According to the UK Independence Party website UKIP will try to achieve the following if they gain power at the 2010 general election:

9.1 While our climate may currently be changing, this has happened in the past. Greenland was covered by forest that supported butterflies less than 1 million years ago. A mere 10,000 years ago glaciers extended south of Birmingham. In Britain, and probably globally, our climate was relatively warm in Roman times and again in the ‘medieval warm period’. This was followed by a ‘little ice-age’ from about 1350 to 1850, followed by a further period of warming. Global temperatures increased during the twentieth century by only about 0.7 degrees Celsius despite the large-scale industrialisation that took place, with little control of emissions.

Cyclical changes in the brightness of the Sun, variations in the Earth’s orbit, and cosmic and solar radiation effects influencing the amount of cloud formation on Earth, may be raising global temperatures directly and indirectly through the release of carbon dioxide and methane from the Earth’s crust and oceans11. There is an historical association between global temperature and the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide, but rises in temperature have generally preceded rises in carbon dioxide (by about 800 years).

Which is ‘cause’ and which ‘effect’ has yet to be settled convincingly. Oceans act as buffer absorbers of carbon dioxide. They may be approaching saturation but the extent and consequences of this are not well established.

9.2 Greenhouse gases (principally water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, ozone and nitrous oxide) keep our planet habitable. The level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased from about 280 parts per million in the pre-industrial period to about 380 ppm in 200512. Some part of this increase is almost certainly due to the burning of fossil fuels, though the continuing destruction of rain forest (a net absorber) is also a major contributor, together with other anthropogenic sources which include agriculture (for example, methane from farm animals and nitrous oxide from fertiliser use), gas pipeline losses (methane) and so on.

9.3 The Fourth report published by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), using computer models based on a number of scenarios, predicts that the mean global surface air temperature will increase by between about 2 and 6 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. It predicts an increase in adverse weather patterns and a rise in sea-level over this period somewhere in the range 0.2 to 0.6 metres. It sees carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels as the main factor driving the change in temperature. But these model forecasts do not correlate well with actual measurements, and many fail to take account of important influences such as cloud formation and dissipation.

One of the first major published sources to accuse greenhouse gases of driving climate change was the UK Meteorological Office Hadley Centre computer model, first formulated with numerous assumed, rather than measured, climate parameters. Very recently Dr Doug Smith’s team at the Hadley Centre have modified their basic model to include more ‘real’ information about natural ‘cyclic’ factors which include the influence of our oceans, particularly their circulation patterns, and our atmosphere, although cloud effects may still be under-represented. This newly-revised model now predicts little overall warming until after the year 2014. Work elsewhere on cloud effects also suggests that there is still more to be done to achieve forecasting accuracy, even in the short term.

At a conference in Oxford in March 2007, the Chief Officer of the Royal Meteorological Society warned that the global warming situation remains complex, and that sound-bite solutions beloved of press and politicians could bring serious climatology into disrepute.

9.4 If anthropogenic carbon dioxide is indeed proven to be critical to recent global warming, as the IPCC suggests, then UKIP will re-examine its present position.

However, the IPCC also says that much of the expected change in temperature and sea- level over the rest of this century will continue even if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels can be held at current values. Even if their view is essentially correct, we should avoid panic actions to cut emissions: this would do little to modify the climate but would risk serious economic, social and political consequences.

If non-human factors prove to be major drivers of recent global warming, our chances of intervening successfully are slight. Efforts then need to be directed to mitigating consequential problems, for example by moving populations from low-lying areas, enhancing sea and other flood defences, modifying agricultural practices to suit the new conditions, and fishing in more northerly waters expected to have enhanced fish stocks.

9.5 The UK produces less than 2% of global carbon dioxide emissions. Reductions in the use of fossil fuels would have to be made globally to reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There is no present indication that China, India and Brazil, all industrial powers of the future, will comply. While UKIP would support international initiatives that really do bring all the major nations of the world together in a realistic and practical way, self-gratifying gestures that ‘lead the way’ while damaging our economy are unconvincing.

9.6 Ending or reversing the destruction of rain forest is a high priority which is only likely to be achieved if it can be made advantageous to the nations and local peoples immediately involved. Ironically, rain forests are being cleared in some parts of the world in order to allow the production of biofuel crops, causing untold ecological damage to some of the richest sites of biodiversity on the planet.

Until the results of more and better climate research have led to agreement between scientists who are fully independent of political or commercial sponsors, UKIP will remain sceptical of apocalyptic claims.

I would be interested to hear both positive and negative views on UK Independence Party’s policies in the comments below?