Human effect on climate is minor
I NOTE Tony Philpin’s zeal in making his case for human-induced climate change (Letters, June 6), but I fear he only reveals more of his misconceptions and contradictions on the subject. He depicts climate deniers (realists, in my view) as hearing what they want to hear while disregarding the rest, but to paraphrase Jonathan Swift in his satire, Polite Conversations, it could also be said of activists that “there are none so blind as those who will not see”.
We are told that things have moved on since Al Gore’s unscientific and exaggerated Inconvenient Truth in 2006. They should, but they have not. His sequel of a similar title in 2017 perpetuates his penchant for more flimsy science and dangerous hyperbole. He basked unashamedly in the glory of a Nobel Peace Prize award even though the British High Court ruled that numerous scientific errors had been made “in the context of alarmism and exaggeration”.
Mr Philpin concedes that science rarely has 100 per cent certitude and yet super-computer climate models miraculously predict climatic conditions decades from now with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stating that “the science is settled” while simultaneously contradicting itself by hedging its bets with a wide range of different possible scenarios. He also accuses those with whom he disagrees of having a “100% filter” when in reality they have taken considerable time and trouble to examine both sides of the argument without resorting to pseudo science and distortion of fact.
While the activities of billions of humans may have had a minor effect on the overall climate, their inexorable encroachment and interference with natural ecosystems with associated deforestation and overgrazing result not
only in localised climate changes but also in so-called natural disasters such as landslides, flooding, subsidence and so on, events that are invariably blamed primarily on human emissions.
Neil J Bryce, Kelso. Some 125,000 years ago hippos swam in the River Thames, and lions and elephants were living nearby. A couple of hundred years ago the same Thames froze over during several winters, with ice thick enough to hold fairs. Yet Tony Philpin expects us to believe at the present moment, when temperatures are comfortably between these two extremes, that we’re in a climate crisis.
Geoff Moore, Alness.
REGARDING Neil Mackay’s question (“Could new mobile phone link solve mystery of the Chinook tragedy?”, June 6), the answer is no.
I gave the most likely explanation for the accident in my book Chinook Crash (Pen & Sword, 2004), apparently ignored by David Hill and John Blakely.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) was right the first time: that the pilots were responsible. The reason given at the time was breaking safety rules, which was true but not the fundamental error responsible. The pilots made a navigation error and flew the aircraft into the ground because they lost their way. Of course, if they had observed the safety rules, they would not have crashed.
The MoD later backed off, having decided not to blame anyone in the case of aircraft accidents. So they ended up with no reasonable explanation, ignoring mine.
Steuart Campbell, science writer, Edinburgh.