Mark Adams – Response To Stephen Needham’s Letter
Dear Editor
I am both dismayed and disappointed at your irresponsible decision to publish what you termed as ‘an alternative view of climate change’ based upon the letter from Steve Needham. ‘An uninformed view’ would have been a more apposite title.
To clarify Steve, yes the Earth’s climate has always been subject to change. And for an explanation as to why that is, perhaps he should start by familiarising himself with stadials and interstadials, Milankovitch cycles, variations in the earth’s orbit – obliquity/eccentricity, axial tilt and precession. Such natural and astronomical phenomena play out over tens of thousands of years, not decades. The difference today lies in the rapid, acute and anomalous degree of warming that the planet is experiencing which is unprecedented in the last two hundred years and cannot be explained by natural variability or solar changes. The reason is post-industrial anthropogenic climate change.
Yes, UK history documents the ‘frost fairs’ on the Thames. From 1300 to around 1850 average global temperatures dropped by as much as 2°C (3.6°F), particularly in Europe and North America. The so called ‘little ice age’ was likely a result of a combination of reduced solar output, changes in atmospheric circulation and increased volcanic activity. Go back almost two millennia and our period of Roman occupation was a time of unusually-warm weather in Europe and the North Atlantic that ran from approximately 250 BC to AD 400. Both this, the ‘Roman Climatic Optimum’ and the ‘Medieval Warm Period’, another brief climatic interlude, are postulated to have been caused by the reverse – an increase in solar activity and a reduction in volcanic aerosols, but also large-scale climate patterns, such as El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the North Atlantic Oscillation.
History does indeed tell us that there have always been “storms, fires and floods”, but the reason that you hear about them so often today is due to the increase in frequency and ferocity exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change. Look no further than the extent and intensity of the recent LA wildfires which are now 34% more likely to occur.
That the rate and rapidity of climate change over the last century is of anthropogenic origin is neither equivocal or up for debate, it is demonstrable and consensual. Current greenhouse gas emission trends put the world on course for a 3.7 – 4.8°C temperature increase by 2100, which would be catastrophic. Even the commitments made under the new Paris Agreement fall short of the cuts required to limit warming to a relatively safer 2°C increase. Hypothetically, assuming all emissions were stopped immediately, effects will continue for centuries due to the cumulative impact present in the atmosphere. Meanwhile, nearly 800 million people globally are currently considered especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change whilst our future generations face the prospect of huge demographic upheaval affecting billions, ailing food security, the destruction of habitats, and the increased risk of disease and poverty.
The suggestion that one should “stop worrying, say no to net zero, and get on enjoying your life” is not only reckless, myopic and morally reprehensible in the extreme, but epitomises the populist world that we now inhabit in which opinion ‘Trumps’ fact and a reel on Instagram or a Facebook meme substitutes for substantiation. Being on ‘the wrong side of history’ is irrelevant when the entire future of civilisation is at stake.
Yes, sure, there are other existential threats. Nature could consign us to a fossil record overnight whilst the threat of nuclear annihilation hangs over us all like the Sword of Damocles. But what happens when nations that have become dust bowls but are armed with nuclear weapons, decide that they need more suitable space for their people?…
Perhaps the editors should consider reinstating the outright bizarre, at times incomprehensible, albeit anodyne ‘Duggie’s Ramblings’? It was harmless and brought significantly more value and worth to your publication than devoting space to someone insidiously parroting GB News and the Daily Mail.
Mark Adams
Look After Your Mind – Quotes Of Many Colours
