Bristol Green Party - Letters - Climate change is real

Bristol Green Party

Climate change is real - Charlie Bolton, 23 January 2006

To: Western Daily Press

Dear Sir/Madam

I am not sure whether Basil Baldwin of Hereford is arguing for action on climate change or against it in his letter of 23rd January (Blinded by the Science on global warming). However, he is wrong to use the evidence of just three days to support his case (contrails after the 9/11 attacks). Climate change evidence comes from studies over years, not days. I would suggest that Mr Baldwin - and any others considering the science of climate change - believe the IPCC. The IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) were set up precisely to produce the best scientific view, given the evidence available to them. And they conclude that climate change most certainly is taking place.

Yours

Charlie Bolton
Bristol Green Party

BLINDED BY SCIENCE ON GLOBAL WARMING

23 January 2006

Sir - In my younger days, I was often told that I couldn't see the wood for the trees, a very worthy statement that has rung in my ears for over 70 years. We are often blinded by so much irrelevant detail and pseudo fact that cause and effect is obscured.

Flavour of the month appears to be the onset and threat of global war ming.

Let us consider some basic realities:

First of all, we are led to believe that global warming stems from the activities of man and the use of carbon-based fuels by industry, road vehicles, aircraft, etc.

Yet for three days following the tragic 9/11 terrorism in the USA, absence of aircraft was associated with a three-degree temperature rise because more of the sun's rays had reached the Earth unhindered by vapour trails and aircraft exhaust gases.

Further, Arctic surface temperatures were one degree down last year and yet the ice was melting at a furious rate, threatening higher sea levels and flooding.

Volcanically-heated water like geysers has been instrumental in melting ice which, among other things, led to a slow but sure southerly diversion of the Gulf Stream current which keeps us much warmer than Moscow, where winters are probably some 15 to 20 degrees C less than UK averages.

Please don't bamboozle us all with pseudo scientific claptrap, however well-intentioned, and stop hiding the wood by the trees.

At the same time, we must ALL do our best to accommodate changes and ameliorate effects and think in a positive but realistic manner.

Basil Baldwin, Hereford.