Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
WEDNESDAY 8 DECEMBER 2004
PROFESSOR SIR
DAVID KING
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon, ladies
and gentlemen, and welcome to the further evidence session on
climate change. We welcome as our first witness this afternoon
Professor Sir David King, the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser,
somebody who we have had the pleasure of hearing from on a number
of occasions. As I say, by popular acclaim, Sir David, we invite
you back, but little did we know that you were going to appear
on the very day the Government dominated the news headlines telling
us this morning perhaps what had been thought about and known
to some people but which now is explicit, that the United Kingdom
is not going to achieve the Government's targets in terms of cutting
back on carbon dioxide emissions. I suppose we should be unsurprised
to note that there were some commentators this morning on the
media who were questioning, in fact, whether we were going to
be able to achieve our Kyoto target, although the Prime Minister
said, when pushed on that in the House recently, we were going
to meet it. It will be very interesting to know how you feel today
as somebody who has been a strong advocate of reductions in CO2
to be facing the fact that the Government of the day is not going
to make its own target. What do we make of that?
Professor Sir David King: That
sounded rather like a political question being addressed to a
chief scientific adviser.
Q2 Chairman: Let me put it into more
scientific terms. You have been monitoring this area very carefully.
Are you surprised that we have to admit now that we are not going
to do it? What are the factors that have led us into this situation
and what does it mean for the future?
Professor Sir David King: Perhaps
I could answer your question by just putting some facts down and
then addressing the issues from the review which has just been
published by Defra today to which you are referring. First of
all, some of the commentators have misunderstood a very important
point. The basket of greenhouse gases is one number, carbon dioxide
emissions are another. These two have been conflated in some of
the reports, so if we could just clarify on the basket of emissions,
we are down 14% on 1990. We are required by the Kyoto Agreement
to reach 12.56% by 2010. On the basket of emissions, we have already
reached the target set by Kyoto. The issue then is: what about
carbon dioxide emissions? Between 1990 and 2002 our carbon dioxide
emission reduction was, I believe, 8.7% and it has now gone to
7%. Over the period from 2002 to the present we have seen carbon
dioxide emissions rise so that the target for carbon dioxide emissions
is below what we would like it to be. We are not achieving on
the carbon dioxide emissions target. First of all, in terms of
the question you are asking me, I do not think that there is an
issue about meeting the Kyoto target. The issue is about whether
or not we would meet the Government's more ambitious target by
2010; that, frankly, looks difficult and that is what Margaret
Beckett was saying this morning.
Q3 Chairman: What are the main drivers
for this situation? As I understand it, the Government had the
beneficial effects as far as electricity generation was concerned
from the substantial move to gas, but, if you take gas out of
the equation, what does the rest of the picture look like?
Professor Sir David King: The
switch from coal to gas is responsible for roughly 30% of our
reduction; the other 70% has come from other measures. If I could
deal just first of all with the rise over the year 2002 to the
present, that has come largely from two factors: one is from the
utilities switching to a greater dependence on coal and using
less gas, so there was a move to more coal dependence by the utilities;
secondly, we have reduced imports of electricity. Of course, when
we look at overall global emissions, we have to look at the emissions
that we generated in the country that generated the electricity.
That is the reason why the two have gone up. That other 70% reduction
is very largely attributable to energy efficiency gains that have
come through the system. I think that the climate change levy
of the various policies that have been put into place since 1997
have been coming through the system, but, before we get too pessimistic
about meeting targets, I do not think we should expect anything
but lumpiness as we move forward. In other words, utilities are
free to switch from one supply source to another. What we need
to do is to have a fiscal process and to have a proper set of
incentives in place to see that over the longer period of time
we do have the right form of behaviour coming through.
Q4 Chairman: The implication of your
answer is that what we have at the moment is a less than perfect
solution because I was intrigued in the Government's document,
The Essentials Of Life—I think we are going
to re-christen our Committee "The Essentials of Life Committee",
that sounds rather good—they say that, and I quote: "We
are launching extensive consultation on the review at the same
time as this strategy". I thought we were pretty clear about
what we had to do to meet the various targets, Kyoto and our own
self-imposed target. In terms of the methodology, which we will
probe in detail a little later in our questioning, again the move
towards renewable energy, the dash for gas, and so on and so forth,
everything seems to be fairly clear. We have a climate change
levy in place, emissions trading is all there, why do we have
to have another review?
