David Cunningham, Castlemaine
David Cheal (‘Just no time’, Opinions, September 25) claims hurricanes Florence and Manghut are evidence of climate change. Al Gore said the same.
Atmospheric scientist and hurricane expert Dr Ryan Maue publicly ridiculed these claims, but Mr Cheal prefers to believe Gore, and also wrongly guesses I don’t believe in climate change.
My beliefs or opinions are irrelevant. Opinions are trivial, what matters is the evidence they’re based on. Claims likewise. Rebuttals without sound evidence are still only opinion. Two writers here have pointed to hard data that show no discernable causal link between climate change and bushfires. In response, Neil Barrett, (‘Clear and present danger’, Opinions, September 25), cites fluffy CSIRO prophecies which use words like, “are expected”, “is likely”, and “could be”. Prophecy is conjecture. The 40-year history of these climate change prophecies is abysmal. They’ve failed every time. There isn’t a single thing alarmists can point at and say, “See! We were right”. The judgment of the British High Court was not the ultimate proof Gore’s first film was untrue. The proof was the fact that the film’s prophecies all failed.
Mr Cheal is right that climate change is real and measured. Naturally we’ve warmed almost 1°C since 1850, because we’ve been slowly steadily climbing out of the depths of the Little Ice Age which ended about 1870. Neither the recent warming nor the rate is unprecedented as alarmists claim.
Collated worldwide evidence from hundreds of scientists and institutions show that the Medieval Warming Period was globally far warmer than today, and 11,500ya the planet warmed 5°C in 30-40 years and as much as 8°C over 40 years which is eight times larger than the assumed 1°C of warming over the past 100 years.
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/abrupt-climate-change/The Younger Dryas
Note the paleoclimate data shows 60 per cent of the past 10,000 years are warmer than present.
