Environment secretary Owen Paterson, the Secretary of State charged with overseeing the climate-proofing of the UK, has found himself in an increasingly isolated position this week, after views expressed during a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester were branded "immoral" and "arrogant" by expert climate scientists and even his political allies.

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Responding to a question about the IPCC's fifth report on climate change, the Defra secretary said, "People get very emotional about this subject and I think we should just accept that the climate has been changing for centuries."

The report, produced by a UN-convened panel of over 250 scientific experts and peer-reviewed by over 1,000 of their colleagues, provides 'unequivocal' evidence for anthropogenic climate change (that which is driven by human activity). Its authors warned ahead of its release on Friday that humanity is likely to be locked into a cycle of climate change and instability "As a result of our past, present and expected future emissions" of greenhouse gasses.

On Sunday, Paterson continued, "Remember that for humans, the biggest cause of death is cold in winter, far bigger than heat in summer. It [climate change] would also lead to longer growing seasons and you could extend growing a little further north into some of the colder areas. I think the relief of this latest report is that it shows a really quite modest [temperature] increase, half of which has already happened. They are talking one to two-and-a-half degrees."

"I am rather relieved that it is not as catastrophic in its forecast as we had been led to believe early on and what it is saying is something we can adapt to over time and we are very good as a race at adapting," he concluded.

The scientists behind the IPCC report in fact said that observed changes since the late Twentieth Century "are unprecedented over decades to millennia" and that an average temperature rise of 2.5^oC would be enough to drastically change the planet as we know it.

Former government chief scientific advisor Professor Sir Robert Watson elaborated, "Without immediate reductions in global emissions of greenhouse gases, the world will not be able to achieve the political target of limiting the increase in global mean surface temperatures to 2 degrees C, but rather we are likely to see an increase of 3-5 degrees C.  Time to act is running out if we are to take the threat of human-induced climate change seriously."

Speaking at a press conference before the release of last week's landmark climate report, Lord Stern, author of perhaps the best known report on the economic impacts of climate change, warned that the IPCC scientists would understate the risks posed, and provide conservative estimates based on areas where current knowledge is strongest. Even so, he said then that for anyone to underestimate the threat posed by climate change would be "absurd".

Top climate scientist laments UK government response

The influential economist predicted that the IPCC report's findings would be so convincing that they would force world governments into action to lower emissions and prepare for the impacts of climate change.

Reacting to the report's release, Professor Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and Chair of Energy and Climate Change at the University of Manchester, offered a damning indictment of the "reckless" attitude those in power have shown to calls for climate preparedness. He said, "What has changed significantly since the last report is that we have pumped an additional 200 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Annual emissions are now 60 percent higher than at the time of the first report in 1990 and atmospheric CO2 levels are the highest they have been for over 2 million years.

"So what are we doing in the UK to help reverse this reckless growth in emissions? Record levels of investment in North Sea oil, tax breaks for shale gas, investment in oil from tar sands and companies preparing to drill beneath the Arctic. Against this backdrop, the UK Treasury is pushing for over 30 new gas power stations, whilst the government supports further airport expansion and has dropped its 2030 decarbonisation target – all this alongside beleaguered plans for a few wind farms and weak energy efficiency measures."

"Governments, businesses and high-emitting individuals around the world now face a stark choice: to reduce emissions in line with the clear message of the IPCC report, or continue with their carbon-profligate behaviour at the expense of both climate-vulnerable communities and future generations," Professor Anderson concluded.

In response to the Defra Secretary's comments on the report, Anderson told The Independent on Monday that, "His view that we can muddle through climate change is a colonial, arrogant, rich person's view." He continued, "Many people will die in the developing world where the changes will be felt the most and it is irresponsible and immoral to suggest that we as a species can adapt to climate change." In fact, the World Health Organisation estimates that 150,000 deaths each year around the world are already related to climate change.

At another fringe event, organised by the Huffington Post on Wednesday, prominent Tory environmentalist and MP for Richmond Zac Goldsmith distanced himself from the environment secretary. He said, "we stand a much better chance of dealing with these issues with someone in that post who understands and accepts our responsibility for climate change."

Goldsmith even joked that, although his statement on the IPCC report misrepresented climate science and appeared devoid of the empathy that characterised his exhortations to adopt genetically modified crops in Europe, made in June this year, Paterson's response did represent "a huge step forward" for the environment secretary. Goldsmith added, "as far as I knew he didn't think warming was happening, this is remarkable progress."