Professor Sir David King: This
is a review that was there to establish what progress was being
made or, as I understand it, what difficulties were still in place,
but I do think, Chairman, that your questions are directed more
properly on this matter to the department concerned.
Q5 Chairman: The reason I am asking
you the question is you give advice to the Government. You have
studied this thing in immense detail. If you thought that the
Government was going off track or not doing something scientific
which it ought to be doing, you would give them advice no doubt
in your own spontaneous way. I was intrigued as to why, because
it says: "We are launching an extensive consultation on the
review". I thought we had a pretty clear idea of the nuts
and bolts of what was Britain's climate change package, if you
like. I did not understand why we had to go and have another consultation
about it. You said a moment ago that what we needed was a package,
for example, of good fiscal measures that would be required. The
implication that somehow what we have is not quite delivering,
could you address the question, an implication of your response,
and secondly, answer my question as to whether you think we need
a root and branch review or whether we have to make what we have
in the pipeline work better?
Professor Sir David King: Let
me address the very important question of whether or not things
are being put into place that in the longer term will deliver
the targets. It seems to me I would be absolutely amazed if these
were already biting because what we are setting in place is targets
which are fiscal in nature which will bring on board the right
kind of behaviour. For example, inventors are being directed at:
here is an opportunity because there is a new kind of behaviour
required to emerge for inventors to come in, for researchers to
come in with new low carbon technology devices, et cetera.
These will take a while to play through into the system. In the
shorter term, benefits can also come through in energy efficiency
gains in every sphere of our usage of energy. For example, in
the design of buildings and, again, the targets on building design
are there. They are being pushed through by improved regulatory
behaviour. That again is going to take a time to come through.
New buildings going up will be the more efficient energy user
buildings of the future, but getting to old buildings and refitting
them out so that they are more energy efficient is going to take
quite a while.
Q6 Chairman: Can I bring you back
to the question that came from what you said? We need an improved
fiscal regime; let me ask you a direct question from that. Do
you think the climate change levy is working? How much carbon,
for example, has been saved? Do you know as a result of the climate
change levy to date?
Professor Sir David King: No,
I do not.
Q7 Chairman: Does anybody?
Professor Sir David King: I could
find out and put in a written reply to your question if that answer
is known. Let me rather direct your question at the whole range
of things that are being put into place in order to meet the targets
which provide opportunities for business, each of which will only
come through if business thinks that this is a long term process.
The fact that we are going into international emissions trading
now means that that long term process is ensured not only through
the UK's emissions trading, and we were one of the first in the
world to get off the ground on that, and/or European emissions
trading, but that is going international. There is now a new trade
in carbon dioxide. I believe London will become the financial
centre for that new market. Our inventors, our technologists,
our companies will be prepared therefore to make long-term investments,
but it is long term.
Q8 Chairman: Just to ask you a couple
of concluding comments and then pass to Mr Simpson and Mr Tipping
as well. People say that the problem of greenhouse gases, climate
change is the most severe problem we face today. Perhaps you could
tell us the answer why. That, if you like, opens up the fact that
there is still a lot of conjecture within science seemingly about
the speed, the process of change for some who would seem to be
in denial almost that anything is happening at all. Perhaps you
might bring us up to date on those two points.
Professor Sir David King: Short
answer or long answer, Chairman?
Q9 Chairman: I am going to say short
because my two colleagues and others may want to come and tease
out some of these things in more detail later on. Give us the
short version.
Professor Sir David King: In brief,
the science of understanding the greenhouse effect began in 1826
with the great French mathematician Fourier publishing what we
now understand is, if you like, the duvet effect of our atmosphere
on maintaining heat and the temperature difference between night
and day being relatively small, and so on. The fact is that our
atmosphere absorbs some of the energy that comes in from the sun
and re-radiates it back to us, so that maintains a higher global
temperature than it would otherwise be. As we add greenhouse gases—these
are essentially carbon dioxide, methane, NOx gases—then
the effect is that the duvet cover gets thickened and we feel
a higher temperature. Carbon dioxide levels are 379 parts per
million today. We have now from data going back 900,000 years,
ice core data 750,000 years, ocean sediment data 900,000 years.
