Scientists have spoken out after Reform UK’s deputy leader dismissed scientific consensus on man-made climate as “garbage”.
Richard Tice MP told Sky’s political correspondent Ali Fortescue: “There’s no evidence that man-made CO2 is going to change climate change. Given that it’s gone on for millions of years, it will go on for millions of years.”
Fortescue challenged him with the findings of more than 200 international scientists that humans activities like burning fossil fuels are to blame for the recent hotter climate.
Human influence is “unequivocal”, said the report, which was signed off by all governments, including fossil-fuel-rich Russia, USA and Saudi Arabia.
“No, that’s absolute garbage,” Mr Tice said. “The climate changed for millions of years before man-made CO2.”
Dr George Adamson from King’s College London said the idea that Richard Tice had “discovered something that climate scientists don’t know about is of course preposterous”.
The climate did change for years before humans began burning fossil fuels at scale.
But what alarms scientists now is how quickly it has changed in the last few decades – too fast for nature or societies to keep up.
Many came out today to rebut Mr Tice’s claims.
Recent rapid warming has coincided with a rapid jump in the greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels or chopping down forests. Pic: Prof Ed Hawkins
Dr Andrew Jarvis from Lancaster University called the comments “categorically wrong”, while Dr Philipp Breul from Imperial College London said Mr Tice was “missing the point”.
“We are causing the climate to change significantly faster than it has, to the best of our knowledge, in the last million years,” added Dr Breul.
“This incredibly fast rate of change is the real…
