Climate ‘facts’ do not support the claims

PROFESSOR Bruce Webb finds it ‘reassuring’ that the margin of error in the results of the People’s Climate Vote is on average +/–2%.

However, the fact that a large percentage of those surveyed believe that there is a climate emergency is a measure of opinions, not of fact.

Furthermore, the fact that there is a high correlation between level of education and belief in the existence of a climate emergency does not establish a climate emergency as a fact.

Many highly educated people have little, if any, knowledge of science or of scientific principles, yet may believe there is a climate emergency on the basis that they have been told this by certain ‘authority’ figures, who assure them that this belief is the consensus view of scientists.

For anyone prepared to think for themselves, the ways in which temperatures changed over the

20th century, while carbon dioxide was steadily rising, should raise questions over the belief that in recent years climate has been driven by this life-essential gas.

Equally, for anyone prepared to think for themselves, it should appear strange that the prospect of temperatures rising to levels that were experienced in the Roman and the Medieval Warm Periods is regarded with horror.

And, for those prepared to think for themselves, they might wonder why anyone is surprised that temperatures should slowly rise after the Little Ice Age.

Some of the ‘evidence’ cited as proof of climate change is about more frequent and more extreme weather events, and about accelerating sea level rises – but the facts (not disputed by the IPCC) do not support either of these claims.

The first can only be held by remaining ignorant of history, and the second by ignoring the evidence of tide gauges.

Some of the policies for ‘tackling climate change’ are inherently impractical while being ruinously expensive – it would make more sense and be much less expensive to concentrate on practical ways of limiting the effects of storm, tempest and flood – weather events human beings have had to deal with for thousands of years.

Howard Curnow Lifton, Devon