20130325_R5

Source: BBC Radio 5 Live

URL: N/A

Date: 25/03/2013

Event: Benny Peiser: On more weather extremes "there is no scientific consensus whatsoever"

Attribution: BBC Radio 5 Live

People:

• Sir John Beddington: UK Government Chief Scientist
• Rachel Burden: Presenter, BBC Radio 5 Live
• Dr Benny Peiser: Director, Global Warming Policy Foundation

Rachel Burden: Now, over the past week, a combination of snow blizzards and flooding have brought many parts of the UK to a standstill. The government's Chief Scientist, Sir John Beddington is warning that these kind [sic] of weather extremes could become the norm, if we do nothing to curb our CO2 emissions. And he joins us this morning. Good morning, Sir John.

Sir John Beddington: Good morning.

Rachel Burden: You know what many people will be thinking. They'll be looking out of their windows, they'll be seeing 8 feet of snow and saying "Climate change? Ridiculous!"

Sir John Beddington: Well, I think that's because the early discussions about climate change were talking about global warming. So you look out or you go out of the door this morning, and it is damn cold. But the key issue is actually that it is climate change that is being driven by driving the global warming - global warming is a way in which we can simply describe it. But what is actually happening, well, from having CO2 and other greenhouse gases in our upper atmosphere, is that in fact the climate is going to be changing. One of the phenomena is warming, and that's the one that many people just tie onto. But the real issue, and the real one that I'd like to emphasise now this morning, is that because of the delays in our climate system, we're experiencing weather which was determined by greenhouse gas emissions about 25 years ago. So, because of that delay, and this - what is going to happen is the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now will drive what our weather is going to look like over the next 20, 25 years. Which is why, given the extremes we're now observing, we need to worry.

Rachel Burden: Let me put the other side of the argument to you, then, because there are some people who say billions of pounds is [sic] being wasted trying to cut CO2, and that extreme weather is simply down to natural variabilities.

Sir John Beddington: Well, the scientific evidence is just against that. All the analysis that is looked at in variability shows that variability has been increasing, that it's increasing very much in line with the expectations of the climate scientists, and that it is happening in different parts of the world and to different degrees. And I think the evidence is very, very clear.

Rachel Burden: And what is that unequivocal scientific evidence, that you talk about?

Sir John Beddington: Well, I'm sorry, you can't summarise a vast amount of information -

Rachel Burden: Sure.

Sir John Beddington: - with millions of observations.

Rachel Burden: Just give us an overview, as best you can.

Sir John Beddington: Yeah, the overview is very clear, that people have been monitoring a whole series of phenomena in weather, over the last hundred years or so. Obviously one needs to then put together these data and try to relate them. And what these data show, for example, is that the last decade was warmer than the previous one, that was warmer than the previous one, and so on. That's very simplistic, but there's also things that we can observe, for example, the climate change analysis implies that the Arctic is going to be warm quicker than the rest of the world. And indeed that seems to be happening. And there are many, many issues that I can point to, which actually indicate that the scientific evidence is coming. But the point I'd like to make here, is that we really have to worry now. As I said, we're looking at weather extremes now. You know, we - last March was significantly warmer than the average, this March is - as we're experiencing it - significantly colder. And, for example, if we look in the USA, 2010 was one of the wettest years on record, 2012 was one of the warmest. And these are big, long time series, there - we're talking one in a hundred year events. And these one in a hundred year events, the extreme ones, are coming more and more frequent. We have -

Rachel Burden: What about - and the other difficulty people have with this is that, for example, China produces, what - about a quarter of the world's CO2 emissions. So, for all the concern that there might be here in the UK, there's very little that we can do, but we are effectively impotent, in the face of all this.

Sir John Beddington: I think "impotence" is putting it too strongly. I think this is - you make the point which I completely accept, that we actually need to be thinking about this community. China and the US are very large emitters, as are India, Russia and so on. But I think that we do need to be actually making the point. And I think this is for international discussion, rather than somebody like me - I'm not a political analyst, I'm a scientific advisor. The point I'm trying to make - and I'm sure scientists in these countries are also making the point - that there are real issues here, that we can expect extremes in climate to - extremes in weather to occur more frequently and that the time delays in the system are such that unless we act now, our weather is going to continue to be disrupted and become more variable and more extreme, with human suffering, and the sort of problems that we see throughout the world for the next 25, 30 years.

