The transcript of Martin Rees' recent evidence session at the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee is now available. The relevant excerpt for readers here is as follows:
Chair: Can we move on to a subject that I know that has caused you some angst over the last few months?
Q75 Graham Stringer: Do you think public confidence has been damaged (and, if so, by how much) by the leak of emails from the University of East Anglia? Where do you think public confidence is in climate science, at the moment?
Lord Rees of Ludlow : In climate science in particular?
Q76 Graham Stringer: Yes.
Lord Rees of Ludlow : Obviously, the publicity over those emails did have an effect, and that combined with the cold winter, etc, did have an effect. What the Minister said last week to this Committee, I think, reflected the situation that nothing has really changed regarding the science. The scientists have been exonerated of any sort of unprofessional conduct. As I say, the science is not affected. However, I think there are lessons that should be learnt. Firstly, the IPCC procedure needs to be modified, and I mentioned that had been done by this InterAcademy study, which will report next month, when The Royal Society hosted a final meeting last week. So the IPCC procedure is going to have to be modified in order to restore confidence and to make it less cumbersome to make the interaction between governments and science slightly different, and also to ensure that it is not just a seven-year cycle where things go into orbit in between but where there is a secretariat that can update the science and respond to concerns. That is one thing. The other lesson that has been learnt is the need to have proper protocols for ensuring that data is made available to anyone who is able to analyse it. I think that, again, is something which has been brought under control now in many sciences, but in space science there are firm protocols. I think what went wrong in this particular case was that some of the data goes back a long way and was collected when clearly climatology was a rather arcane and under-funded subject, whose practitioners had no idea of the importance it would subsequently have. I think lessons have been learnt and this leads to, I hope, a change in the mindset of scientists towards being more willing to share their data with genuine enquirers.
Q77 Graham Stringer: I think the last point is well made. I do not think David Willetts’s point, that you referred to, is as well made because the three inquiries - the inquiry by this Committee, the inquiry by Muir Russell and the inquiry by ---
Lord Rees of Ludlow : Oxburgh
Q78 Graham Stringer: None of them looked really looked at the science, and where they stepped over the science, as Oxburgh did, he said that he was rather surprised that methods that depended on advanced statistics had not used advanced statisticians; he said that they had also used subjective methods. So I think David Willetts was wrong to say that somehow these had validated the science, because the science was not looked at. One, do you think the science should be looked at? If it was to be looked at, how would it be done?
Lord Rees of Ludlow : I would, to some extent, contest what you have just said. These papers were refereed, but the key thing which the Oxburgh Committee did was to actually go and sit with the scientists and see what they actually did and how they analysed the data. As regards the statistics, Professor Hand from Imperial College, who is one of the UK’s leading statisticians, was put on the Oxburgh Panel precisely because he had that expertise. What the report said was that indeed they had not used the optimum sophisticated techniques but he thought it would not have made any difference to the results. So, again, I do not think the science from that group is severely under question from the techniques they used. Of course, I should also emphasise that the science from that group is just one small element in the overall body of evidence on climate change in the past. In my view, the most important piece of evidence that policy makers need to take account of is not the past climate at all but the completely uncontroversial rise in the carbon dioxide concentration over the last 50 years, which is due to, primarily, the burning of fossil fuels. That is, I think, the most important data, and that is not controversial.
Q79 Graham Stringer: Can you explain to us a little bit about your own new pamphlet that you are going to produce on climate science? At the end of May there were three elected Fellows of The Royal Society who complained about the information that was being put out. I paraphrase but they said that the information was too sinister (?) and did not reflect the totality of the sciences as well as it could have done. Is that document being produced and will it be very different from what went before?
Lord Rees of Ludlow : I think you are referring to someone who criticised the document that we put out a few years ago which was a response to the Channel 4 programme The Climate Swindle.
Q80 Graham Stringer: Yes.
Lord Rees of Ludlow : So we need to update that in a number of ways, and we are doing that. More importantly, what we have done at The Royal Society is had a whole series of conferences to address what is happening in climate science. We had a meeting on greenhouse gases in the early spring, followed by a meeting on uncertainty in science. We have another one on computer models. So these are all meetings and all our Royal Society discussion meetings are open to the public, and I would hope that those who are sceptical about the science would take the opportunity to attend these meetings. I think the important thing is to try and push forward the science and reduce the uncertainties. As you say, in terms of expressing the scientific consensus in a form that is important and that is accessible to the public and to politicians, that is one of our roles, and that is what we are doing. So we are updating the one which was on the web earlier. I would say that if anyone looks at The Royal Society’s literature there are several volumes of our journals reporting conferences we have had on climate change which have been very controversial. Anyone who attended these meetings would certainly not be able to say that there is a quiet consensus and that people who make assertions are not tackled. It is a very controversial subject.