Climate expert vows to fight the 'naysayers'

Sir John Houghton has accused sceptics of waging a dirty tricks campaign to spread uncertainty about the state of global warming research. He hopes to use a talk at the Edinburgh International Science Festival this week to fight back against climate change "naysayers".

Houghton, former co-chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former chief executive of the Met Office,

said the past six months, when the science of climate change had been through a battering due to the "climategate" scandal linked to the University of East Anglia, had been both "depressing" and "worrying".

"A lot of rubbish has been spoken about the IPCC, saying we are just a bunch of greenies with a fixed agenda which we are putting out as hard as we can, which is not true at all," he said.

He said he had been targeted by a misinformation campaign. He says he has been misquoted as saying: "Unless we announce disasters, no-one will listen", which he said has damaged him by giving the false impression that he exaggerates.

Now he is taking legal advice to try to stop the quote's further spread.

"I've never said that, and I've never written it. It's been going around for a few years, but I ignored it, but it's now on over two million websites. I am actually taking legal advice about people who are quoting it and how to restrain them. There are some lawyers who are keen to help me actually."

However, he said he has never been openly lobbied by sceptics, such as by people interrupting his public lectures. He added: "I think they try to target people who couldn't answer them back so easily. They don't know enough to put any arguments forward of a scientific kind."