Professor Philip Stott is an ecologist based at the Department of Geography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Professor Stott's research interests include biogeography and tropical ecology, as well as the role and significance of environmentalist movements and debates.

How easy is it to determine what causes climate change?
Climate is probably one of the most complex science issues that any scientist has to face. It is horrifyingly difficult. We know it is governed by a million, nay, probably a billion variables, what we will call ‘factors’, separate factors. These range quite literally from the flip of a butterfly’s wing to erupting volcanoes, to oceans, to the changing surface of the earth, through the changing geometry of the earth, through natural greenhouse gases, including the most important greenhouse gas of all, water vapour, not CO2, right the way up through solar activity to dust, atmospheric dust of all types, and debris, solar debris, plus also, ultimately, chaotic effects.

The trouble with climate is we know so little about so many factors. Even in the last 3 months alone we have learnt of 3 factors that are not in the model. In other words the models at the moment are still relatively primitive, despite what they seem to have a complexity built into them. Therefore the likelihood of pinpointing any single cause is something we should be very careful about accepting.

Why do people believe it’s our fault?
Every generation appears to want a myth, and therefore when we come to look at a change in climate now, people want to explain it in terms of human action and human faults. In other words, we always need a Noah myth, and a Noah myth that says we have sinned. When carbon dioxide came along, which could be seen to come from things like fossil fuel burning, it was a gift to servicing this kind of myth. Instead of saying we have no control over the elements, we had a feeling that we did, but it was not a benign control it was to do with human sinfulness, human greed. And particularly American greed, hence in Europe, where it had an even greater attraction. So I think one of the reasons we particularly like ‘global warming’ is that it seems to fulfil this long history of myths about human action in relation to not just the environment but in relation to goodness and the Garden of Eden and all the rest of it. It’s a great myth.

What we’re always looking for is something that will show that it’s human causes, I think it’s a desperate plea to find a human cause, when primary school physics and science asks us to stand back, look at the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere and say ‘my goodness me, this is just beyond comprehension’.

What do you think about the sharp rise and spike in the temperature curve that it is claimed has occurred over the past 10-20 years?
Firstly, it is not exceptional. Work that is now being done by paleogeologists, those who are looking at the ancient history of the world, there appears that there have been massive rises in temperature over very short periods indeed, over 10 to 100 years up to 4-5 degrees C. It’s not at all exceptional. Secondly, is it actually happening? Measuring temperature is enormously complicated today and I would remind people that in certain of the free atmosphere measurements there are still measures that show cooling, small, but cooling.

What do the temperatures really reflect? In the oceans we’ve just learnt that the figures that have been fed into the models from sea are probably wrong in relation to free air by 40%. So the second point about this, are we really measuring a real spike? But the most important thing comes to a major paper of hard science produced in Nature just before Xmas 2000. This was a magisterial piece of work, by a team under Jan Veizer. If he is right it drives a coach and horses through the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature. Interestingly, that famous paper had virtually no coverage in the European media.

In any case, we have to remember is one simple fact – in 1200AD Europe was 2 degrees centigrade warmer that it is today. We know that, we grew grapes, of course in England, and in was possible even as far as Northumberland. Agriculture flourished in Greenland. More recent work has shown that in S. Africa it was probably 3 degrees C warmer, in other parts of the world 1 degree: so in other words, it was warmer virtually all around the world. The world did not come to a crunching halt.

What is your opinion of the IPCC report?
One of the things I think it is very important for the public to understand about the IPCC report and a lot of other reports too is that they are not reality. They are computer modelling, they are predictions based on models of what possible climates might exist. Quite frankly there are hundreds of them. The IPCC report relates to from about 40 to 250. Recently, interestingly, there was one produced in India showing cooling. They range from cooling, therefore, to extreme warming. But it’s vital to understand that they are based on inadequate models, and I’m afraid, it’s not a criticism, it’s simply the state of the science. And one of the big criticisms of the IPCC that can be made is that next to its ‘scenarios’, as these models are called, there are no risk assessments, that is, what is the likelihood of this scenario actually happening. So we’re dealing with ideas in a computer, not real climate.

What do you think of the Bush administration’s decision not to ratify Kyoto?
In Europe there has been a predictable hysterical and moral outrage at the decision of the Bush administration to withdraw from Kyoto. But we must look very carefully at Europe’s own position – is that moral outrage justified? The EU, which politically and militarily wants to be compared to the US actually produces more CO2 per unit area, more CO2 per person and more CO2 in total than the USA. But who knows that?

Moreover, out of the 15 EU member states, only 2 are predicted to be even near to meeting their Kyoto targets, that’s the UK and Germany. Germany, however, with a precipitate withdrawal from nuclear energy under pressure from their Green movements is unlikely to do so, and there are some estimates that the UK will be 20% short. And when we come to those wonderful moral countries of France and Sweden, that helped to scupper John Prescott’s attempts in the Hague to get an agreement, we find they are miles off meeting their Kyoto targets.

Kyoto agenda clearly has allowed Europe to play a bigger role on the world stage in this particular issue and I am sure that Europe has had its eye on running the carbon trading agenda. It also helps them to continue to have some control over what happens in the developing world – you must keep your rainforests, you must allow us to plant trees here, etc. In other words, there’s a neo-colonial element of Kyoto which Europe definitely has been wanting to exploit.

So you disagree with the decisions taken at Kyoto to control climate by cutting down CO2 emissions?
The idea of controlling climate is the biggest single mistake of Kyoto. It has deflected the international eye from the way that humans have always coped with change – hot, wet, dry or cold – and that is not through control, in other words trying to fiddle about and try to play God with climate, but through adaptation. Just think, suppose our planners had not allowed the building that they have allowed on flood plains. Suppose, alternatively, that the building had built to cope with the 1000 year norms of flooding. Most of the problems that we have seen over the last 2 years in GB wouldn’t have happened. So we come to a very important question here – is the future about control or adaptation? I am absolutely myself 100% convinced that it is it is not about control, but is about adaptation, of ways of living, of architecture, of building design and that that has to be flexible, so that if the change turns in an unpredictable projection we are not caught out.

We must remember change is the norm and it is normally the poor who suffer most from change, because they have the least ability to adapt to it. We must therefore internationally have an agenda in financial terms and technical terms to help wherever inequitable change takes place. We should accept that change is inequitable. Living in GB we are very, very lucky people – we have no volcanoes, minor earthquakes, and fundamentally despite any change a temperate climate. In other words, we have got advantages just by the fact we happen to be born in this geographical area over and above a country like, say, Bangladesh. I think there’s a moral duty indeed to help on that level, but it won’t be done through control at Kyoto, it’s got to be done through international agendas that will with adaptation, growth and development all over the world, wherever inequitable change takes place.

So what I would like to see is a new language turning to flexibility and resilience, rather than sustainability, because I think in the end that’s what wrong with Kyoto, it’s about the idea that we can reach an equilibrium climate, a stable climate, and I want to say 100% that is a lie.

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Content last updated: 14/07/2006

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