We know from each of the glacial, interglacial cycles over that
period that carbon dioxide levels in glacial periods were 200
parts per million and in the warm interglacial periods 270. Our
warm period was 270 until the industrial period and now it is
rising at 1.84 parts per million per annum and we are at 379.
This is higher than our global atmosphere has had on record and
likely for 50 million years. The consequences of that can be calculated
and computed. Certainly our own Hadley Centre is amongst the world
leaders, but there are four or five independent computer models,
vast models, of our global system around the world all indicating
that we are headed for impacts to our climate system over the
next 30 years which are virtually independent, and I stress this,
of what we do in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. For the next
30 years because of the enormous climate system, it has a lot
more inertia than even the social and political system, that climate
system will take 30 years to play out the effects of changing
carbon dioxide levels over the last hundred years. That is going
to be a temperature rise of another 0.6 or so degrees centigrade.
After that, the impacts will get more and more severe depending
on how much more carbon dioxide we put up. Any abatement of effect
by reducing carbon dioxide is going to play through in the time
of our grandchildren; that is the difficult political issue. If
you look at the impacts that we would like to avoid, and this
is where a lot of the current science is, in other words, what
are the major impacts that whatever happens we should avoid, then
the melting of the ice sheet on Greenland has become the focus
of attention. If the ice sheet on Greenland goes, sea levels will
rise six and a half metres and London would be under water. That
is a long-term process, but what scientists clearly understand
is that if we reach a global temperature, which is about two to
two and a half degrees centigrade above the pre-industrial level—and
we are already 0.6, 0.7 above that—irreversible melting
of Greenland ice sheet will begin. These are the long-term effects
that the scientists are examining in great detail. You mentioned
naysayers; there are climate change sceptics and lobbyists. I
have to say, Chairman, that I find it rather difficult to distinguish
between these two. The science community, thousands of scientists
who contribute to our understanding of the global climate system,
is focusing its attention on these more advanced problems. What
is the effect of increased cloud cover as the temperature goes
up? What are the effects of aerosols? There are a whole range
of challenges. The challenge is no longer: is carbon dioxide of
concern to us; is it causing global warming? That bit we fully
understand, but the challenges are moving on to understand what
the true impacts will be. My emphasis is on two factors: we must
reduce emissions for the long-term sake of our system; in the
short term, we must focus on dealing with the impacts. In our
own country, and I have talked to you about this before, the great
impacts are going to come from increased intensity of rainfall,
flooding and coastal attack.
Q10 Alan Simpson: The resumé
from Fourier onwards was fascinating. What troubled me were the
things you were saying before that which were really about incentives.
The troubling part of it was that it is very easy to see lots
of fragments that are thrown out as incentives without there being
a coherent strategy. As I was listening, I was reminded of a different
approach, that well-known scientist Modali of Chicago who said
that if you grab them by the balls their hearts and minds will
follow. Rather than offering incentives and hoping, is not the
scientific scenario that you depict one that says we just have
to change the rules? Business will change its practices when Government
changes the rules. That is what happened when we introduced the
Clean Air Act. Governments had exhorted industry for decades to
try and clean up their act. It was not until they were obliged
to do so that the nature of air pollution changed. Are we not
faced with the same issues here? If we want houses to be more
energy efficient, why do we not require that each new property
that is built to generate a proportion of its own energy? If there
are puddles of flash flooding, why do we not say it has to be
a planning duty that each new building and car park has to have
its own soakaway or reservoir facilities to deal with this? Why
do you duck the issues of obligations?
Professor Sir David King: I wish
it were me who was ducking them. It is not quite that simple.
Q11 Chairman: Why do we duck it,
not coming back for the things that we have a duty to do?
