To The Editor
The letters page in our local paper seems to be full of correspondence from climate skeptics. After muttering to my wife about this over coffee in the morning one too many times, she sent me off to write my own letter to try and balance the score. I’ll let you know if it gets published.
Here is what I wrote (with a couple of hyperlinks inserted, since this is the web and not a dead tree):
Dear Letters Editor,
There seems to be an endless stream of letters from climate “skeptics” published in The West. A real skeptic should be a critical inquirer but these correspondents all seem to copy and paste from the same tired climate change denialist web sites: “we’re not warming, we’re cooling”; “well okay, we are warming but its the sun that’s doing it”; “actually its CO2 from volcanoes”; “well even if it is from burning fossil fuels, an ETS well send us all bankrupt!”; “it’s a global conspiracy, don’t you know!”.
Matthew Lague (I don’t warm to this policy, 2/1) seems to be no exception. He suggests that global warming isn’t happening because since 2001 satellites “have detected a discernible downward trend in temperature”. Picking a particular satellite temperature record starting in 2001 smacks of cherry picking, picking data to suit your argument. If you look at the global temperature trends from NASA GISS, the long-term warming trend is very clear. NASA’s analysis was recently updated with 2008 data. It was the coolest year since 2000 because of a strong La Niña event in the Pacific, but was still the ninth warmest year since instrumental measurements began in 1880.
He also says that climate models, the reason we think warming is going to continue, aren’t trustworthy because “they do not reproduce past warming”. This is just wrong too. They can and do reproduce past warming. One of the first real climate models from NASA in 1988 successfully forecast the warming of about 0.2 degrees a decade we have experienced in the last 20 years.
Lastly, he suggests that the sun is responsible for global warming because Mars has been warming too. There is actually very little evidence that Mars is warming. What’s more, if skeptics don’t think scientists understand understand the climate on Earth, why would they think they know what’s happening on Mars? As an aside, the sun is definitely not causing the current warming on Earth. There has been no increase in solar irradiance on earth since 1940, according to the Max Planck Institute.
In the same edition Peter Bowley (Join the real world, 2/1) asks for the government to detail both sides of the “global warming issue”, “for and against”. This request demonstrates a real problem, the perception that there is a debate underway on climate change between two opposing viewpoints with equally valid arguments. This is just not the case. The evidence for human induced global warming is overwhelming and the arguments against are for the most part pseudo-science and empty rhetoric. The media should take most of the blame for this perception with relentless ‘false-balance’ reporting and contrarian and sensationalist “op-ed” letters and articles.
I do agree, however, with Peter Bowley’s call for the Government to explain the ETS in plain english. They should, because it really is quite simple. The government will set a limit on our greenhouse gas emissions. Each year they will issue permits to pollute up to the level of this cap. About a thousand businesses will then need permits for their emissions. These permits will be tradable. And no, it won’t send us bankrupt, Treasury checked. It will just ensure we meet our national reduction target, even if it is only 5% and even if the skeptics don’t like it.
Yours Sincerely,
Fabian Le Gay Brereton
