they said most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid 20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic - i.e., man-made - greenhouse gas concentrations. It says warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, rising global average sea level. What do you dispute in that?
Richard Lindzen: Okay um, the statement itself - that most of the warming since '50 or '60, 1950 or '60, is due to man's emissions - is possible. Uh -
Mehdi Hasan: Or very likely, as the IPCC says.
Richard Lindzen: You know, no-one knows where their estimate - you know, 90% likely - came from. It's very hard to identify - the most recent works I've seen suggest that it may be on the order of half. Now remember, we're talking about a few tenths of a degree. The real controversy comes with the last part, not of this statement but of the statement that having seen this, we must cut our emissions. Because the presumption is these - which I call reasonably innocent statements - imply disaster. Now, to put it into perspective, let us say that man's emissions accounted - let's say greenhouse gas emissions - accounted for all of it. That would be entirely compatible with no problem.
Mehdi Hasan: No problem.
Richard Lindzen: No problem. I mean, it would say that we might expect, by the next century, a degree or so. And there is little doubt that man has dealt with much more than that.
Mehdi Hasan: Okay, well, on that note, you mentioned the question mark about the IPCC. Professor Myles Allen is a professor of geosystems science at the Department of Geography here, and the Department of Physics here at Oxford University. He's also served on several IPCC reports. How do you respond to Professor Lindzen, when he says "Where does this 90% figure come from?"
Myles Allen: The evidence is entirely consistent with most of the warming, or indeed all of the warming, being driven by the increase, the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Which puts the future into perspective, when we think about the fact that we had, 250 years ago, four trillion tons of fossil carbon underground. We've burnt about half a trillion tons and caused somewhere between three quarters of a degree and a degree of warming. That's taken us 250 years. We'll burn the next half trillion tons in 35 years. We'll burn the next half trillion tons in maybe 30 years. And we'll burn the next - we're not going to stop doing this, because fossil fuels are such a fantastically useful resource. So, that's where I see a mismatch between saying most of the warming to date is due to this build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the statement that we won't see very substantial warming in the future if emissions continue. Because that's exactly what's happening, this stuff is building up.
Richard Lindzen: Well, first of all the IPCC was properly cautious in saying "most". I think you'd have a hard time arguing for "all". But even if it were all, if you double CO2, you create an imbalance in the radiation. That is the source of the warming. We're already, actually, quite close to the doubling.
Myles Allen: My point is it's clearly not going to stop at doubling. I mean, people who say we're going to avoid doubling CO2, I would agree with you, it's going to be very hard to do that. But if we carry on burning fossil fuels -
Richard Lindzen: Well -
Myles Allen: - without doing anything, we're heading for tripling, quadrupling, whatever. I mean, it's - there's plenty of fossil fuel down there, that's my point -
Richard Lindzen: Yeah, and so, and so -
Myles Allen: - they keep finding more.
Richard Lindzen: - where does one go from there?
Mehdi Hasan: Let me come back to a point you made earlier, about the alarmism - what you termed as [?] alarmism - and you mentioned that the IPCC was rightly cautious. A lot of people say - scientists, environmentalists, politicians even - that the IPCC is too cautious, too sober, that in fact - for example, their predictions, their modelling, their forecasts don't match up to what we're seeing around the world right now, you know, superstorms and heatwaves in the United States, droughts and floods in Australia, England having its wettest year ever, last year... I mean, the IPCC, you could argue, is too cautious.
Richard Lindzen: Well, perhaps -
Mehdi Hasan: Not alarmist enough.
Richard Lindzen: One of the questions is always, is not "We've seen warming of a few tenths of a degree, we must do something", the question is: how much do you expect? And that is the issue of climate sensitivity. That's still a very open question.
Mehdi Hasan: When you say it's an "open question", how representative are you of scientific opinion? Because there is this debate - you talk about labels.
Richard Lindzen: Look -
Mehdi Hasan: People say you're fringe, you're extreme, you're marginal.
Richard Lindzen: You know, how shall I put it -
Mehdi Hasan: The IPCC reflects mainstream science, thousands of scientists across the world.
Richard Lindzen: How shall I put it? I've served on the IPCC, and the agreement was we would say nothing that was untrue. But there was clearly a bias. You were not to attack models, you were not to do this unless it was absolutely essential.
Mehdi Hasan: When you say "bias", it's not just the IPCC, is it? I mean, 34 national academies of science across the world - your country's, my country's, Sweden -
Richard Lindzen: What have they said?
Mehdi Hasan: - India, China -
Richard Lindzen: Yeah, then what have they said?
Mehdi Hasan: - they have all signed up to the consensus position, that the planet is warming, that man is responsible, largely, for that warming, that greenhouse gas emissions have to be cut down on.
Richard Lindzen: Yeah, and it's the third -
Mehdi Hasan: And they're all wrong. All those - all those national academies of science, they're all biased.
