Bishop Hill Lord Smith on Owen Paterson
Jun 27, 2014 Climate: Parliament Environment Agency Leo Hickman pointed this morning to an interview with Lord Smith, the head of the Environment Agency, in the Guardian this morning saying that Smith had said that "Owen Paterson does not accept that global warming is due to CO2".
As I have noted in the past, Paterson seems quite clear that carbon dioxide emissions can affect the climate, so this is a bit of a surprise. However, although the article itself repeats the allegation, the words it quotes Smith as saying about Paterson are actually about something slightly different:
He recognises weather patterns are changing and that something is happening to the climate. But he doesn’t necessarily accept that it’s down to the CO2 we are throwing into the atmosphere. I wish he had a better view on that.
Two things occur to me here. Firstly, there is now a measure of agreement - at least among Met Office scientists and the BH community - that we have not detected anthropogenic global warming in the surface temperature records - there are no statistically significant changes to date [or, put better, that no significant change has been demonstrated]. Claims that there is "something happening" therefore rely on computer simulations of the climate. What though, is the situation for "weather patterns"? Have we detected any statistically significant changes in any other feature of the weather? I am unaware of any.
Secondly, has Paterson actually said that he recognises that weather patterns are changing? If so, did he mean in a statistically significant way?
I wonder if anyone at Defra can throw any light on these questions?
[Phrase in brackets above added at a later date]
Reader Comments (54)
regarding wind chill
I have not thought about it muich, but my gut reaction is that relative humity would be a factor.
I heard John Humphrey (I think it was) on BBC Radio 4 Today yesterday asking Smith if he thought Owen Paterson was incapable of being the Environment Secretary because he was sceptic about the climate. (Question expecting the answer "yes" ).but as far as I recall, Smith just waffled on about extreme weather happening much more and he (Smith) thought it was down to humans.
Sigh.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b047c310
The discussion of who said what tempts me off-topic - is there a reliable way of measuring Relative Humility?