Innovation Strategy 2004–2014. He suggested that scientists should honour a Hippocratic Oath for Scientists. In April 2008, King joined UBS, a Swiss investment bank, as senior science advisor. He left UBS to return to the UK government when he was appointed the Foreign Secretary's Special Representative for Climate Change in September 2013. From 2013 to 2016, King was the first chairman of the Future Cities Catapult, a government-funded body conducting research into smart cities. In May 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, King formed and led Independent SAGE, a committee of unpaid experts which acts as a "shadow" of the UK government's SAGE group to address concerns of lack of transparency and political influence on that body. Views Climate change In his role as scientific advisor to the UK government King was outspoken on the subject of climate change, saying "I see climate change as the greatest challenges facing Britain and the World in the 21st century" and "climate change is the most severe problem we are facing today – more serious even than the threat of terrorism". He strongly supports the work of the IPCC, saying in 2004 that the 2001 synthesis report "is the best current statement on the state of play of the science of climate change, and that really does represent 1,000 scientists". King criticised the Bush administration for what he saw as its failures in climate change policy, saying it is "failing to take up the challenge of global warming". In 2004, King gave evidence to a House of Commons select committee confirming his view that "on a global and geological scale that climate change is the most serious problem we are faced with this century", and illustrated it with a statement that "Fifty-five million years ago was a time when there was no ice on the earth; the Antarctic was the most habitable place for mammals". The Independent on Sunday reported that King had at a later event compared current and projected carbon dioxide levels with the record over the past 60 million years, and in an indirect quote suggested King implied that Antarctica was likely to be the world's "only" habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked. At the end of the 2007 programme "The Great Global Warming Swindle", broadcast on Channel 4, Fred Singer ridiculed the reported view of the "chief scientist"; King's complaint to