Richard Lindzen: Most of these bodies have issued that statement without reference to their membership. So that's another problem with this issue. Why have societies that have nothing to do with this issue felt necessary to issue statements? And the statements always begin with what I call the "trivial agreement", and then lead to a policy conclusion, that this is dangerous. Anyway, that's one of the questions.
Mehdi Hasan: But what's the answer? Why have 34 national academies of science put out these statements? Why has NASA, why has the World Meteorological Organization?
Richard Lindzen: NASA has been conflicted on this, but -
Mehdi Hasan: Why has the Geological Society of America? Why has the International Geophysical Union?
Richard Lindzen: Yeah, I think that's a fair question. Why do the agricultural societies say this? Why do -
Mehdi Hasan: But what's the answer?
Richard Lindzen: - the American Statistical Society? I have no idea. I do have some ideas - they've been told: "Issue a statement on this". They -
Mehdi Hasan: Told by who?
Richard Lindzen: Well... [Laughs.] I'd rather not say, to be honest.
Mehdi Hasan: Why not?
Richard Lindzen: Why? Because, in each case, it would be in some ways embarrassing. I mean, each of them are dependent on the goodwill of the government. And if they're told "Sign on", they'll sign on.
Mehdi Hasan: Sounds like - if you're talking about 34 national academies in countries as diverse as China, Sweden -
Richard Lindzen: No, no.
Mehdi Hasan: America - I mean, it sounds like a pretty big global conspiracy.
Richard Lindzen: Let me ask you. What content is there in what you're saying?
Mehdi Hasan: David Rose is - wanted to come here. David Rose is a special investigations reporter for the Mail on Sunday, contributing editor Vanity Fair. David?
David Rose: First of all, I'd like to say that your argument, that because 34 academies of science hold a view, it must be right, is daft. If you go back in history, before Copernicus, before Galileo, you could get a fantastic consensus, enforced by the Inquisition, that the Earth was the centre of the Universe. [Applause from the audience.] One of the curious paradoxes of this whole debate is that from the very beginning. it gained a fair greater political traction than a scientific traction. Politicians and policymakers began to assume, using this so-called precautionary principle - a kind of doomsday, apocalyptic view of what was happening - now with the enforcement of that consensus -
Mehdi Hasan: Who's enforcing?
David Rose: Hold on, hold on -
Mehdi Hasan: Professor Lindzen, who do you think is enforcing - you're using big words -
David Rose: Wait, let me finish my point.
Mehdi Hasan: - comparing it to the Inquisition, and Copernicus, and - who's doing the enforcing, David?
David Rose: The issue is not whether there is global warming. The issue is not whether a large -
Mehdi Hasan: It is for some people, some people who deny it.
David Rose: - component is being caused by human beings. The issue is: how fast and how far is that happening? That consensus is falling apart.
Mehdi Hasan: Let's bring in - let's bring in Mark Lynas, who is an author on this subject, an activist - he has advised the Maldives government at the Copenhagen Summit in 2009. Take on board David's point that this is all - this is comparable to Galileo, Copernicus...
Mark Lynas: I actually think there is a very respectable position to be sceptical on - every issue, you should always ask for evidence, you should never just take something as true because it's given by authorities. However, there comes a point where the consensus amongst the experts - 99 experts out of 100 say that we've got a really serious problem here, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions - then that's something which concerns me. And I could listen to Professor Lindzen's very reassuring, very calm, slightly dismissive attitude, and say "Well, okay, we could carry on pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and carry on this enormous experiment with the Earth, but actually I don't think that's a very sensible, very precautionary position. And if you want to take a kind of balance of risk approach, the fact that we burn 1,100 tons of carbon dioxide and release those into the atmosphere every single second, the fact that we're potentially pushing the climate back to where it was 50 million years ago - way outside anything that humans have evolutionary experience of - actually really does concern me.
Mehdi Hasan: Dr. Myles Allen - Professor Allen - who is telling you what to think?
Myles Allen: Er, I've never had anybody threaten me with thumbscrews. I find this idea that there's some kind of Inquisition out there that tells scientists what to conclude - I find that kind - I find it kind of weird. [Richard Lindzen is trying to respond.] And nor has anybody ever told me I'll lose my funding if I don't go with the -
Richard Lindzen: - [inaudible] disingenuous.
Myles Allen: No, well, I - I'm telling you no-one's ever threatened me with thumbscrews, that is a fact.
Richard Lindzen: - M.I.T. and among my grad students, there's always an understanding that they will play down anything that suggests there's not a major problem.
Mehdi Hasan: David's a lay person, I'm a lay person. If David and I are in a room together, we're taking different positions on this. I can't just ignore the fact that, when polled, 97% of climate scientists signed up to the consensus.
Richard Lindzen: Where were they polled? Where were they polled?
Mehdi Hasan: Were they polled in a torture chamber? [Audience applause.] You tell me where were they polled.
Richard Lindzen: I don't know where they were polled.
Mehdi Hasan: At Guantanamo Bay?