Professor Sir David King: It is
a very good question. I think first of all that the Office of
the Deputy Prime Minister is looking at Building Regulations as
a dynamic process. In other words, Building Regulations will be
improved next year, but that is a continuing process. We have
to move towards the kind of system that you describe, but I do
think we have to do this realistically. I have been advising Government
long enough now that I realise that there is a real world that
can only change at a certain rate. I would like to emphasise this:
our objective as a Government is, I believe, to demonstrate that
we can cope with carbon dioxide reductions and lead the world
in doing this and at the same time have a really quite remarkable
growth in our GDP. In other words, we are growing our GDP at a
substantial rate, but we are reducing emissions. That is an important
fact to demonstrate to the rest of the world that meeting the
carbon emissions reductions requirements in order to stabilise
the world's emissions is not something that will hamper your economic
growth. It is right that the tensions that you are really referring
to are between economic growth and reducing emissions, and will
continue into the future. We have to find the right pathway through,
but your question was very good because you are focusing on win-win
situations. If you put a wind turbine on the roof of your house,
the capital cost of that will repay in terms of the lower running
cost of your house. There is an interesting problem that the private
sector in particular tends to occupy buildings on a relatively
short-term scale. So payback times of more than five years are
looked at askance from that point of view, but it is a good question.
Q12 Paddy Tipping: You talked to
us earlier on about recent trends in carbon emissions in the UK
that have gone down. Now they are going up largely because the
burning of fossil fuels is on the increase again. One of the sectors
I do not think you touched on so far is the transport sector.
If there is an area of policy where perhaps we are not making
much gain, I suspect it is the transport sector. Could you give
us a bit of a commentary about what you think is happening there?
Professor Sir David King: Yes.
I think the other country that is leading in terms of the carbon
emissions targets is Germany and precisely the same problem, if
you like, is occurring there where, as better behaviour emerges
in the built environment and in utility production of energy,
transport is remaining as the growing problem area. I do believe
that it is going to take quite a while to bring this into line
with the anticipated reductions. There are two areas of transport
that are really quite separate: one is ground and one is air.
In terms of ground transport, I think we are very pleased to see
the emergence of the hybrid engine to replace the straightforward
combustion engine, which I am very happy to say I arrived here
in a car driven by a hybrid engine. The Government car service
is now beginning to change its fleet to hybrid engine driven cars,
at least as an option. Sixty-eight miles per gallon in London
from a car that is delivering a top speed of 106 miles an hour
(not in London). We will, I am sure, see the hybrid engine come
in very substantially in the future. I am convinced that that
will then be coupled with a very significant reduction in carbon
dioxide emissions. Again, it is a win win. The fuel costs for
the driver are substantially reduced. Of course, I am very pleased
that in London the congestion charge on cars has not been applied
to hybrid engine driven cars. That is another fiscal process that
can bring on the right sort of behaviour. With air travel, we
have, of course, a bigger problem and there the problem is that
there is no tax on the fuel that the aircraft use. The reason
given usually is that this requires international agreement. We
do have international agreements on very many things, such as
fishing. I think it means that international agreements are possible
in this area as well. Certainly I am very pleased that Britain
is backing the introduction of aircraft carbon dioxide production
into the emissions trading process. We have pushed it in Europe
and we will continue to push for it on the international scene.
Air travel is exacerbated in this sense by the push for very cheap
travel—and I suspect we are all guilty of this particular
form of travel—and the practice there is for very rapid
turnaround at airports. Many of us will travel on these flights
precisely because they often get in early and the timing is very
good, but the way they achieve that is to fill up with fuel in
the morning and then travel with a very heavy plane through most
of their flights. This is a very expensive way of using fuel.
It is also, of course, very bad for the environment and that is
where fiscal process, Chairman, is simply not coming into play
to get the right behaviour at the moment.
Q13 Paddy Tipping: You take an overview
of Government scientific advice. I suspect in the Department of
Transport climate change is not high on the agenda. Do you think
it is?
Professor Sir David King: I think
climate change is now high on the agenda right across Government.
As a matter of fact this comes from Number 10, for example, there
is a Clean Vehicle Group. I sit on that group looking at exactly
this problem and bringing biofuels on. No, I do not think any
department is escaping the rigours of the climate change agenda.
Q14 Paddy Tipping: Finally, you mentioned
biofuels. It has been on the agenda for a long time. Why are we
not using it more frequently in the UK?
Professor Sir David King: The
idea is to ramp up the percentage of biofuel in the petrol that
you fill your car with; that is already happening and will continue
to happen, but let me quickly say—
Q15 Paddy Tipping: Let me challenge
you: you say that is happening. I am not entirely sure it is;
is it?
