Fair weather report on tackling climate change from Sir David King

October 2005

As the debate rages over business responsibilities on global warming, the Government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has revealed he’s an optimist on the issue.

Speaking to business leaders at an event at the House of Lords, hosted by executive career counsellors IDDAS, Sir David said: “I believe the global response is going to handle the problem. I am certainly more optimistic than I was a year ago.”

But Sir David didn’t underplay the seriousness of the situation. “There is no wriggle-room in this. It’s simple physics. If we really want to handle the problem in the period beyond 2030, for Britain and for others, we are going to have to reduce emissions from fossil fuels”.

He stressed the need “to grab every opportunity to develop carbon-free energy sources”, including farming tidal energy, as well as developing energy savings through improved building design. “London’s built environment costs could be reduced by a factor of two if we had better building regulations.”

He said adaptation to the impacts of climate change had to be tackled country by country. But he warned that while the problems facing the UK - specifically the risk of increased flooding – “are quite severe, the impact on Asia and Africa are simply massive by comparison.” The nations most able to manage the risks from global warming, he said, would be those with the wealth.

In a speech charting the scientific work on climate change since the discovery of the greenhouse effect in 1827, Sir David provided some chilling statistics. A key figure in this field of study is the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere. During every ice age, levels were about 180-220 (parts per million). The current level is 379 ppm, rising by 2 ppm each year. Sir David said if we continue at the present rate, the level by the end of the century will be 800 ppm – a situation not seen for 50 million years when Antarctica was a tropical land