Is this best evidence?
YOUR climate changing denying correspondent N Waddecar challenges me to respond to his claims. I am reluctant to oblige, because if he were right, surely he’d be applying for a Nobel Prize in Stockholm, not wasting everyone’s bandwidth in Manchester.
Also, his talking points are out of date. He mentions the Ordovican ice age and claims CO2 levels were much higher. As the excellent website skepticalscience.com notes ‘recent work has shown that atmospheric CO2 was much lower than the myth claims, and it kept falling through the Ordovician. It was less than eight times pre-industrial values towards the end, which may sound very high, but with a four per cent fainter sun back then and with a large continent over the South Pole, it was low enough to trigger a major continental ice sheet.’
He seems relaxed about rapid increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere because it is ‘only’ 410ppm.
Would he drink water with 410ppm cyanide? Or be a passenger in a car when the driver had ‘only’ 0.2pc alcohol in their bloodstream? Small amounts of a substance can make big differences, as our species if finding out.
He also offers a long debunked ‘Oregon Petition’ to argue climate change isn’t happening.
Two things – first, science doesn’t proceed by petition, but facts.
Secondly, that particular petition was signed by ‘Ginger Spice,’ ‘Charles Darwin’ (slightly dead) and people with prank names like ‘I. C. Ewe.’ This is Mr Waddecar’s best evidence? Really? Marc Hudson, Manchester