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Climate Change

At the beginning, I gave a list of six conditions that need to be met, among which were that we need to be clear that the planet is warming, that we are causing it, and whether removing the effect that we might be introducing to the system can arrest or reverse the process. My personal view is that global warming is taking place and that there is, in the language of climate science, an anthropogenic signal, which might be large. I have noted that arguments within the scientific community about the scale of that signal are now extremely vigorous. It is not true that the scale of the anthropogenic signal is settled among climate scientists. However, my hon. Friend asked for my personal view. I have read quite a lot on the subject, and my view is that the anthropogenic signal probably forms a large proportion of the increase. Nevertheless, we must bear in mind that the temperature increase was only 0.6 per cent. over the past century, with no further increase in this century, and a not yet fully explained cooling period between the late 1930s and early 1940s and the 1960s. In other words, we are back to the measurement issue that I raised a moment ago. In addition, there is another measurement problem. Although we know pretty accurately the temperature at sea level for the past 150 years, our records are much poorer about temperature in the ocean depths and in the atmosphere, particularly in what is known as the tropical troposphere, about which a fierce debate is taking place. There are unreconciled differences in temperature readings from the tropical troposphere and sea level. Some have tried to come to a clear view about that dispute, but they have failed. The tropical troposphere has not risen in temperature by remotely as much as theory and models predict that it should have, based on what has happened at sea level.