Richard Lindzen: I have no idea. But I mean -
Mehdi Hasan: You keep posing these questions - where's the answer? Where were they polled?
Richard Lindzen: Well -
Myles Allen: As one of the 97%, I'd like to agree with David Rose - it's completely irrelevant. I get - this is not - science is not a democracy. We don't vote on things, we look at the evidence. And -
Mehdi Hasan: But I, as a layperson, should ignore the fact that 97% -
Myles Allen: No, I'm not telling you to ignore the fact, I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just saying that's not the way science works. I don't think that's a helpful way to frame the discussion.
Mehdi Hasan: Professor Lindzen mentioned papers. Is it not the case that when a study was done, of all the papers that have been published, a summary of the scientific evidence on this - what was it, something like 928 papers - zero, none of them disagreed with the consensus. They're all wrong as well?
Richard Lindzen: It's one of the reasons I think you, as a citizen, as opposed to a scientist, should be extraordinarily suspicious. What in the world was that study about? It was saying, when you got down to it - and it was, you know, there have been various such studies - they looked through all these papers to see if they contradicted that there was a greenhouse effect, and there was warming. Many of these papers had nothing to do with that at all. I wouldn't even have disagreed with it. Why was something like that trotted out to make you feel there's a terrible problem? That should be what you should be suspicious of. [Audience applause.]
Mehdi Hasan: David and Professor Allen.
David Rose: You're creating this bogus idea of consensus. There is a consensus on the basics but -
Mehdi Hasan: - David, David!
David Rose: No - wait. On the detail, there is no consensus, and there is less consensus with every passing month. Because the areas of further investigation, the areas which have been questioned, are far less - to use another favourite word - settled, than is sometimes made out.
Mehdi Hasan: Mark's been waiting patiently.
Mark Lynas: No, actually I don't agree with Myles. It's fine for Myles, because he is a scientist, and Professor Lindzen is a scientist, and... Those of us who aren't - and I was in a position of having to advise a head of state about what to do about climate change, he was concerned because he was in charge of a country which, potentially - you know, it's only about that high [gestures] above - about a meter above sea level - the Maldives - potentially, this country is going to go out of existence. It won't see out this century if rising sea levels continue to accelerate because of the melting of the ice sheets, which is also projected as a, as a sort of fairly obvious impact as the Earth warms. Now, he's not going to read through all of these thousands of scientific papers. There does come a point, actually, where you have to say "Well, the balance of evidence - because pretty much all the experts agree on this - is that we should take a very precautionary stance, and we should go to the international fora at Copenhagen, we should say to the rest of the world 'For the sake of our survival as a nation, yes you must cut your greenhouse gas emissions.'" [Audience applause.]
Myles Allen: Okay. Could I? Thank you. David was talking about tropical storms. The IPCC does agree that the risk of heatwaves is being enhanced, or likely to be being enhanced by anthropogenic warming. I agree, there is no consensus that there's any discernible role of human influence in tropical storms. There're different extreme events. Some extreme events are being made more likely. It's possible that others - extreme blizzard risk in the UK - may be being made less likely by human influence on climate. The weather is changing - I think we can agree on that.
Mehdi Hasan: As someone involved in the peer review process, unlike David and I, what's your response to Richard's line about these journals being outliers, these articles being - you know, reviewers being brought in, etc? There's a - there is a, forgive me, a sense of conspiracy I keep getting here.
Myles Allen: No, no, the IPCC doesn't rely on a single article. I mean, we're always really careful - in whenever I've - I'm sure, in the chapters Dick's been involved in, as well, you'd have been the same, very careful to look for a range of articles, and also to understand the evidence behind the articles, not just to say because the article's there it's necessarily correct. And, you know, so that's why I keep coming back to: we need to look at the evidence, rather than, sort of, just looking at the numbers.
Mehdi Hasan: Where is the fundamental disagreement, do you believe, between you two?
Myles Allen: Given the accelerating rate at which CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere, as emissions rise, we should expect an accelerating commitment to warming. So the statement that we've only seen a little bit of warming so far means it won't matter in the future, we won't see any warming in the future, flies in the face of our basic understanding of the way the carbon cycle and the climate system works.
Mehdi Hasan: But let me ask you a question about some of the politics of this, because you suggested implicitly at the start of this programme, and elsewhere you've suggested explicitly, that some of the climate scientists working in this field are pressured, they're doing it for, you know, political reasons, job reasons, financial reasons. But your critics would say that the reverse is true, that in fact the, kind of, small band of people who disagree with the consensus - however you want to define it - are the people who are actually getting funding from the fossil fuel industry, from Big Oil, from Big Coal. Does it bother you that those are the kind of people on your side?
Richard Lindzen: No, no, I'm glad you brought that up. I'm terrifically happy about that. Er... I don't know what you're talking about. Er... [Audience applause.]
Mehdi Hasan: Really? There's no - there's no funding going from Exxon Mobil or -
Richard Lindzen: Oh, yeah. There is.
