Extraordinary claims on climate change
I WAS interested to read a report released at Cop27 has highlighted that, although the science about the climate crisis is unequivocal, there is a rise in misinformation about the topic (https://www.cnet.com/ science/climate/climate-changedenial-makes-untimely-comeback/).
Recent letters to this newspaper by Dr Phillip Bratby and Mr Gareth Jones seek to promote the cause of those who deny that recent significant and serious climate change has been primarily driven by human activity.
I’m not sure which branch of physics Dr Bratby was active in, but I am prepared to wager that it was not atmospheric physics.
As an ‘inferior’ scientist whose research interests were in water quality in the context of physical geography, I am, however, seemingly unlike Dr Bratby, able to absorb the work of thousands of climate scientists who among their number count a large number of highly qualified physicists, mathematicians and computer modellers.
In addition, unlike him, I am not unaware that every major scientific society in the world, including the Royal Society of London, not to mention the World Meteorological Organisation, NASA and NOAA, is in no doubt that it has been the unabated rise in the main noncondensing greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which has increased by almost 50% since the industrial revolution, that has been the major factor forcing the rise in mean global temperatures and is unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years.
As Dr Bratby should know, science relies on evidence to support its assertions. I would be grateful if he could provide a reference to the scientific literature to back up his extraordinary claim that ‘carbon dioxide’s ability to absorb and emit infrared radiation is essentially saturated, so that even a doubling of its concentration would have a negligible impact on the climate’.
This would be revealing, especially as respected physicists specialising in atmospheric radiative fluxes have debunked this notion (https:// rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ doi/10.1002/wea.2072).
In relation to the effect of increasing global temperatures on extreme weather events, I draw his attention to the latest
IPCC assessment of the physical science basis to climate change (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixthassessment-report-working-group-i/).
In this publication, it clearly states ‘it is very likely that human influence is the main contributor to the observed increase in the intensity and frequency of hot extremes and the observed decrease in the intensity and frequency of cold extremes on continental scales’ and ‘human influence has contributed to the intensification of heavy precipitation in three continents where observational data are most abundant, including North America, Europe and Asia (high confidence)’.
Dr Bratby suggests that I know nothing about climate change and am making false statements. However, if he took the trouble to read the scientific literature, he would realise that I am simply repeating the view of the overwhelming number of expert scientists, including very many physicists, who have studied the earth’s atmosphere and climate.
Also, I assume, as someone trained in the scientific method, he should also know that Mr Gareth Jones’ extremely strange assertions about climate statistics can be safely ignored.
Professor Bruce Webb Exeter