Having heard Lord Turner the other day I wondered what sort of policy recommendations somebody with his approach to facts might come up with and so I decided to take a look at some of the outputs of the Climate Change Committee, on which he sits alongside such luminaries as Sir Brian Hoskins and Lord May.
This is the report I've been reading, and in particular I've looked at the bit where they try to determine what the global target for temperature stabilisation should be.
As far as I can tell the process is this:
1. Examine a section of the IPCC AR4 WGII report on impacts which looks like this:
;)
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and this...
;)
Click for full size2. Note that above 2°C things get really bad.
3. Decide that 2°C should be the target.
I'm a great one for keeping things simple but, assuming I've got things straight, this seems to err rather on the side of the back of an envelope. Is that really all there is to informing climate change policy in the UK?
And another thing. Why are they only examining costs? What about the benefits of climate change?