Professor Sir David King: Let
me come back to you on the current percentage of biofuels in fuel.
Let me say at once that I believe if we look at this as a global
problem, as we have to, that there are very significant limits
on what biofuels can produce globally. The other major problem
facing us globally is clean water provision. Each of these problems
is generated by our global population. We are now at 6.2 billion
and we are likely to plateau out at about 10 billion provided
there are no major disasters. Clean water provision to provide
the food that we require is not going to meet that global population
demand at its present rate beyond about 2040. A further demand
to provide energy through clean water, as you would need with
biofuels, would only exacerbate that problem.
Q16 Mr Lepper: Sir David, you said
just now that the push within Government was coming from Number
10 and influencing, as you see it, all Government departments.
The Prime Minister has obviously made it clear that during the
UK's Presidency of the G8 next year climate change is going to
be a priority issue. I think we kick off with the conference in
February at the Hadley Centre to review the latest climate change
science. Is that going to be, do you believe, more than just a
sort of showplace reviewing the state of science, or is the hope,
the aim that it might come up with some policy strategy initiatives
that are going to inform not only that year of the Presidency
but the G8 from then on?
Professor Sir David King: It was
the Prime Minister's desire that the discussions that ensue during
the G8 Presidency year on climate change should be informed by
science. It was, therefore, his request that we put right up early
in the year a meeting to evaluate the current state of climate
change science. This is a meeting that is not intended in any
way to overtake or supplant the activity of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change which continues its own work at its own
pace. The meeting to be held in the Hadley Centre from 1 to 3
February will have the senior scientific players from around the
world at it. I believe those scientists feel that is a very good
opportunity to review together the current state of climate change
science. As a matter of fact, since the Intergovernmental panel
last reported in 2001, climate change science has really moved
on in leaps and bounds. Virtually weekly, Chairman. In the journals
Nature and Science, there are very important papers
in this area being published. I think the scientific community
sees this as a marvellous opportunity to review the science. The
intention is not for us in the British Government to put a heavy
hand on that conference. It is rather to see that the scientists
can set out the scientific arena as they see it today. What we
are not, therefore, anticipating is any policy directives to come
from the scientific conference itself, but rather a clear statement
of where the science is at the moment so that the politicians
can take it from there.
Q17 Mr Lepper: That has clarified
that for me, thank you. You said that the speed of understanding
of science by scientists increases rapidly. You also talked about
the importance of the international panel but said that it will
continue "at its own pace". I was a little worried by
that "at its own pace". Is there that suggestion that
the political discussions at international level are lagging behind
the speed of accumulation of scientific understanding?
Professor Sir David King: The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an Intergovernmental
group of scientists; that is not a political grouping. The COP
meeting taking place in Brazil this week is a meeting of officials
from governments. That continues under the United Nations Framework
on Climate Change which will continue to meet on a regular basis,
certainly more than once a year, but the scientists will only
next report I think in 2007. They make a very detailed report.
The report of the scientific community published in 2001 is many
hundreds of pages long and it does represent the work of thousands
of scientists.
Q18 Mr Lepper: Is science currently
looking at not only mitigating the effects of climate change,
which is what we usually talk about, but also adapting to the
effects of climate change? Is the balance right in the way in
which both the scientific community and the public generally think
about the issue of climate change: mitigation, adaptation?
Professor Sir David King: I am
very glad you have posed that question in that clear form because
I think that it is quite right that we focus attention on mitigation
because carbon dioxide reductions are going to be key to the long-term
behaviour of our planetary climate system. In the shorter term,
adaptation measures are vital for almost every country round the
world. It is often said that countries like Russia will benefit
from the climate change, the warming of the climate. The melting
of the permafrost creates massive problems for built environment
on the permafrost. As a matter of fact, the Alaskan pipeline is
already beginning to suffer from the melting of the permafrost
in the Alaska-Canada region. The climate change impacts region
by region around the world are quite severe. Because these impacts
begin to take effect rather slowly I think countries are being
slow to respond to them. If I can just dwell on the hot summer
of 2003: I am one of those who stresses that we must not associate
each extreme event with climate change, so in the case of Boscastle,
I do not know if that would have happened with or without climate
change. The summer of 2003 is the biggest natural disaster that
central Europe has seen probably since 1500 or maybe longer. Currently,
we estimate over 30,000 deaths can be associated with that very
hot summer we experienced in Europe. It is certainly the hottest
on record by a long way, by such a long way that when you take
the data we have going back to 1864, that summer of 2003 stands—excuse
the mathematical term—5.2 standard deviations away from
the mean of that period, which means that it is a 1 in 1,000 year
event. That is only if you take 1864 to the present time as static.
