Climate Change Act 2008 (2020 Target, Credit Limit and Definitions) Order 2009

My Lords, if I may say so, that is a perfect example of unsubstantiated assertion and anecdote. The world’s leading expert by far on sea levels is Professor Axel Morner, the IPCC’s lead author on sea levels. He says that sea levels have been increasing at six and a half inches per century since the little ice age, that they have over the past 100 years modestly declined, and that they are now rising at about six inches per century. The assertion of one and a half metres, and Al Gore’s absurd assertion of many metres, are pure speculation and wholly unsubstantiated by observation, or by the best single expert on sea levels in the universe—the IPCC’s lead author, who resigned from the IPCC, if I am not mistaken, because he refused to substitute fanciful numbers for the right ones. I turn back to the science. It is widely believed that there is a universal consensus. If that is so, why have 33,000 scientists—the number grows so fast that I may be out of date, and it may be 35,000 or 40,000—signed a protest against the climate extremism expressed in the Kyoto Protocol? There is no scientific consensus. There is an official, political consensus. There are dangers to people’s careers and funding, and to the esteem in which they are held in official circles, if they express the views that I am expressing now. I can express them because I am not a scientist, so my career is not at risk. There is absolutely no consensus. I once wrote a letter to the Times, saying roughly what I am saying now. I received a flood of letters, and those supporting me outnumbered those against me by six or seven to one. Many of them came from professors and fellows of the Royal Society who said that they did not care to speak out. That is just anecdote—I will not give their names—but it is typical. If you immerse yourself in the blogosphere, which is as good a place as any to study the science—and where sceptics are much more courteous and open to dissent than believers—you will find that scientific opinion is very divided, and that there are at least as many sceptics as believers. The concern of anybody who is open-minded, and who recognises that ships must not pass in the night and that we must try to come to some agreement, is that the Government are not open-minded. They have signed up to the most expensive possible version of climate extremism. Professor Carter, a distinguished economist specialising in climate economics in Australia, recently testified before the authorities there that emissions trading schemes would cost every Australian family 3,500 Australian dollars per year for a theoretical IPCC-modelled reduction of one-1,000th of a degree centigrade. Let us suppose—although he is a very distinguished witness—that he is wrong by a factor of 100. It would still be true that the theoretical saving in climate warming would be one-10th of 1 degree—a wholly trivial amount for a vast expenditure. I agree with my noble friend Lord Lawson that there has not been a proper cost-benefit analysis of this, and that what cost-benefit analysis there has been has gone wholly against the government programme. Has the Minister studied Professor Carter's figures? If so, does he agree with them; do the Government agree with them? If they do not, do they have better-founded estimates and what are they? As I say, the professor is a very serious witness, and if he is even remotely right, the cost of government emission reduction schemes is frankly grotesque. He particularly applied it to emissions trading schemes, but the same goes for carbon offset, wind farms and various other forms of government-sponsored intervention. Sometimes people talk about those vast expenses as though they were free, as though they fell out of the air. They do not; they come out of the vast shortfall in resources that are needed for huge projects, whether for economic well-being, reafforestation, ocean pollution or disease control—to go rather closer to home than the climate change arena. The trillions that we intend to spend on those grotesque schemes have to be taken from somewhere, and that is where they will be taken from—from adaptation, flood defences, reafforestation and disease control projects. Or, if the money comes straight out of the economy, it will come out of the wealth creation that is essential to survive properly in the 21st century. It is not too late for the Government to reconsider. In my opinion, the only redeeming feature of the order is that there is not the slightest prospect that it will be taken seriously or actually implemented. Even if every other country signed up, it would not be implemented. I just ask the Government to reconsider this unsatisfactory proposal.