Database

Evidence from: 5th December seminar: Oxford Martin School “Now for the long term” Lord Martin Rees and Sir John Beddington spoke around facts and projections contained in a publication of the same title. http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/commission/Oxford_Martin_Now_for_the_Long_Term.pdf Rees Having looked at the state of play and the academic projections out to 2050, Rees espoused the following ideas. Global solutions are needed [but perhaps instituted by new bodies, not just the UN], Equality is the main solution, anything which should add to sustainability must be good, whatever we do now should not in effect be paid for by our great grandchildren. Besides the political inputs he also noted that it is the developed world that is most vulnerable to a sudden loss of capacity in IT. He thought that investment in resilience measures would be justifiable. He suggested some sort of global watchdog that could help protect the more dependent. Beddington By 2050 in Asia

Evidence from: Sir Mark Walport, speaking at the Oxford Martin School. 3rd December 2013. The focus was on privacy and personal identity. One argument was that out of all the information we have control of we choose exactly what and how much we disclose in a given situation. Given that selectivity is not a fundamental problem, should we complain when governments and companies choose what information they wish to represent each of us by? Should we complain when they choose to cross check what we tell them using independent sources? The idea that we are in command of the representation we go by is a fragile one. It was pointed out that not sharing information could present risks to an individual. Obsessive secrecy is not the optimum, complete openness is not the optimum. Somehow a balance must be struck; each case to be judged on its merits. practical problems: Consent to data sharing in exchange for access to services is now a common practice. Does the person really consent or is there

Evidence from: 30th October lectures entitled Is climate change science a barrier to flood management decision making? by Jon Wicks and What is the risk of drought in the Thames basin? by Jim Hall Both speakers had used climate change projections to estimate the effect on water flow. Both had been intensely aware of the political interest in their work. Speaker Jon advised that modelling was useful when it considered the probability of stepping over a critical threshold. First you must know what is the critical threshold e.g. a certain depth of flood water, and this is essentially a political decision. He added that modellers tend to focus on the things they can actually model and to underplay by their absence, the things they cannot model. For example, an administrative decision might increase the population in a low lying area thus approaching a loss of life threshold even in the absence of climate change. He presented an estimate that by 2050 the damage bill in Shanghai would increa

Evidence from: Oxford water lecture series 23rd Oct 2013 Matt Cullen (ABI) explained flood re, Prof Edmund Penning Rowsell delved into the economics of risk rating and subsidy. The annual property premium in the UK is circa £9bn. Most perils are predictable, but flood losses are very volatile e.g £3bn in 2007 on commercial and domestic flooding combined. Reinsurance would seem to be in the region of £13bn. Around 500,000 homes in the UK are at very high risk of flooding, a high proportion of these are council tax band A and B and have a high probability of not insuring either structure or contents. This causes political embarrassment when large numbers of people find out what it is not to be resilient. Flood Re would offer a subsidised insurance scheme for such domestic risks. It is estimated that home-owners would contribute £140m annually, the property insurance market would top this up with an additional £180m by annual levy. Flood Re would be able to buy reinsurance. The 1:200 year

Evidence from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/27_09_13_ipccsummary.pdf The summary is labelled as a summary for policy-makers. As such it provides statements of agreed judgements made by climate scientists. It provides selected illustrative support for those judgements but not in a way that can be independently sense checked. It is hoped that the evidence reports will eventually provide that data in a suitable form. For some unexplained reason, the uncertainty in data points is provided with 90% confidence intervals when the standard for science is the 95% confidence interval. This is not a major criticism but indicates a willingness to report an apparently higher degree of certainty by up to 20 %.  Much larger uncertainties are found in the choice of model rather than how well the essentially similar models agree with each other. Chief among these choices are vertical energy flow mechanisms, which are not well modelled. In the period 1998 to 2012 global mean surface temper

Evidence from: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmtran/117/117.pdf On the subject of evidence: ‘We broadly support the Government’s proposals on improving medical reports but would like to go further and require whiplash claimants to provide more information in support of their claim, such as proof that they saw a medical practitioner shortly after their accident. In addition, we recommend that the Government bring forward  recommendations to reduce the time period during which whiplash claims can be made.’ ‘In our view, the bar to receiving compensation in whiplash cases should  be raised.’ ‘ There should be a presumption against accepting claims where such information is not provided.’ ‘We support the proposal that there should be an accreditation scheme for medical practitioners (who need not all be doctors) who provide medical reports in relation to whiplash claims. We also agree that these reports should be availa