Tone down the talk of climate crisis

Sir, – Thanks for publishing the letter from Clark Cross in the P&J (May 23). Whereas I do not doubt that the climate is warming, he quotes the report by the Global Warming Policy Foundation that UK weather trends have changed very little in recent decades.

The climate change rhetoric uses words like “catastrophe”, “extreme” and “unprecedented” to embellish the narrative when even just minor research discloses that much of the weather we experience is not, in fact, unprecedented.

Even the recent Storm Arwen is precedented by the “Big Blaw” of the 1950s,

and Storm Frank was also precedented, especially in the 19th Century.

Outwith the UK the incidence of hurricanes was higher in the 1930s and as recently as the 1980s.

Wildfires in California and Australia are not a new phenomenon, made worse by current lack of forestry management in clearing undergrowth and brushwood, something the Australian Aborigines knew and practised for centuries.

The threat of famine is often quoted by the alarmist sector, but again a little research will tell you the European famines occurred in the 15th-17th centuries during cold periods which caused widespread crop failures.

Indeed, currently the world continues to feed its population in spite of

its growth in numbers. The “crisis” needs to be toned down, otherwise we are going to make some dreadful and expensive mistakes.

The real and current crisis, in my view, is that of single use and other plastics which are wrecking the marine environment and getting into the human food chain – there is a real crisis! And one which governments could fix relatively quickly.

Mike Salter, Glassel, Banchory.