Lord Lawson, chairman of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, reiterated his doubts over global warming on the BBC’s Politics Show on Sunday. He then asked for an “honest, rational, reasonable debate” over the issue among the scientists representing both sides of the debate. He also expressed his concerns over the “extremely damaging and harmful policies” being discussed to deal with climate change, and their impact on the poor countries which depend on carbon-based energy for economic development. He said that though there was proof of rise in global temperature in the last quarter of the 20th century, there hasn’t been any further warming since then.
Mr. Ed Miliband, climate change secretary, called Lord Lawson’s actions “profoundly irresponsible” and guilty of spreading doubt despite of well accepted scientific consensus. He also called the leaked e-mail fiasco an attempt to sabotage the Copenhagen summit. He reminded of glaring proofs of global warming provided by the national academies from eight leading industrial countries, and the five leading emerging countries, including India and China. He has reassured the public of climate change affected by human activities and has urged the scientists to put all available data public to put the controversy to rest.
Earlier on Saturday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown had shown his belief in the human activities having a major role in causing global warming. “There’s a flat earth group over the evidence, if I may say so, that exists about climate change, and we’ve got to show them that the scientific evidence is strong,” the prime minister said.