UK Chief Scientist warns we must act on climate change now
PM - UK Chief Scientist warns we must act on climate change now
Wednesday, 12 October , 2005 18:30:00
Reporter: Mark Colvin
MARK COLVIN: Britain and Australia may have been together in the Iraq war, but when it comes to climate change they’re poles apart.
The UK and Australia are on different sides on the Kyoto Protocol and the regime of carbon trading which comes with it.
The Chief Scientific Adviser to the British Government, Sir David King, is in Canberra at the moment for talks in which he’s hoping that Australia may come round to the UK’s view on global warming.
He insists the need is real and immediate and says Britain has already had to increase its spending on coastal protection from 200 million to 500 million pounds a year because of climate change.
Sir David King told me this afternoon that there was no longer any scientific doubt about global warming or what was causing it.
DAVID KING: We’ve now developed a very sophisticated understanding of our climate system. It’s completely absurd to suggest that there is even a debate about the issue: is climate change occurring? We know that the planet has warmed by about 0.7 degrees Centigrade over the last hundred years.
Is it due to carbon dioxide emissions? We know that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen very substantially over the last hundred years and we also know that these two facts are connected.
Where the climate science community and, by the way, some of the world’s most brilliant applied mathematicians and physicists and chemists involved in that, where the climate science community is currently engaged in the debate is on what the impacts to the world will be from the changes that are already occurring and are in the pipeline for all of us.
MARK COLVIN: One of the reasons almost that some of the sceptics say that we shouldn’t believe this is simply, paradoxically, because there is such a consensus. They say that when there’s a scientific consensus of this nature that’s when you should be most suspicious.
DAVID KING: Well, excuse me if…
MARK COLVIN: Is there any answer for that?
DAVID KING: Excuse me if I say that that is almost the most absurd argument I have yet heard.
It’s rather like saying the second law of thermodynamics has got total consensus amongst the scientists, so we should question it. Or that energy conservation operates, so we should question that.
Science moves by challenge, but the challenge moves the topic on. And so the consensus has moved, not because it’s some kind of a vote taken amongst the scientists, but because there is no viable challenge. The strength of the science is such that we have to move on.
MARK COLVIN: Alright, well putting those arguments aside, the other big assault on Kyoto has been much more political and really to do with the fact that it left out two of the biggest and most growing, if you like, polluters in world, namely China and India.
Isn’t that an insoluble problem about Kyoto?
DAVID KING: I don’t believe it’s at all an insoluble problem about Kyoto.
Kyoto was set up, quite rightly, for those countries which had produced most of the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere to date, to take action first.
And it was always believed that in the second phase of Kyoto the rapidly developing economies, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, would be brought into the arrangements and that is what we will be discussing in Montreal on the first of December and beyond.
MARK COLVIN: But in the meantime, China and India are absolutely powering ahead with their industrial development and that means an enormous amount of petrol and coal being burned and an enormous amount of pollution.
So in that sense hasn’t Kyoto failed already?
DAVID KING: I don’t believe Kyoto has failed already.
First of all, in terms of China and India, the amount of carbon dioxide produced from those two countries still doesn’t match up to, or even begin to match up to, the amount of carbon dioxide produced by the fully developed world.
By 2020, by 2030, we will see, at the present rate of change, both of those countries attain the same level of energy usage as the developed world.
Quite simply, if we don’t manage that process globally, the cost of managing the risks to our populations around the world is going to become absolutely massive.
MARK COLVIN: Now here in Australia, we’re a huge exporter of energy, we’re a big, big coal producer, as I’m sure you know, and we’re also exporting gas to China. In fact, China is a big expanding market for energy.
Do you have much expectation of being able, in these economic circumstances, to get through to the Australian Government on these issues?
DAVID KING: I certainly hope to.
First of all, we need to develop the technologies in Britain, in Europe, in America, in Australia, so that we ourselves are able to generate energy without carbon dioxide emissions. And once we have developed that, to transfer those technologies to these rapidly developing nations.
MARK COLVIN: Sir David King, Britain’s Chief Scientist, speaking to me from Canberra.
