Impact of climate change can’t be denied

In response to Valerie Hemsley-Flint’s letter on climate change, I would like to ask where she obtained her PhD in climatology. Presumably at the University of Denial.

She’s right in that the climate has been fluctuating for millions of years.

About 50 million years ago the temperature was 15°C above the pre-industrial baseline and sea level was some 70 metres higher than today. From there to about a million years ago the planet has cooled to several degrees below the pre-industrial baseline where it held more or less steady for several hundred millennia.

The changes we see today are taking place over a matter of decades, not thousands of years!

Does she really believe the hundreds of climatologists around the world who’ve been working on this for years haven’t allowed for the natural fluctuation in the planet’s temperature?

I suggest she read the scientific literature on the subject. Does she also believe we have never set foot on the moon and that the earth is flat?

Barrie Hart

Canterbury Road, Kennington warming has been known since the mid-19th century and we have profligately continued with fossil fuel use since then, followed by dragging our feet and denying the consequences for the last 40-50 years.

We have science clearly showing that the recent European heatwaves were made five times more likely due to human caused global heating and the Met Office has just reported that the 10 hottest years have occurred since 2002.

Meanwhile the melting of most glaciers and ice sheets is largely increasing worldwide and will cause greater sea level rises, whilst the UN reports that wildlife diversity is collapsing.

The answer is to take immediate international ‘emergency action’ to implement such as the

Green New Deal for decent jobs in renewables tech and re-wilding alongside perhaps Citizens’ Incomes, etc, to help people around the world halt further warming and reverse wildlife extinctions.

This would all be far better helped by our staying within the EU and deeply reforming it at the same time, as UK-only business as usual ‘free’ trade and ‘exceptionalism’ would only end up aggravating global heating, damage our farmers and fisheries.

Ray Duff

Clarence Street, Folkestone