20130325_PG
Source: BBC Radio 4: Today Programme
URL: N/A
Date: 25/03/2013
Event: Critics: CO2 reductions "unrealistic, impractical and undesirable"
Attribution: BBC Radio 4
People:
- Sir John Beddington: UK Government Chief Scientist
- Cathy Clugston: Announcer, BBC Radio 4
- Pallab Ghosh: Science correspondent, BBC News
Cathy Clugston: The outgoing government Chief Scientist, Professor Sir John Beddington, has implored world leaders to take urgent action to tackle climate change. He's told the BBC that there's already enough carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere to increase the frequency of floods and droughts over the next 25 years. He spoke to our science correspondent Pallab Ghosh.
Pallab Ghosh: Professor Beddington ends his term as the government's Chief Scientist next week. His final piece of advice is to urge governments across the world to take climate change seriously. He warns that countries will experience more droughts, floods, sea surges and storms, and that these changes will begin to occur within our lifetimes.
Sir John Beddington: The basic evidence that climate change is happening is completely unequivocal. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now are likely to determine the behaviour of climate - and therefore our weather - for the next 20, 25 years.
Pallab Ghosh: Professor Beddington's comments come at a time when those sceptical of climate change have been challenging the scientific consensus that rising carbon dioxide levels are increasing global temperatures. Other critics have argued that even if this is the case, the reduction of CO2 levels by the world's emerging nations is unrealistic, impractical and undesirable.