Mr. Paul Price:

I will add to that by saying we all have huge respect for what the council has done. It did not have an easy job. What Professor McMullin and I are pointing to, and what Professor Anderson just mentioned, is about clarity. Let us be honest about the value judgments we are making because they are unavoidable. In any carbon budget one comes up with, there are unavoidable value judgments to be made about the start year, the prudence, the temperature target and the percentage chance of meeting that target. These are value judgments and it is very important that we make them plainly. If we do that, we will have something to talk about.

How much clarity is there in what is laid out in the Paris test? If we had more clarity, we would be talking about what that means in terms of our portion of the carbon budget, but it is very difficult right now to say exactly what that is and to be honest in the terms Professor Anderson talked about.

Neither I nor any climate scientist is in any way saying that there should be a delay. Certainly, there should not be a delay in getting carbon budgets. It is the responsibility now of the Government to take on and accept carbon budgets and then divvy them up between sectors. That is a huge responsibility and very difficult to do, but there is no idea of delaying in any way.

We should remind ourselves that climate scientists went to Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967 and said there was a problem. Climate scientists have been saying this for all this time, as loudly as we possibly can. I am not a physical climate scientist, but climate researchers in general are saying that. In no way are any of us saying that there should be a delay. We are saying there is a need to act now and possibly act a bit harder, but whatever we do is about acting now without delay.