Mehdi Hasan: - the Koch brothers.
Richard Lindzen: Exxon... Koch brothers I've never seen any funding from. They've never given any to people who are sceptics.
Mehdi Hasan: Really? They don't give money to the various, kind of, centre-right think tanks in the United States that publish so much stuff about global warming being a myth. The Cato Institute, the Heartland Institute, they don't get money from these people?
Richard Lindzen: Cato... They may get, you know, but it's a small amount compared to what the environmental movement puts up. I don't know what their bookkeeping is. I know in the science community nobody is being supported by Exxon Mobil. Most of the fossil fuel industry has actually gone out of its way to endorse climate alarm. BP, Shell - official position's "Beyond Petroleum". Exxon Mobil has given $100,000,000 to people who promote these issues.
Mehdi Hasan: Okay. Let me just... I'll come to you in one second, David. I just want to bring in Mark, there, who has, in the past, campaigned on this issue, as well as written about it, worked in it... The environmental movement doles out far more money, in the climate science debate, than the oil companies, which are not a vested interest. [?]
Mark Lynas: I'm not sure that's true, but I haven't done the figures either. I'm not going to sit here and accuse Professor Lindzen of taking money from a fossil fuel company - I have no idea. I'm sure - I'm sure -
Mehdi Hasan: What role does Exxon Mobil play, in this debate? What oil does [?] - they don't play any role at all?
Mark Lynas: I think that - I think there's been strong links with some of the climate sceptic think tanks and funding from fossil fuel companies, that's well demonstrated. So I don't think that's - I don't think that's anything that can be denied. The question is: who's right and who's wrong [?] here. And -
Richard Lindzen: An example would be helpful.
Myles Allen: Here's an example - I once had an airfare paid for by, I believe, Exxon Mobil - it didn't make a scrap of difference to what I said at the other end of the plane ride. I'm sorry, I mean, this is - this is irrelevant, it really is irrelevant.
Mark Lynas: That's why I'm not making that same allegation, but the point - the whole of humanity is dependent on fossil fuels, here. I took a flight across the Atlantic about two weeks ago, I emitted a tonne of carbon. So I am involved in this business too, you know, it's not just Exxon Mobil, we have - we have to find a way to support human civilisation without emitting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Mehdi Hasan: Of course, and me also. I was asking specifically about the lobbying efforts.
Mark Lynas: I think there's lobbying on both sides, actually. I don't make any great accusations. I think we have to take the perspectives seriously, when they are scientific ones, and this is all very mixed up with ideology, this is an ideological debate. I think Professor Lindzen's made it fairly clear that he's on the, sort of, free-market side of the argument. Which is fine, he can have that, but we've got to remember that where people are coming from, they're often speaking very politically when they have this, because they're reacting against what they perceive as a sort of state intervention in the economy, the things they think are coming with climate change.
Mehdi Hasan: We're going to bring this part to an end. Join us in Part 2 of Head to Head, where we'll be carrying on the discussion on climate change with Professor Lindzen, and our audience will be coming in, in Part 2, so don't go away. [Audience applause.]
* * *
Mehdi Hasan: Welcome back to Part 2 of Head to Head this week here again, in the Oxford Union. I'm joined by Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world's best known critics of what some call the consensus position on climate change. Professor Lindzen, before we go on any further, just very quickly - we talked about where people should get knowledge from, information on the subject where you and some other scientists, many other scientists, disagree. You talked about alarmism, earlier. If somebody comes and says to you "Should I stop recycling?", "Should I drive less?", "Should I fly less?" "Should I try and save more energy around the house?" would you tell them not to do it? What's your advice?
Richard Lindzen: I think it depends on why they're doing it -
Mehdi Hasan: Because they're worried about warming.
Richard Lindzen: Oh, for that purpose I would say that it's probably futile. These gestures are feel-good gestures. There's something rather retrograde about this issue, in the sense that you have people looking for omens in the peculiarities, the everyday and normal peculiarities of weather, and then making sacrifices in order to appease the gods of Gaia, or whatever it is, er, regardless of the relevance of those sacrifices to the issue at hand.
Mehdi Hasan: You're not a fan of the environmental movement, are you.
Richard Lindzen: No, not particularly. [Audience laughter.]
Mehdi Hasan: Why not?
Richard Lindzen: Well, I distinguish between a concern for the environment and a political environmental movement. They occasionally seem to do things that don't seem to particularly help the environment, and so I have the feeling they're just another authoritarian feel-good movement, capitalising on God knows what good sentiments of people, and taking advantage of it. It's become a big business in its own right, I suppose, but - no. I don't particularly find most of the environmental movement very attractive.
Mehdi Hasan: Mark Lynas is here, who's an author, activist, former advisor to government. You've mentioned earlier in Part 1 it's very political. When you hear people who are campaigning for climate change, worried about the environment, worried about what's going on across the world described as authoritarian, is that something you share - agree, disagree?
