Owen Paterson v the science of climate change

The environment secretary has told the Tory conference there are advantages to global warming, but he appears to be viewing the problem through a narrowly British lensThe UK environment secretary, Owen Paterson, has told a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference: "People get very emotional about this subject [climate change] and I think we should just accept that the climate has been changing for centuries."The UN's climate science panel, the IPCC, said last Friday: "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia … It is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century."Paterson says: "I think the relief of this latest report is that it shows a really quite modest increase, half of which has already happened. They are talking one to two and a half degrees."Paterson seems to miss the fact that these temperature rises are averages across the entire planet and will not be spread evenly, so a rise of 1-2.5C is not "modest". Some regions, such as the Arctic, will experience much more extreme rises.The IPCC report on Friday put the high end of global mean surface temperature rises by 2065 at 2.6C, which is in addition to the 0.75C or so that we've already caused temperatures to rise since the industrial revolution. For comparison, a 4C rise was enough to transform the planet since the last ice age.Paterson: "R...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: theguardian.com Blogposts Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) World news Global climate talks United Nations Owen Paterson Politics UK news Conservative conference Conservative conference 2013 Green politics Conservati Source Type: news