The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may have concluded that our warming planet needs immediate action, but two Members of Parliament (MP) are not so sure.
According to BBC News, two MPs voted against a conclusion from the Energy and Climate Change Committee to support the IPCC report. The conclusion stated that humans are directly causing a change in the global climate harmful to the planet's sustainability.
Reportedly known for being skeptical, the two MPs did not agree that there was "no reason to doubt the credibility of the science." The United Nations gathered the world's top environmentalists and scientists to form the IPCC and the group was tasked with compiling an extensive report.
As early drafts and various sections of the IPCC's report leaked ahead of its final release, some criticized the panel for its methodology or the relevance of the information they used. Regardless, one their most central findings was that humans have caused a warming climate since the 1950s and they said that with 95 percent certainty.
"What is starkly clear from the evidence we heard however is that there is no reason to doubt the credibility of the science or the integrity of the scientists involved," Tim Yeo, MP chair of Energy and Climate Change Committee, said at the hearing, according to BBC News. "Policymakers in the UK and around the world must now act on the IPCC's warning and work to agree a binding global climate deal in 2015 to ensure temperature rises do not exceed a point that could dangerously destabilize the climate."
Peter Lilley and Graham Stringer were the two outliers and argued that the other nine MPs were not looking at the IPCC's conclusion with critical enough eyes. For example, the IPCC accepted various uncertainties such as the "global warming pause" since 1997.
"As scientists by training, we do not dispute the science of the greenhouse effect - nor did any of our witnesses," Lilley and Stringer said in a statement. "However, there remain great uncertainties about how much warming a given increase in greenhouse gases will cause, how much damage any temperature increase will cause and the best balance between adaptation to versus prevention of global warming."
