Parliamentarians still seem to be showing an admirable interest in the nitty gritty of statistics as applied in the climate change field. Here's a question and answer exchange between Peter Lilley and Greg Barker:
Lilley: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change what assessment his Department has made of whether the decrease in the extent of Arctic sea ice since reliable records began is statistically significant; and what statistical model his Department has used to conduct that assessment.
Barker: The Department has not commissioned any assessment of the statistical significance of long-term trends in Arctic sea-ice extent. Work undertaken under the Climate Programme at the Met Office Hadley Centre has assessed the physical reasons for the decrease in ice extent and used physically-based climate models to assess its future course ('Assessment of possibility and impact of rapid climate change in the Arctic':
We note that the downward trend in Arctic sea-ice extent, taking account of the seasonal cycle, is now well-established from satellite observations since 1979 and has been reported as being statistically significant in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
Given what we know about the amount of checking that doesn't go on in academic studies these days, particularly climate change, for policymakers to rely on the scientific literature is foolish in the extreme. In fact one could go so far as to characterise it as negligence.