You may know that the UK has been suffering from extreme weather conditions for the past couple of weeks. The relative warmth of the north Atlantic means that the weather systems that have caused the cold and snow in the USA have translated as a series of very heavy rain storms. Over most of the country the ground is completely saturated, with floods in many places. More rain is expected as the low pressure area currently hitting the Eastern seaboard is pushed across "the pond".
The British Conservative party has its share of right wing climate change deniers - usually the old fogeys from the Thatcher years who have shuffled upstairs to the House of Lords. One "equivicater" is the current Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary, Owen Paterson, who has questioned the link with human activity and has obviously swallowed a lot of the change denialists in the USA's arguments.
In particular, Paterson made this comment in the BBC's "Question Time" show last June in response to a question "Are those concerned about climate change talking anti-scientific green ideological nonsense?":
"Well I'm sitting like a rose between two thorns here and I have to take practical decisions - erm - the climate's always been changing - er - Peter [Hain, Labour MP] mentioned the Arctic and I think in the Holocene the Arctic melted completely and you can see there were beaches there - when Greenland was occupied, you know, people growing crops - we then had a little ice age, we had a middle age warming - the climate's been going up and down - but the real question which I think everyone's trying to address is - is this influenced by manmade activity in recent years and James [Delingpole, a full bloodied denier] is actually correct - the climate has not changed - the temperature has not changed in the last seventeen years and what I think we've got to be careful of is that there is almost certainly - bound to be - some influence by manmade activity but I think we've just got to be rational (audience laughter) - rational people - and make sure the measures that we take to counter it don't actually cause more damage - and I think we're about to get -"
Evidence perhaps that Paterson had been rather too busy with "rural affairs" to take time to be properly briefed by his civil servants. On Wednesday though his boss, David Cameron effectively put him down.
At Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons, Cameron was asked by Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat back bencher who is currently party president) if the recent extreme weather and floods were a ""destructive and inevitable consequence, at least in part, of climate change". Cameron replied:
"I agree with you that we are seeing more abnormal weather events. Colleagues across the House can argue about whether that is linked to climate change or not. I very much suspect that it is.
"The point is that whatever one's view it makes sense to invest in flood defences...It makes sense to get information out better and we should do all of those things."
Cameron went on to list some of the measures the Coalition had put in place like the
Green Investment Bank (whilst ignoring the fact it was a policy demanded by the Liberal Democrats in the coalition agreement).