If we could not trust science, planes would just fall out of the sky

HOWARD Curnow (WMN 3rd February) says claims about climate change are not supported by ‘facts’. One person writing to the newspaper, without citing evidence, is opinion, not fact.

A correlation between education and belief in climate change does not establish a fact; so what is Mr Curnow’s qualification to speak with authority?

The global temperature did indeed rise, by about 4-6°C, after the last great ice age. But then, for the last 10,000 years, ever since humans ceased to be nomadic hunter gatherers, discovered agriculture and built settlements, the temperature has been remarkably constant.

The Roman and Medieval warm periods only affected our part of the world – globally, temperatures remained steady, until the industrial revolution.

The average rise of 1.1°C in the last 100 years would normally have taken at least 1,000 years. (https://xkcd. com/1732/ illustrates this well, and cites its sources.)

The evidence for this is also in the multiple IPCC reports (eg https:// www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ ), which review thousands of scientific articles. I have not read all these articles. I’ll bet nor has Mr Curnow.

So why would someone who “thinks for themselves” trust these authorities?

Firstly, because the 2015 Paris climate accord was signed by nearly every government in the world, of widely differing ideology and lifestyle: USA, Russia, China, India, Israel, Iran, Vanuatu.

If the evidence behind climate theory were a hoax, one or more of these governments would have called the evidence into question.

Even North Korea has ratified the treaty. The only major world leader to dissent was Trump, whose understanding of science took “thinking for himself” into the realm of pure fantasy.

Secondly, because we trust science every day. When people board an aeroplane, they do not stop to think “perhaps I can’t trust scientists. I’d better read a Facebook post or a YouTube video to check whether planes work.”

If we could not trust science, most planes would just fall out of the sky. Our computers talk via satellite to others across the world, regardless of whether we understand the science. Science works.

Of course, it’s perfectly valid for some scientists to challenge the prevailing view.

They publish their ideas in peerreviewed journals.

They cite the sources they rely on, list their evidence, and explain why their evidence should carry more weight than that of views they challenge.

But Mr Curnow does not cite a single piece of evidence to back up his claims, or to overturn the IPCC’s thousands of articles.