Will the foot come off the pedal in drive to cut transport CO2?

19 February 2016

Benny Peiser

The chart shows a growing disparity between temperature forecasts of climate models (red line) and observed temperatures (green and blue lines) in the troposphere. The red line is the five-year running mean of the 102 computer models found in the 2013 assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that can generate temperatures in this layer of the atmosphere. The chart was presented to the US House of Representatives just before Christmas by professor John Christy of the University of Alabama.

The need to decarbonise transport is driven by the Climate Change Act target of an 80% cut to greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 against 1990 levels. Critics such as Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Forum, say the Act is damaging the economy and ministers should slow the pace of action. Andrew Forster went to meet him.

Climate change hasn’t been quite the driving force in transport policy that many expected it to be when the Climate Change Act was passed in 2008....