YOUR correspondent John McLeish (The Border Mail, April 9) seems to be making assessments about the health of the planet based on ideology rather than information.
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He refers to “extremists on the far left”, including “global pessimists” who are delivering “doomsday hype”, to support his general hypothesis that the planet has never been healthier.
However nice it might be to believe this, the evidence he musters to make the case contains several false assumptions.
Two examples.
He says climate models cited by the IPCC failed to predict temperatures would remain “flat” over the past 15 years.
They didn’t predict temperatures would remain flat and they didn’t.
Nine of the hottest years on record occurred in the past 15 years — just what the models predicted would happen.
Secondly, he claimed that “consensus between computer scientists has collapsed”, a claim that requires some evidence. It’s not clear who these “computer scientists” are but there is no lack of consensus among the climate scientists with 97 per cent agreeing anthropogenic global warming is occurring.
One study showed from November 2012 to December last year there were 2259 peer reviewed climate articles from 9136 authors, and only one rejected anthropogenic global warming.
The others all agreed with it.
Sounds like a consensus to me.
— GRAHAM PARTON,
Stanley
