The Rt Hon Edward Davey MP, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, British Government
First, I must state I find it remarkable that the British government has a Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. There are 24 ministerial departments in the UK government and one of them is the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). Can you imagine a Cabinet member within the executive branch of the United States federal government with the title of Secretary of Energy and Climate Change? Me neither. Not in my lifetime.
The DECC was created October 3, 2008 by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. If you visit the DECC website, you will read this:"Various natural factors, including volcanic eruptions and changes in the Sun's activity and Earth's orbit, have altered the Earths' past climate - but none of them can account for the warming that has occurred since about 1900. Rising greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations from human activity do, however, explain this warming through their enhancement of the natural 'greenhouse effect'."
And there is this: "Records from ice cores confirm the CO2 concentration is now higher than for at least the past 800,000 years and that the extra CO2 in the air today has a chemical fingerprint that links it to fossil fuels."
And this:
"If GHG emissions continue unabated, average global temperatures may rise (relative to 1990 temperatures) by between 1.1 and 6.4°C by the end of this century."
Edward Davey was appointed Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in February of 2012 and a week ago gave a speech at a symposium on climate change at the Royal Society and "was as blunt on the reality of climate science as he was critical of those who deny it."