Mark Lynas: I'm not sure that's so accurate. I mean, I have my own differences with much of the environmental movement over nuclear power, and I couldn't understand why the environmental movement wanted to close down one of our largest sources of low-carbon energy. And persist in doing so, despite the fact of [?] so concerned about climate change - there's an obvious conflict there, which isn't resolved.
Mehdi Hasan: But, as you say, you're in disagreement over the means to an end.
Mark Lynas: Right.
Mehdi Hasan: The end is - you share - that greenhouse gas emissions have to come down -
Mark Lynas: Yes. And I -
Mark Lynas: - in order to prevent -
Mark Lynas: Exactly. And I don't - I don't think the environmental movement's got it wrong on climate. There's some areas where it has, but actually on climate, I think, they've been very close to the science, and that includes groups like Greenpeace - I think they've done actually a very good job on climate change. What annoys me is that the solutions which are proposed are so futile - that's actually a reasonable word for it - and the changing light bulbs, the energy efficiency, the wind and solar only - actually we need a much, much broader panoply of solutions to that, which include ways, ways to capture all sorts of different kinds of low-carbon energy, which have to be cheaper than what we're doing now. We need to remember, this is about economic growth for the developing world - we can't say to the rest of the world they have to go backwards. China's putting in as much coal-fired power plants every six months as we have in the whole of this country, you know - this is a huge, huge problem, but we have to find a way to solve it, whilst allowing people the aspirations for growth and the aspirations for solving poverty, as a way forward.
Mehdi Hasan: Mark's agreeing with you on the futility of the small solutions, but of course you don't agree with the big solutions, either - that's part of alarmism -
Richard Lindzen: How shall I - how shall I put it? I haven't seen anyone agree to the big solutions, in a way that matters. So I think, you know, in that sense, Myles and I and Mark and others -
Mehdi Hasan: Are you saying - sorry, people don't agree to big solutions, you mean governments? Or -
Richard Lindzen: Yeah. I - look -
Mehdi Hasan: Is that partly because people like you keep saying -
Richard Lindzen: No. No.
Mehdi Hasan: - there's no consensus, nothing needs to be done?
Richard Lindzen: Well, how shall I put it? You have a phrasing of the issue, and here I disagree with several environmental groups, you know, who are saying "Save the planet". We all know that's an extreme statement that doesn't mean anything. The planet has survived far more than this, and yet what is the value of a statement that's so extreme? Well, it then bypasses any policy issue - anything you do, whatever you can, 'cause you don't have a planet any more... But in a more rational world, we're talking about the potential of some damage, a little damage, maybe a lot. And the question is: what do you do? And how much can you do? And what is worth it to people? What you have is, of course, for the large developing countries like India and China - you know, they're not going to give up their future development for this.
Mehdi Hasan: Although their governments take the problem more seriously than you do. You seem much more relaxed.
Richard Lindzen: Well, how shall I put it?
Mehdi Hasan: The Indian Environment Minister is, for example.
Richard Lindzen: Yeah. On the other hand, almost all proposed measures have very little impact on climate.
Mehdi Hasan: But if you're wrong, as you've accepted - there's no 100%, there's a lot of uncertainty -
Richard Lindzen: Yeah, yeah -
Mehdi Hasan: - then you are - the same communities -
Richard Lindzen: No.
Mehdi Hasan: - the poorest, most vulnerable people in the world are at risk.
Richard Lindzen: They may be -
Mehdi Hasan: You are at much less risk.
Richard Lindzen: Yeah, I agree.
Mehdi Hasan: Which is why I don't get why - why you're so relaxed about this.
Richard Lindzen: Well -
Mehdi Hasan: Because you see, you might be wrong. You might be right, you might be wrong. The evidence that's published suggests -
Richard Lindzen: First, by nature I tend to be relaxed, so that's a personal issue. The second thing about it is: if I'm looking at a situation where nobody is actually proposing anything that will do anything to these people, except make them poorer, then I have to come out on their side and say "Don't bother with this. Become less vulnerable."
Mehdi Hasan: That's not true. Many, many economists working in this field don't say that at all. They actually say the benefits of tackling climate change now will save money in the long run.
Richard Lindzen: But, actually, the best study of that I know - and we've had an argument with Bill Nordhaus over it -
Mehdi Hasan: William Nordhaus of Yale University, who says waiting 50 years, as you propose, would cost 4 trillion dollars -
Richard Lindzen: Yeah, yeah, yeah - out of 30 trillion, where he is working to less than one significant figure, I mean, this is ludicrous. If you looked at all these things -
Mehdi Hasan: You're an atmospheric physicist. He's an economist, working on climate. He's ludicrous, on the numbers.
Richard Lindzen: No, of course he is. You know, there's no question of that.
Mehdi Hasan: Your colleague at the M.I.T. Atmospheric Science Department, Professor Kerry Emanuel, said "It just seems deeply unprofessional and irresponsible to look at climate change and say 'We're sure it's not a problem.' It's a special kind of risk, because it's a risk to the collective civilisation."
