Obama's science advisor calls for climate science investment in Imperial address

Dr John P Holdren delivers the 2012 Grantham Annual Lecture at Imperial College London

Dr John P Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, delivered the Grantham Institute Annual Lecture 2012.

Good weather forecasting saved America tens of billions of dollars' worth of damage to homes and belongings during super-storm Sandy, The White House's most senior science advisor told an audience at Imperial College London last week.

Dr John P Holdren, Assistant for Science and Technology to President Obama, delivered the Grantham Annual Lecture, entitled Coping with Climate Change: Issues in Science, Policy, and Communication, on 13 December 2012 during a special visit where he met with his UK counterparts.

Dr Holdren's lecture included a message for policy-makers that unless money is invested to advance the science of forecasting and modelling climate, the cost of fixing the damage caused by extreme weather events will massively outweigh the cost of doing nothing.

During the event, which was attended by Sir John Beddington, Government Chief Scientific Adviser, and Lord Rees, Astronomer Royal and Visiting Professor at Imperial College London, Dr Holdren addressed the "five big myths about climate science". He began by refuting claims that the planet isn't warming and that if it is human activity is not the main cause, two commonly held beliefs in some political factions of his home country, the United States of America.

Following recent claims by people he called "climate sceptics" that global warming has paused or stopped, Dr Holdren made it clear that this was not a view he shared. He cited "convincing evidence" of a continuing increase in global temperatures. "Although heating of the planet has not been uniform geographically there has been an average 0.53°C increase over the period 2001 to 2005 compared to 1951 to 1980," he said.

Dr Holdren pointed to retreating glaciers and decreases in the coverage and thickness of Arctic sea ice. "In 2012, the extent of the Arctic sea ice in September was by far the lowest since 1979, when satellite observations first began," which he said indicated the extent of climate change occurring, along with many other worrying trends. These included "increased floods, droughts and wildfires, coastal erosion, melting permafrost, coral bleaching and pest outbreaks".

"With continued warming of the climate in the future we can expect to see hotter summers, declining crop yields, worse droughts, sea level rise and increased ocean acidity," he warned.

Addressing the policies needed for humanity to cope with the effects of climate change, Dr Holdren stressed that minimizing the amount of suffering from adverse impacts can only be achieved by both mitigation and adaptation. He said that "more effective communication and education is needed to inform the questions that the public and policy-makers have about what to do and when to do it".

Links

• A video of the lecture is available to watch online
• Slides from the talk are available to download