Now there have been two very detailed statistical analyses of
that summer published which show that, however, with warming of
the climate the extremity of that temperature rise, half of it
can be attributable to the baseline increase and half to an extreme
event. We can say with 90% confidence that half of the severity
is attributable to climate change. Then extrapolate forward and
by the time you get to about 2045, that will be a typical summer
in Europe. That event which would have been a 1 in 1,000 year
rises to a 1 in 100 and actually happens and in perhaps 35, 40
years' time will become an average summer, by which time we will
not be going off skiing in the Alps.
Q19 Mr Lepper: Can I ask you one
final thing? We talk and you have talked now about global warming
and about climate change in that sense. We have had some evidence
from the Biosciences Federation which talks about research which
could indicate that changes in ocean currents could cause Europe
to freeze. What is the status of that theorising at the moment?
What is the likelihood of it happening? Are the two scenarios
that seem to be global warming and global cooling incompatible
or are they part of the same issue?
Professor Sir David King: They
are certainly not incompatible, and it is certainly not going
to happen The Day After Tomorrow. If I can for a moment,
Chairman—I realise my children tell me I am inclined to
give lectures so you must stop me—but if we take the ocean
over the equator as being hot by virtue of receiving much more
solar energy and the fact that it has a movement up towards the
northern pole, so that ocean surface water that is hot moves up
to the northern pole. As it gets up there, it is cooled down and
as it cools because it is saline, salty, it drops below the hot
current and can actually flow back underneath it. We have this
thermohaline circulation current which is the world's biggest
heat conveyor. It is conveying heat from the tropical regions
up into the northern region. Our temperature is, therefore, maybe
25 degrees centigrade higher than it would otherwise be. A corollary,
by the way, is that equatorial temperatures are, therefore, lower,
so there is a balance. It depends on the salinity of the water.
What happened eight and a half thousand years ago, and this is
why we have some knowledge of this, was that over Canada there
was an ice dam formed that was literally damming up over Canada
a great pool of fresh water. During the warming from the last
ice age, that ice suddenly broke, the dam broke and the water
flowed into the North Atlantic. The salinity rapidly changed and
it switched off the thermohaline current. In that period the global
warming was arrested and then climbed up again in Europe. That
is exactly what the scientists are raising as a possibility of
happening as we lose Arctic ice. We have lost at least 40% of
Arctic ice so far over the last 50 years. As that goes, because
ice itself is non-saline, the salinity of the oceans changes and
that threatens the thermohaline current. The probability of that
happening, the probability of it switching off is probably low.
The probability of slowing down the circulation may not be so
low. There is some evidence coming through now that there is some
slowing down. The overall timescale of the event—and this
is why I referred to the film The Day After Tomorrow—it
will not happen in two weeks. It is something that if it happens,
it may happen over a three-decade period. There is another interesting
question which is: if we have the rest of the globe warming up
and we are then losing the thermohaline current keeping us warmer,
we may end up with a climate in balance.[1]
There is no clear indicator that we would actually go into a mini
ice age, but because the rest of the globe is warming up, we may
not suffer. Having said that, my final point is that the areas
around the equatorial region will warm up more as a result of
switching off the thermohaline current. All the focus is not on
what happens in the north, which is where we are, but actually
Africa, which is already set to suffer twice the average temperature
change for the globe.
1 Footnote inserted by witness: The latest
publications by the IPCC state that all models show a weakening
in the Gulf Stream but none predict it to shut down by 2100. Deliberately
switching off the RHC in climate models leads to a cooling in
the UK, but the level varies depending on the models used. An
average figure published by the IPCC shows UK temperatures falling
by 1-3 degrees centigrade over a decade. The more probable outcome
is that any reduction in average temperatures in North-West Europe
due to a weakening of the THC will be more than offset by global
warming. Back
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