Rachel Burden: Thank you very much, Sir John Beddington, who is the Chief Scientist for the government.

* * *

Rachel Burden: Now the government's Chief Scientist, Sir John Beddington, has told Five Live Breakfast that flooding and droughts will become more frequent over the next 20 years unless we tackle CO2 emissions.

Sir John Beddington: ... global warming is a way in which we can simply describe it. But what is actually happening, well, from having CO2 and other greenhouse gases in our upper atmosphere, is that in fact the climate is going to be changing. One of the phenomena is warming, and that's the one that many people just tie onto. But the real issue, and the real one that I'd like to emphasise now this morning, is that because of the delays in our climate system, we're experiencing weather which was determined by greenhouse gas emissions about 25 years ago. So, because of that delay, and this - what is going to happen is the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now will drive what our weather is going to look like over the next 20, 25 years. Which is why, given the extremes we're now observing, we need to worry.

Rachel Burden: Well, let's talk to Dr. Benny Peiser, who's from the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and critical of climate change policies in general - is that fair to say, Dr. Peiser?

Dr. Benny Peiser: That's right, yes.

Rachel Burden: Why is it that you think Sir John Beddington has got it wrong, when he talks about overwhelming, unequivocal evidence about the change in global temperatures and the effects it's having on extreme weather in - well, not just this country but around the world?

Dr. Benny Peiser: Well, I think the Chief Scientific Advisor should be very cautious in making long-term predictions that may not turn out to be right. I mean, we remember, ten, fifteen years ago, climate scientists saying children will not know what snow is, there won't be any snow in Britain. I mean, these long-term predictions are based on the assumption that climate will change dramatically in the near future. And, for all I know, and many people know, there hasn't been much of a change at least in the last fifteen years.

Rachel Burden: Well, this is what he said to me, he said that after around a hundred years' worth of observations, temperatures are going up and up as each decade progresses. The Arctic is getting warmer and we are seeing more variable, more extreme weather, which is leading to human suffering. He says although you cannot predict the weather for another 25 years, because what's happening now won't actually come to pass for another 25 years in terms of the weather we experience, when you look at the graphs, they all point to the fact that these weather extremes are going to become more and more the norm, and have a terrible damaging effect on the way we live our lives.

Dr. Benny Peiser: Well, he may be right, but he may be wrong. For the time being, there is no evidence that weather extremes are actually rising. But even if he is - if he were to be right, and as I said, nobody knows exactly what's going to happen over the next 20 or 30 years, he's predicting, essentially, everything. He's predicting more flooding, he's predicting more droughts, he's predicting more snow and less snow. I mean, essentially what Britain needs to do is to be prepared for all eventualities. There will be droughts - no question - and there will be flooding. This has been going on for thousands of years, and it will continue in the future, so we need to prepare for that. We don't know what - we don't know whether, in 20 years, summers will be drier or wetter. We don't know.

Rachel Burden: Your own academic background is sociology. Why should people disregard the consensus amongst highly qualified scientists, when it comes to this?

Dr. Benny Peiser: Because on this issue, on this particular issue of whether or not there will be more flooding or more drought, or more weather extremes, there is no scientific consensus whatsoever. There's a big scientific debate, and people who are actually the scientists, who are more cautious, know that we can't make these long-term predictions.

Rachel Burden: So the best policy is to - what? Watch and wait and deal with the outcome?

Dr. Benny Peiser: No. No, the best policy is to make societies - around the world, not just in Britain - more resilient for the droughts and the floods and the hurricanes and the snowstorms and the extreme hot and the extreme cold, to cope with what is going to happen. To think that if Britain were to cut CO2 emissions we would not have any droughts in the future, or no flooding or any other weather extremes, is in my view naive. There will always be these kinds of extremes, and the best way to deal with them is to make societies more resilient.

Rachel Burden: Dr. Benny Peiser, thank you, from the Global Warming Policy Foundation.