Talking of "powerful vested interests", it is interesting to see how much we, the taxpayers, are and have been paying those dedicated public servants at the Met Office to study climate change.
Two entries in the DEFRA science database give some hint. The entry for 1990-2007 puts the sum at £146,275,582, while the next tranche for 2007-2012 stands at £72,536,724.
That is a cool £218,812,306, paid in addition to the basic overhead payments. And on top of that, there are many millions more paid for specific research projects - the total funding declared by DEFRA amounting to £243,620,197.
These sums, themselves, are a tiny proportion of the overall money extracted from our pockets, to pay for the government's obsession with global warming. The problem is that the payments are spread between so many different groups, and made by so many different departments, that it is very difficult to put an overall figure on it.
Of one thing, I am certain, however, the total – over term – runs to many billions. These sums here are just the tip of the iceberg. We could have bought our aircraft carriers, with change to spare, from the amount of money frittered away on climate change.
CLIMATE CHANGE – FINAL PHASE THREAD
