Carbon dioxide is not main factor

Sir, – Sean Galbally’s well-reasoned response to Alistair Ballantyne’s frequently blinkered criticisms of Dr Charles Wardrop regarding the fundamental causes of climate change are to be welcomed (The Courier, May 11).

It should be noted however that the term “climate denier”, with its negative connotation, is a complete and deliberate misnomer.

They readily accept that climatic changes are occurring but maintain that the role of carbon dioxide in the process is largely irrelevant.

Well-documented scientific evidence from ice core samples reveal that what used to be called global warming actually began some 1,800 years ago

and that carbon dioxide levels always lag behind temperature rises by hundreds of years.

During the current Holocene Warm Period there have been climatic blips as documented during the Dark Ages (AD 450490), the Little Ice Age (AD 1500-1900) and the Medieval Warm Period (AD 950-1250).

The latter episode was deliberately concealed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to exaggerate their warming claims.

Those transitions that occurred were of a similar magnitude to the current situation but the warming eras occurred when atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were stable and much lower than at present.

There is therefore no compelling reason to believe that the marginal 21st Century warming is in any

significant way related to elevated levels of CO2.

Distinctly more plausible reasons include natural climate cycles that have occurred through aeons of time in glacial and interglacial periods alike, involving fluctuating solar cycles and powerful galactic events which determined cloud cover and hence temperature as well as variations in ocean current flows and

intermittent volcanic activity.

Neil J Bryce. Gateshaw Cottage, Kelso.

Boris Johnson’s Queen’s Speech: “Repugnant obscenity.”