Climate change

Computer-generated predictions of accelerated global warming and its putative dire consequences, such as of melting icecaps, drowning islands with mass migrations of refugees, and truly awful weather, are failing to come to pass, so far at least.

Indeed, the 20-year “pause” in warming, suspect adjustments of recorded temperatures and the name-change from “global warming” to “climate change” make for grave doubts about the reality of the warmists’ hypothetical predictions.

Vast monies have been spent, as in Met Office super- computerisation, and in attempted climate mitigation  by curtailing greenhouse gas  release with a view to “decarbonisation” heralds economically insupportable damage, while third world nations’ industrial awakenings are direly threatened.

One must rhetorically ask: “To what purpose this waste?”

Surely, now, the case for a worldwide “wait and see” policy, repairing the planet after climate-induced damage if that happens, is rationally prudent and would free resources for more obviously humane and constructive purposes.

(Dr) Charles Wardrop

Viewlands Road West

Perth

Walter Attwood’s letter on climate relies heavily on a report by the Royal Society. I am a fellow of that august institution and science relies on debate, not authority or dogma.

Current climate discussion relies heavily on models which have yet to be validated, although that might change. As an experimental scientist I prefer reports based on direct observation, not models. Some five or six papers have used solely the principle of the conservation of energy.

By measuring the difference between heat entering the planet and that leaving it from satellite observation together with concomitant observations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, estimates can be made of the effect of a doubling of carbon dioxide on climate temperature.

The figures range from 1.3-2C compared with the average from models of just over 3C.

The discrepancy between these two estimates are the reason the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change failed to provide a figure for the sensitivity of climate temperature to CO2 change.

(Prof) Tony Trewavas FRS FRSE

Scientific Alliance Scotland North St David Street

Edinburgh

Walter Attwood continues to promote the man-made climate change theory. No one is denying that climate change exists, but the climate has been changing since long before humans started emitting greenhouse gases. Yes, the world’s temperature has been on a warming trend for more than 100 years, but this is because we are coming out of the Little Ice Age.

Yes, Britain is having some extreme weather, but this has always been the case, for example the great flood of 1829 in Moray and the big freezes of 1946 and 1962. Yet climate activists talk as if these concepts are new.

The biggest climatic changes which have ever happened are those which initiated ice ages, or conversely put ice ages into reverse. Again, there were no human emissions.

All these events suggest that there are strong natural forces which affect the climate, even in the absence of human activity. A list of these would include the tilt of the Earth’s axis, the season when the Earth is at its closest to the sun, the shape of the Earth’s orbit, how much energy we are receiving from the sun and volcanic activity.

And yet climate activists expect us to believe that CO2 levels are the biggest driving force in climate.

Geoff Moore

Braeface Park

Alness