18 March 2007Climate Ark / The Independent
Global warming is a "weapon of mass destruction", one of Britain and the world's top climatologists said yesterday. Sir John Houghton, former director-general of the Meteorological Office and chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, entered the debate over the seriousness of climate change after two meteorologists were reported as saying that "some scientists have been guilty of overplaying the available evidence". He said he agreed with the Government's chief scientist, Professor Sir David King, that it posed a greater threat than terrorism.The comments of the two meteorologists, Professor Paul Hardaker and Professor Chris Collier, both of the Royal Meteorological Society - billed on Radio 4 as "leading experts on climate change" - threatened to revive the row over the scientific view of global warming after the broadcasting of Channel 4's polemic The Great Global Warming Swindle 10 days ago, which took issue with the view set out in Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth.One of the most distinguished scientists featured in it, the oceanographer Professor Carl Wunsch of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he has registered a formal complaint with Ofcom.Sir John says he agrees "we must not exaggerate the evidence, and if anything must underplay it". But he adds the evidence of serious climate change is now "very substantial".Sceptics charge that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change exaggerates the dangers. But Sir John, as one of the founders of the panel, says that it had "deliberately underestimated the problem".He says the latest projections of the floods and droughts that will result from the heating of the globe are "frightening". And he adds that the 20,000 deaths caused by the 2003 heatwave in Europe justify the view that it is more dangerous than terrorism.Some confusion surrounded the views of the RMS scientists yesterday after Prof Hardaker told the IoS that he could not think of a case where a scientist had overstated the position. He did however mention a statement by the American Association for the Advancement of Science that described an "intensification of droughts, heatwaves, floods, wildfires and severe storms" as "early warning signs of yet more devastating damage to come".He said he did not disagree with any of this, but thought the AAAS should have made it clear what could be justified by the scientific evidence and what was based on judgement. He pointed out that he and his colleague were not experts on climate change.
