By Paul Homewood
Last Sunday, the Telegraph printed this letter, in response to Booker’s column on global warming groupthink the week before:
SIR – I agree with Christopher Booker that people tend to adopt the views of their “group” without checking facts or using critical thinking.
Nevertheless, his article contains inaccuracies. A big one: that climate change theory was immediately hailed as a scientific consensus. In fact, it has been challenged, disagreed with, tested, refined, disagreed with some more and, after two decades, a sort of scientific consensus has emerged. However, Mr Booker uses the scientific uncertainty, and the one case of deliberate misuse of data, to try to argue against the facts.
Mr Booker seems to be saying that a small group of scientists have pulled off a hoax of massive proportions that flies in the face of the “real” data, which he doesn’t present. He says that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is corrupt, meteorologists are incompetent, and the 200 countries who have independently researched this are all wrong. The only world leader to point to the truth is that well-known intellectual and world-renowned scientist Donald J Trump.
Simon Foster
Cincinnati, Ohio
Today there is an excellent riposte:
SIR – Simon Foster’s claim of “a sort of consensus” in the matter of anthropogenic climate change (Letters, March 4) is extremely modest, given that adherents to the global warming meme claim that 97 per cent of scientists fervently believe the hypothesis.
In reality the atmosphere does not conform to the models, and real-world data shows climates varying within natural limits. As nature continues to demonstrate, choosing carbon dioxide as Occam’s Razor to cut through the Gordian knot of climate complexity leaves many loose ends.
Mr Foster’s closing comment about the current US president shows how politics underpins the demonisation of carbon. This helps explain why so many people find it easier to join the bandwagon rather than being sceptical, as scientists should be.
Dr Eric A Huxter
Ashtead, Surrey
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
March 11, 2018 at 08:00AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 