Global warming / climate change

Set out below is the text of a letter I sent The Journal yesterday about global warming and climate change:

"Readers of The Journal’s letters page could be forgiven for getting the misleading impression that there is still a serious ongoing debate in the scientific community about the fact of global warming and climate change. It’s vitally important for your readers to know that there is now overwhelming concensus in the scientific community worldwide about the following three facts.

First, global warming and climate change is real and is happening now. It’s no coincidence that at least 8 of the hottest years for global temperature have been since 1998, and at least 14 of the hottest years for global temperature have been since 1990.

Second, human activity is playing a fundamental role in driving global warming and climate change. Since the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the nineteenth century, the Western world has engaged in activities which have released huge quantities of carbon into the earth’s atmosphere. Those activities have now spread worldwide. For a long time, ignorance of the consequences of industrialisation was understandable and perhaps even forgivable. No longer.

Third, if global warming and climate change is not brought to a sharp halt, the consequences and risks to life on this planet are potentially grave.

Let me be clear – everyone has the right to express their opinions in The Journal about global warming regardless of their scientific background (or lack thereof – me included). But make no mistake– there is no serious scientific debate about the three facts cited above.

In the same way that a false debate rumbled on for decades about the health risks of smoking when the scientific evidence on that issue was unambiguous, one-sided and settled years earlier, we must not allow a false debate to be perpetuated about global warming, climate change and the urgent necessity of taking effective measures to tackle both when the scientific evidence on those issues is now equally robust."