Figures don’t add up

Last week, David Rose made a number of extraordinary claims about a paper by climate scientist Dr Thomas Karl in his article ‘How world leaders were duped over global warming’. He purported to compare figures for global mean surface temperature from the paper with figures compiled by the Met Office. A graph showed Dr Karl’s figures for the past 20 years as higher than the Met Office ones. However, the two datasets use different baselines – Dr Karl taking the period between 1901 and 2000, while the Met Office uses the average between 1961 and 1990.

Bob Ward, Policy Director, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science It is deniers of climate change, not politicians, who have been duped by duff data. When the correct baselines are used, the match between ‘flawed NOAA data’ and ‘verified Met Office’ data is near-perfect.

Dr Karl’s paper is just one of hundreds of scientific reports that have unambiguously demonstrated that human-driven climate change is under way, with potentially dangerous consequences for the environment and human society.

Dr Phil Williamson, School of Environmental Sciences,

University of East Anglia Why should anybody be concerned about climate change? Religious people will know that God is in charge and atheists will know that Darwin’s theory will ensure that if it happens, we will all evolve to cope with it.

Roger Lancaster, Bristol