Richard Lindzen: Yeah.
Mehdi Hasan: Your colleague at M.I.T. [Audience applause.]
Richard Lindzen: Yes, I know.
Mehdi Hasan: It's not - it's not professional just to write it off.
Richard Lindzen: I'm not writing it off. I'm saying: if you're in a position where nobody has proposed to do anything except symbolic, and you're arguing "Should you make a lot of symbols?", you would be doing much better to make people more robust, study the problem better, ascertain these things, don't put pressure on people to find one answer or another. And, you know, stop trying to exaggerate, which is being done with a lot of this. [Audience applause.]
Mehdi Hasan: David, let me ask you a question. If Professor Lindzen is right, and the other climate scientists, the 97%, are wrong, we lose a little bit of economic growth. If he is wrong, and they're right, and we heed his advice, it's much potentially worse consequences, isn't there?
David Rose: I am not denying that carbon dioxide causes warming, but the critical issue that we are skirting around is: what works? This word "futile", which has been used - and the truth is, what we have done has been futile. We have invested colossally, and are going to invest even more, in wind farms - wind farms are a hopeless solution. Wind farms don't work - they require backup capacity. The cheapest and cleanest way to keep the lights on in this country is building combined cycle gas-powered stations [audience applause], and they reduce emissions heavily, compared to coal.
Mehdi Hasan: Your proposal, your solution, to a problem of reducing greenhouse gases, which in Part 1 you were telling us not a problem because it's not warming any more, the world.
David Rose: I didn't say it wasn't warming.
Mehdi Hasan: Do you think emissions should come down, yes or no?
David Rose: In the long run, of course I do. [Some applause.]
Mehdi Hasan: Okay. Good. I'm glad that we're in agreement. I'm sure many of your critics will be delighted.
David Rose: The question is: how do we achieve it?
Mehdi Hasan: Myles Allen.
Myles Allen: I think we should really emphasise the enormous amount we all agree on. You know, the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere causes warming. [Someone behind him is saying something.] We can argue about how much - well okay, save being [?] somebody behind - but I think Dick and I agree on that, anyway. So - so -
Mehdi Hasan: You agree with that, Professor Lindzen?
Myles Allen: - and -
Mehdi Hasan: He's not agreeing with you, either.
Richard Lindzen: You know... how shall I put it? We'll know if emissions have to come down, but what I really object to - there's a tendency in environmentalism to take something that is bad and demonise it so that no matter how little of it is bad. The same time with CO2. The need to diminish it, if you really believe it's a problem, is huge. Symbolic gestures are not about that. And so, you know, doing anything you can - quote - to reduce your carbon footprint - is not -
Mehdi Hasan: Okay -
Myles Allen: We can all agree that most of the current policies are futile, but that doesn't mean that we don't need a plan to make a transition, eventually, to a zero-carbon economy -
Mehdi Hasan: What would you do?
Myles Allen: - it's completely insane, the way we are approaching this problem, but because - just because it's insane, it doesn't mean we don't need a plan to do it. We need a grown-up discussion about other ways of doing it that would work, instead of silly conversations about things that don't work.
David Rose [?]: Hear, hear.
Mehdi Hasan: Well, on that note [inaudible, due to applause from audience.] I'm judging, from some of the spontaneous interventions we've had so far, on this show, that we've got a diversity of opinion. Let's throw it open to the audience now. I'm going to go to the lady there, on the end of that bench to my left.
Woman 1: You know, it's not about whether carbon dioxide is rising, or going up and down, or... Those factors are variable, that's not the issue. The issue is actually the oil lobby and their impact on government, and that needs to change.
Mehdi Hasan [to Richard Lindzen]: Your view, as you expressed in Part 1, is that there really is no oil lobby on this subject. You seem to hold this view that they are not vested interests.
Richard Lindzen: The oil industry, as any industry, has interests. They have carefully worked out what their interests are, and their interests are not in opposing concern over global warming. They obviously have an interest in making money, staying in business, and so on. That's true of any business.
Mehdi Hasan: I mean, Exxon Mobil's lobbying activities, as we discussed, seem to go against that. Let's take some more questions in the audience. Gentleman here has been waiting since he interrupted earlier.
Man 1: I would like to get back to the more practical, realistic things. And I would like to ask Professor Lindzen to stack up the evidence on both sides of the argument, as my understanding is that almost all of the so-called evidence on the alarmist side is based on computer models.
Richard Lindzen: The consensus view on climate sensitivity is based on models. You run models - no, I mean - [to Myles Allen] you don't agree?
Myles Allen: Well, there's two lines of evidence.