Wednesday, 12 October , 2005 18:30:00
Reporter: Mark Colvin
MARK COLVIN: Britain and Australia may have been together in the Iraq war, but when it comes to climate change they’re poles apart.
The UK and Australia are on different sides on the Kyoto Protocol and the regime of carbon trading which comes with it.
The Chief Scientific Adviser to the British Government, Sir David King, is in Canberra at the moment for talks in which he’s hoping that Australia may come round to the UK’s view on global warming.
He insists the need is real and immediate and says Britain has already had to increase its spending on coastal protection from 200 million to 500 million pounds a year because of climate change.
Sir David King told me this afternoon that there was no longer any scientific doubt about global warming or what was causing it.
DAVID KING: We’ve now developed a very sophisticated understanding of our climate system. It’s completely absurd to suggest that there is even a debate about the issue: is climate change occurring? We know that the planet has warmed by about 0.7 degrees Centigrade over the last hundred years.
Is it due to carbon dioxide emissions? We know that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen very substantially over the last hundred years and we also know that these two facts are connected.
Where the climate science community and, by the way, some of the world’s most brilliant applied mathematicians and physicists and chemists involved in that, where the climate science community is currently engaged in the debate is on what the impacts to the world will be from the changes that are already occurring and are in the pipeline for all of us.
MARK COLVIN: One of the reasons almost that some of the sceptics say that we shouldn’t believe this is simply, paradoxically, because there is such a consensus. They say that when there’s a scientific consensus of this nature that’s when you should be most suspicious.
DAVID KING: Well, excuse me if…
MARK COLVIN: Is there any answer for that?
DAVID KING: Excuse me if I say that that is almost the most absurd argument I have yet heard.
It’s rather like saying the second law of thermodynamics has got total consensus amongst the scientists, so we should question it. Or that energy conservation operates, so we should question that.
Science moves by challenge, but the challenge moves the topic on. And so the consensus has moved, not because it’s some kind of a vote taken amongst the scientists, but because there is no viable challenge. The strength of the science is such that we have to move on.
MARK COLVIN: Alright, well putting those arguments aside, the other big assault on Kyoto has been much more political and really to do with the fact that it left out two of the biggest and most growing, if you like, polluters in world, namely China and India.
Isn’t that an insoluble problem about Kyoto?
DAVID KING: I don’t believe it’s at all an insoluble problem about Kyoto.
Kyoto was set up, quite rightly, for those countries which had produced most of the carbon dioxide increase in the atmosphere to date, to take action first.
And it was always believed that in the second phase of Kyoto the rapidly developing economies, China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, would be brought into the arrangements and that is what we will be discussing in Montreal on the first of December and beyond.
MARK COLVIN: But in the meantime, China and India are absolutely powering ahead with their industrial development and that means an enormous amount of petrol and coal being burned and an enormous amount of pollution.
So in that sense hasn’t Kyoto failed already?
DAVID KING: I don’t believe Kyoto has failed already.
First of all, in terms of China and India, the amount of carbon dioxide produced from those two countries still doesn’t match up to, or even begin to match up to, the amount of carbon dioxide produced by the fully developed world.
By 2020, by 2030, we will see, at the present rate of change, both of those countries attain the same level of energy usage as the developed world.
Quite simply, if we don’t manage that process globally, the cost of managing the risks to our populations around the world is going to become absolutely massive.
MARK COLVIN: Now here in Australia, we’re a huge exporter of energy, we’re a big, big coal producer, as I’m sure you know, and we’re also exporting gas to China. In fact, China is a big expanding market for energy.
Do you have much expectation of being able, in these economic circumstances, to get through to the Australian Government on these issues?
DAVID KING: I certainly hope to.
First of all, we need to develop the technologies in Britain, in Europe, in America, in Australia, so that we ourselves are able to generate energy without carbon dioxide emissions. And once we have developed that, to transfer those technologies to these rapidly developing nations.
MARK COLVIN: Sir David King, Britain’s Chief Scientist, speaking to me from Canberra.
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