After hearing about the BBC's exposure of Chris Huhne's breathtakingly alarmist statistic about the usage of the Thames Barrier in the recent Radio 4 documentary, I decided to check where this claim came from, and it is actually an official Lib Dem statistic. It appears on the following webpage in the segment entitled "The need for action is urgent".

http://www.libdems.org.uk/environment/issues/stern.html

"The need for action is urgent

* If we don’t tackle climate change quickly it will cost far more later on. Already storm damage, rising sea levels, drought and flooding are taking their toll.
* Temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula appear to be increasing at around twice the global average - about 2C over the last 50 years, with 87% of glaciers in retreat and one-third of the West Antarctic ice sheet is thinning.
* According to the World Health Organisation 150,000 people already die every year from climate change.
* In Britain, more than 3,000 people died this summer as a result of respiratory problems caused by summer smog pollution. (Summer smog is the noxious air produced when sunlight reacts with pollutants released into the lower atmosphere.)
* The Thames Barrier has had to be raised 55 times in the last five years compared with just 12 times in the previous five."


All of the above claims look dubious to me. If we look at them one by one:

"* If we don’t tackle climate change quickly it will cost far more later on. Already storm damage, rising sea levels, drought and flooding are taking their toll."

I'd say that in the specific case of the UK, the cost of 'tackling' climate change in the manner prescribed by Green groups and politicians is far more expensive than simply adapting to it. In 2000 DEFRA (called DETR at the time) commissioned a study to look at the adaptation cost and came up with the figure of £1.2 billion up to 2050.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/749067.stm
By comparison, the cost of 'tackling' it by a vain attempt to influence CO2 levels is far higher- the cost of the two main global warming-related quangos, the Energy Saving Trust and the Carbon Trust, is at least £80 million per year. The most expensive bit so far in the UK has been the renewables obligation subsidy system (used mainly to subsidise wind farms) which has cost electricity consumers £1.7 billion since it was introduced in 2002 (according to Ofgem, the UK energy regulator).

" * Temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula appear to be increasing at around twice the global average - about 2C over the last 50 years, with 87% of glaciers in retreat and one-third of the West Antarctic ice sheet is thinning."

The Antarctic Peninsula region represents less than 10% of the land area of the Antarctic. Overall, the Antarctic is cooling. The peninsula region is the part of the Antarctic where all the international bases are concentrated, and it might even be an urban heat island effect.

" * According to the World Health Organisation 150,000 people already die every year from climate change."

This WHO figure is mainly connected with increased malaria deaths in Third World countries that could occur due to increased temperatures. It does not consider the reduction in deaths associated with milder winters which would be more relevant to the UK. As pointed out by the Junkscience website, the Green movement have greatly enhanced the malaria problem in the Third World through banning DDT. We can get a feel for Chris Huhne's attitude to DDT on the following webpage:
http://www.eastleighlibdems.org.uk/news/000057.html?PHPSESSID=801ceb21
The above article relates to a stunt carried out by WWF to detect minute traces of man-made chemicals in a number of volunteer blood samples:
Chris Huhne said, "Some of the blood samples showed traces of a chemical (DDT) that had been banned in the 1960s. It is incredible that they can still be detected over 40 years later and it is particularly worrying since they can also be passed from mother to child".

"* In Britain, more than 3,000 people died this summer as a result of respiratory problems caused by summer smog pollution. (Summer smog is the noxious air produced when sunlight reacts with pollutants released into the lower atmosphere.)"

This is an unusual claim because it seems to come from analysis by the Lib Dems themselves rather than some Green group or Green-leaning academics.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5160278.stm
It seems dubious to me to connect this with global warming. This "photochemical smog" is caused by UV radiation rather than ambient temperature, and I'm not aware of any increase in the number of hours of sunlight or UV intensity being claimed for the UK by climate scientists as a result of global warming.

"* The Thames Barrier has had to be raised 55 times in the last five years compared with just 12 times in the previous five."

THe correct figures revealed by Radio 4 are 31 for the past 5 years compared with 35 for the previous 5 years. So there has been an 11% reduction in the use of the Thames Barrier over the two 5 year periods rather than the quadrupling in use clamed by the Lib Dems.