Richard Lindzen: Well -
Myles Allen: There's the spread of results from models, and there's also the range [Man 1 is interrupting] - no I mean - sorry -
Man 1: - can we just -
Mehdi Hasan: Hold on, hold on, hold on - [inaudible] - and I'll come back to you -
Richard Lindzen: What is the second line? Anyway, so you have this range of model outputs. If you go to other measurements, there are a number of them. The crudest approach is to look at the temperature change historically - the change in greenhouse forcing - and try somehow to relate that. The IPCC actually tried to play that game. The problem with that game is there are natural sources of variability, which most of the models do terribly on. These are things like El Nino Southern Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, AMO. So without that, you can't use the temperature record. When you attempt to use the temperature record, you do come out smaller, by a lot, in the models.
Mehdi Hasan: Let me just ask, before we go back to the audience - I want to go back to the audience - um, Dr. Allen, is it fair to say, just to get the different perspective, that the information on one side comes just from models and on the other side from observable experience, observable evidence?
Myles Allen: No, I mean, there's two strands of evidence that we bring in, as Professor Lindzen's described, I mean we use what we can infer from the observations and we use the range of results from models - I personally [think?] scientists tend to prefer what we can infer from observations -
Richard Lindzen: But there are several more - there are several more -
Myles Allen: - and, I mean, there's various types of observations. You can look at the paleo record, you can look at - you know, so -
Richard Lindzen: - no, no no no. The most important lines of evidence should be the ones that do not depend on the fudge factors.
Mehdi Hasan: Dr. Allen, I want to ask you a question. You disagr- I happen to think, Mark happens to think, some other people happen to think the 97% statistic - whatever the statistic is - is important. I know you don't agree, but let me just ask you, from the perspective of a climate scientist, and then I'll ask Richard. If you were asked where the balance of opinion lies, amongst your colleagues, on the subjects that we've talked about, on the impacts of greenhouse gases on the environment, on the need to curb them - where would it fall?
Myles Allen: The broad balance of opinion, as represented by the IPCC reports, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports - those reports actually don't always represent an enforced consensus, quite often, they explain there's a diversity of views on the things. And I think the balance of views expressed in those reports is pretty representative of the scientific community as a whole. I think, by and large, that process does a pretty good job of gathering together a full range of views, and documenting it.
Richard Lindzen: But I think one should clarify something. The iconic statement you made, you know, 90% certainty, etc., etc. What percentage of the IPCC Working Group 1 dealt, even, with that question?
Myles Allen: Certainly all the authors in the IPCC report - because, I mean, we're going through this process for the next assessment - will have discussed that sort of headline statement in plenary - that's how it works. That's how it was working in Hobart.
Richard Lindzen: - but, but -
Myles Allen: So all the authors who were there will have been discussing that statement, arguing over coffee about whether it was justified or not. Believe you me, these are really interesting meetings - we argue a lot.
Richard Lindzen: Yeah, yeah. But how many people are involved in that meeting?
Myles Allen: There was about three - four hundred of us. I can't - I don't know the exact number.
Richard Lindzen: Because my record -
Myles Allen: As I say, this doesn't go by the numbers. It goes by looking at the evidence.
Mehdi Hasan: Are you - is your position, just to be clear, is it that there isn't a consensus, or that the consensus is wrong?
Richard Lindzen: What I'm saying is: the notion that you take people from widely varying areas, most of whom have nothing to do with this attribution issue, and ask them to vote on it, is - doesn't make any sense.
Myles Allen: There isn't - we don't sit around and vote. I mean, you know that's not the way the process works -
Richard Lindzen: I know, what I'm saying is - Mehdi -
Myles Allen: - we're scientists, sit around and question each other...
Richard Lindzen: But Mehdi is suggesting that, you know, this is - quote - a consensus view of people working on... Actually, when you come to those hundreds, it is the Coordinating Lead Authors - which is a small group - that has any input [?], at least the year I was there.
Mehdi Hasan: Okay, the lady here.
Woman 2: To a lay person, it looks like the summers are hotter, the winters are colder, there are more extreme weather events that we have to worry about, the seas are rising. I just want to know - what do you think causes that? And if it's not humans, then, I don't have a car but should my brother trade in his Prius and buy a Hummer, or big SUV? Can we just go out and drive whatever we want?
Richard Lindzen: Well, first of all, pardon me... [Audience applause.] You know, anyone who follows the records knows that the summers are not getting hotter - some are cold, some are hot. The variations occur sporadically, over time scales as long as hundred years, maybe longer.
Mehdi Hasan: But you accept nine of the last ten years have been the hottest years on record?
Richard Lindzen: Excuse me, you're confusing a statement about the fact that the temperature rose to something high on the instrumental record by '97, and then has done nothing, and so almost every year at that top layer - even if the trend has stopped - will be among the warmest years. That's apples and pears.
Mehdi Hasan: Myles Allen, you've been very keen to get consensus between yourself and Richard Lindzen, in this programme. Do you agree with him, that temperatures aren't going up?
Richard Lindzen: Nobody is saying - global mean temperature anomaly, over the last 200 years has gone up on the order of three quarters of a degree. Nobody in this room can perceive personally global mean temperature anomaly. If you're here in the UK or you're in Boston, the year to year variability in temperature can be two degrees, four degrees, much larger than for the global mean, and uncorrelated.
