Geoscientist Online

Sir, With reference to Adler deWind's piece 'Question Time' (Geoscientist 22.07 pp. 16-19), the Geological Society of London’s (GSL) official stance on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) has contributed to negative and technologically flawed implementation by successive UK governments. 

I venture to suggest that there was, and is, a great deal of underlying dissent by many fellows and physicists who doubt the validity of carbon dioxide atmospheric sensitivity, or in the relatively recent (theoretical) discovery and cause of (inevitable) climatic variations - how can such imperceptible shifts in CO₂ sensitivity be responsible for, or empirically linked to, AGW?  Like most sceptics (as I shall persist in describing us) we strongly object to our colleagues, and Adler deWind in his article, who imply that we are spinners of ‘denialist misinformation’ - at the same time as extolling the dubious merits of climate modelling.  We are in fact sceptical (unpaid) scientists for the most part, not ‘denyers’, who learn that stasis in global warming since 1996 (MET Office, 2013) offers no evidential explanation by climate scientists (the orthodoxy). deWind’s piece reports a number of contentious issues, but notably the (questionable) precision of GM models to predict climate outcomes is passed over without a murmur.

• http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/science-and-technology-committee/inquiries/parliament-2010/climate-change/ (View all)