Karl Moore: It's Karl Moore for the Globe and Mail for Talking Management. Today I am talking to Steve Rayner who is a professor at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and the Director of the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization.
Good afternoon, Steve.
Steve Rayner: Good afternoon, Karl.
KM: When we talk about ‘climate change' or ‘global warming', actually which is the proper term - ‘global warming' or ‘climate change' - these days?
SR: I think that the scientifically more proper term would be ‘climate change' because we're at least as much interested in changes in precipitation as in temperature, although interestingly enough there are those in the environmental movement who regard the term ‘climate change' as a fudge because they feel that the notion of global warming, or global heating, is somehow or other a more potent, threatening, term.
KM: One of our newspapers in Canada, The National Post, has kind-of talked about climate change as “junk science.” Is it real; is the climate actually changing?
SR: Well, I think that there is no doubt about the fact that we are seeing changes in the climate. The extent to which any particular manifestation of those can be attributed to human forcing through greenhouse gas emissions is, I think, still to some extent debateable. But I think as long ago as 1990 it was fairly clear that the overall physics of continuing to emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in increasing concentrations would inevitably bring about some climate forcing effect, even if it was unclear what the particular regional implications would be and what the time scale would be.
So, first of all, climate change is a real phenomenon. Certainly it also has some human forcing effect, though it is not really, it seems to me, credible to try to attribute particular hurricane events or increased storm intensity to the effects of climate change. For instance, there has been quite a lot of fuss made about the idea that the costs of hurricane damage have increased markedly in the last few decades, and its perfectly true that if you look at the hurricane record from the middle of the 20th century that there has been some increase in hurricane intensity. But most of the increase in damage costs is actually from putting expensive infrastructure in silly places like coastal zones and beach fronts and that kind of the thing. So, we have to recognize that it is not just the climate that we are changing through human activity; it is actually patterns of human settlement and behaviour that are also at the same time increasing the vulnerability of human populations and the vulnerability of certain marginal natural populations – certain kinds of species and so on – to the effects of climate.
In a sense, climate has always been dangerous. The object of the Framework Convention on Climate Change is to prevent dangerous interference with the atmosphere, but climate has always been dangerous. It's a question really of the extent to which it is now endangering some of the comfortable ways in which we are accustomed to dealing with it, particularly in the industrialized world.
KM: So, climate change is real. One of the key ways that the world has chosen to deal with it at this point is the Kyoto Accord. You've written some negative things about Kyoto. What are some of your criticisms of that accord?
SR: Well, interestingly enough, yes I have written some negative things about the Kyoto Protocol, and it is fascinating to me that a lot of the negative response to those criticisms has really been based on Kyoto as a symbol. And I think that Kyoto has come to mean, in many people's minds, any kind of concerted international action in response to climate change. I'm very much in favour of having a serious policy response to climate change, and I've been convinced of the necessity of that since 1990. When I'm critical of Kyoto, I'm being specifically critical of the Kyoto Protocol and the measures and mechanisms by which that protocol seeks to come to grips with the policy challenges presented by climate change.