Myles Allen: So, the more warm summers we can agree on.
Richard Lindzen: I don't think so. You're dealing with very peculiar series.
Mehdi Hasan: Gentleman there, with the glasses, on my left, on the back row.
Man 2: I think that the key issue here is about sensitivity, which is the response of the system to some forcing. Your vision, your view is that the climate sensitivity is low. So let's suppose you are right, for a second. Now, what about the sensitivity of the climate system added to the sensitivity of the biological system, add that to the sensitivity of the social system, add that to the sensitivity of the economic system. The sum of all the sensitivities may be very large - we might not need a large climate sensitivity to cause big troubles. [Audience applause.]
Richard Lindzen: I suppose the more complex you make something.. You know, yes, everything you do has consequences, and some are bigger than others. I would argue that human beings have shown their capacity to produce economic and political instability, far beyond their ability to produce environmental instability.
Mehdi Hasan: We're running out of time, so I'm going to break it down like this, now, so people don't accuse me of unfairness. Who here - we're going to do agree into [?] - who here agrees with much of what Professor Lindzen said, and would like to come in? Gentleman here has been waiting patiently. And then we'll go to someone who disagrees.
Andrew Montford: Is the climate literature and the IPCC assessments - are they so completely biased as to make them useless for policymakers, or is there something useful that policymakers can extract from them?
Richard Lindzen: Yeah, it's a good question, I wish I could answer it unambiguously. But I think Mehdi gave an example of the iconic IPCC statement - it's a statement that, in my opinion, had very little alarming about it. And yet it was considered a policy-relevant statement that required we "do something". And here you run into the problem of something I used to regard as the "iron triangle" of climate, where scientists make rather nondescript, innocent statements, not particularly alarmist, environmental activists will translate it into something alarming, politicians will be alarmed and feed money to the scientists...
Mehdi Hasan: Come on, scientists are alarmed too - there are plenty of scientists who are alarmed.
Richard Lindzen: You know, how shall I put it -
Mehdi Hasan: I quoted your own colleague at the M.I.T., Professor Kerry Emanuel.
Richard Lindzen: I know, and -
Mehdi Hasan: A collective risk [sic] to civilisation.
Richard Lindzen: I -
Mehdi Hasan: You don't agree with him, obviously.
Richard Lindzen: I don't agree with him, and I don't want to talk about it.
Mehdi Hasan: Okay, well, let's try to get some audience [inaudible] - who here disagrees with what they've been listening to, from Professor Lindzen, and would like to come in? That woman there, at the back.
Woman 3: My question is about the link between temperature rise and possible effects such as droughts, famines, heatwaves... And I've heard around 300,000 people a year have actually lost their life due to extreme weather, which may be connected to climate change. And my question is: if there's any link between the CO2 that we're emitting and those deaths?
Richard Lindzen: As far as I know, for the regions with good data, there is nothing exceptional happening. We've always had droughts, we've always had floods -
Mehdi Hasan: But on the point of - on the point of the human impact, as we discussed earlier, if you're right, we've built too many windfarms, as David Rose put it. If you're wrong, tens of thousands of people are dying.
Richard Lindzen: No, no.
Mehdi Hasan: The WHO's said 150,000 a year, as a result of climate change.
Richard Lindzen: Mehdi, there are lots of people who die, I mean -
Mehdi Hasan: No, the WHO has linked it directly to climate change. It has. You may disagree with it, but it has.
Richard Lindzen: How shall I put it? You can relate lots of deaths to changes in weather and climate that occur. I'm not arguing that natural climate variability is not associated with risks. I am arguing as to whether there is any evidence that there is anything other than natural climate variability. And if there isn't, to assign the deaths from climate that have occurred since time immemorial to man's activities today, is a little bit specious.
Mehdi Hasan: Gentleman there with the glasses, who's been waiting very patient, with the blue jacket.
Man 3: Let's consider the following propositions - that the global warming is caused by man-made sources. Okay? Some people will say this proposition is probably correct. You would say this proposition is probably not correct. If the statement is true, there's catastrophic effect, especially for the poorest people in the world, who are most vulnerable. And so we've got to take that factor into consideration. If that statement turns out to be true, and meant thousands and thousands of people die, would you be able to take that into your conscience? What is your threshold, then, for action? [Audience applause.]
Mehdi Hasan: What is your threshold for action, if things go wrong?
Richard Lindzen: Well, it depends on the action. If the action is purely symbolic, then we'd better think of a better way to help these people.
Mehdi Hasan: I worry that you're wrong, but I do hope, for the sake of our planet, that you're actually right.
Richard Lindzen: Good.
Mehdi Hasan: Thank you very much to Richard Lindzen for joining us. Thanks to you all for coming to the Oxford Union for another episode of Head to Head. And thanks to you all at home for watching. We'll be back at the Oxford Union for another Head to Head. Good night. [Audience applause.]