Dear editor
Recent letters to the editor (People reject climatology when it conflicts with their ideology; This is no time for climate deniers to be ‘whistling in the dark,’ Feb. 28) in response to W.H Welsh’s The Earth’s climate in a constant state of flux (Feb. 21) underscore the misconceptions, falsehoods and hysteria behind climate change.
Since approximately 1850, thermometers have been used to record temperatures. Since the Little Ice Age of the 1700s the earth’s temperature increased for almost 100 years until the end of the Second World War, despite mankind not consuming carbon in any appreciable amount. From then until the mid-1970s the earth’s temperature decreased, despite increasing consumption of carbon by cars, airplanes, etc.
Beginning in the late 1970s highly accurate satellite measurements of temperature free of many measurement errors have provided the temperature record showing that the temperatures rose until the mid-1990s; since then the earth’s temperature has not risen despite increasing consumption of carbon and increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Many institutions publish the results of the satellite measurements. They demonstrate that the Earth’s temperature has risen and fallen with natural events (El Nino and La Nina) however there has been no statistically significant increase in 20 years.
No temperature change despite increasing carbon dioxide is contrary to the predictions of many climate scientists and almost all climate models. Climate scientists call it a pause or hiatus, for Al Gore it’s an “Inconvenient Truth”, for an applied scientist (engineer) with advanced climatology training like myself, it is proof that the climate models upon which climate hysteria is based are completely inaccurate and unreliable and should not be a basis of public policy.
In fact, attributing climatic events to “climate change” when the climate isn’t changing makes a mockery of the entire climate change movement and demonstrates what happens when a complex, scientific issue becomes politicized by the likes of Gore, Obama, Trudeau, Suzuki, etc.
Ed McDonald,
Courtenay