No Excuse

Further to my previous post, a reply to the latest Denialist Letter (pdf)

I would ask Mr Hemmingway who, he supposes, decides what is and is not 'proper evidence', if not the scientific community by general consensus?

It is the process of assessing all the evidence for and against man-made climate change, undertaken by the IPCC at the behest of the international community, that has given rise to the consensus Mr Waugh refers to.

As for quoting this 'proper evidence', I would gladly do so, so long as the Standard is willing to publish thousands of scientific quotes and references. I will settle for just one - IPCC Fourth WG1 (Scientific Basis) Report These are not climate alarmists. They are as conservative and precise a group of career scientists as you will ever come across. 640 of them!

Mr Hemmingway misleads in his 'truth' about whan most scientists are saying. What they ARE saying is "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."

In the terms of this publication, which is the most difinitive and authoritative statement of its kind on the state of the planet, that means there is no contradictory evidence suggesting that warming is not occurring, and that more than 90% of all the evidence collected and analysed points at man-made greenhouse gases being the main cause.

Suggestions that there is no hard evidence for this are ridiculous. Reams of hard data are being collected every day, some of it covering timescales of thousands, even millions of years, and none of it reliant on the models he wrongly considers a key element of the argument. All of this real evidence shows that the Earth's temperature, and therefore its climate, changes in lockstep with CO2 concentrations.

And while Mr Hemmingway's description of how energy is trapped by CO2 is accurate, he draws the false conclusion that CO2 will not cause warming based on the false (and concealed) premis that absorption bands are anywhere near full, for the principle greenhouse gases.

And finally, despite exhorting us to produce evidence for the seriousness of the climate change challenge ahead of us, Mr Hemmingway supplied not one single verifiable reference or fact. Even his quote from Dr Richard North turns out to be nothing more than a throwaway line in a blog, written by a lobbyist for Big Agriculture. The Lies that money can buy

Don't take my word for it - look for yourselves and make your own minds up.

The letter was published here on Friday 6th. (archive pdf file here)