Stop offering such blatant scarecrows

What is it about newspaper columnists (Harry Bell, Kentish Gazette September 22) that make them think that they’re experts in every field that they care to write about?

Your columnist, Harry Bell, is a prime example of this tendency, weekly pontificating about issues about which he has an opinion but only superficial, if any, knowledge.

The aim seems not to be to inform but rather to parade his assumed superiority and above all abuse those with whom he disagrees.

In the process, he throws up more strawman arguments than you could find at a scarecrow convention.

The technique is as well honed as it is vacuous.

This week one of his targets, his allembracing expertise allows him several in a single column, was climate change.

One of his strawman arguments here is his suggestion that those who support the concept of anthropogenic climate change haven’t noticed that climate has changed over the past 4.6 billion years or that there are factors in this variation than other than humankind.

He entirely misses the point that past climate variation is well known by proponents of climate change but that experts have considered natural factors in this case and concluded that they cannot explain the speed or intensity of the current rise in global temperatures.

Further, having excluded the alternatives, they actually have a very good understanding of the cause and that it relates to human activities.

As so often after starting with an argument that even Worzel Gummidge would be embarrassed by, he continues by mistaking ad hominem abuse for argument.

Hence we have “eco-fanatics” who “pollute the world” and “zealots” rather than “scientists” or “climatologists” upon whose work our understanding of climate change rests.

Far from being an “environmental religion”, “eco-zealotry” or “eco-madness” concern about climate change rests on scientific knowledge. If accepting scientific evidence and argument is now considered “fanatical” then we’re in serious trouble.

The rest of his claims, more blatant scarecrows, are that those who are concerned about climate change are “misanthropic” characters who wish to “control, restrict or punish” others or want to “assault” (or even “criminalise”) free speech.

These dubious claims are, of course, entirely irrelevant to the central debate as to the cause of global warming.

However, in the want of rational scientific argument, they serve to demonise those who are concerned about the environment. Consequently, they much approved of by those true fanatics here, that is those who ignore scientific evidence, pray at the altar of unfettered big business and who marshall such abuse to close down free speech.

Perhaps Harry Bell needs to look in the mirror before he launches into another ill-informed diatribe and, having done so, resolves to look beyond the little libertarian anti-environmentalist bubble from which he seems to derive his views on the both the environment and education. John Cantelo Clyde Street, Canterbury Jacqi Woolf of Underdown Road, Herne Bay, captured this gorgeous picture of a swimmer and a sunset with the Reculver Towers in the distance