What is the evidence of ‘climate chaos’?

SIR David Attenborough’s latest programmes The Perfect Planet make fascinating viewing. However, some of his commentary on the first film in the series is highly questionable, if not actually misleading.

He says, at one point, “Volcanoes continue to release carbon dioxide today, and for the last 10,000 years its presence in the atmosphere has suited life perfectly; its greenhouse properties have kept our planet’s climate stable and warm. But too much carbon dioxide would make the planet’s temperature rise to levels which would upset the earth’s long-established ecological balance.”

Not only does this give the impression (intentionally or not) that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere were stable over most of the last 10,000 years, but it gives the impression that temperatures have varied very little over this time period.

Does he not recognise that during the Holocene, maximum temperatures were appreciably higher than today? And does he totally dismiss the Roman and Medieval Warming periods, and the Little Ice Age?

He further says: “Now every year we release 100 times more carbon dioxide that all the earth’s volcanoes combined. And this has brought climate chaos.”

But what is the evidence of

‘climate chaos’? Why is the possibility of a global temperature the same as that during the Medieval Warm Period regarded with horror? Why do people insist on comparing temperatures with ‘pre-industrial’ times (i.e. the end of the Little Ice Age) as if those should be regarded as the norm?

Some point to more frequent extreme weather events as proof of climate chaos or a climate emergency, but the IPCC has found no evidence that extreme events are increasing. Some point to sea level rises accelerating, but tide gauges in many parts of the world seem to show that sea levels have been rising slowly and steadily ever since the end of the Little Ice Age.

Am I alone in thinking that some of the problems that are said to exist in relation to climate, and some of the ‘cures’ which are suggested, are in the end more to do with belief than firm evidence?

Howard Curnow

Lifton, Devon