Dear Editor, The term soapbox reminds me of student days: regularly visiting Hyde Park’s Speakers Corner to listen to Donald Soper, Roy Sawh and others expounding their beliefs. Similarly, in the
April issue of Soapbox Mr Lack expresses his beliefs, not science. A bandwagon is what he suggests the Society should join—doing or supporting something fashionable or literally joining T.P. Barnum’s wagon for his circus band. The Society, as a body dedicated to scientific enquiry, should dismiss such siren calls to support a politically motivated organisation.
If Mr Lack wishes to learn more about bandwagons and their outcomes, he can do no better than read Charles Mackay’s 1841 book “Extraordinary Delusions and The Madness of Crowds”.
Mr Lack’s article is replete with inaccurate or unsubstantiated assertions. For example “….persistent fallacies repeated by…..deniers is that “CO
2 is plant food””. This is not a fallacy, it is a fact. Is Mr Lack suggesting CO
2 is not plant food? His life breath depends on it too.
Mr Lack speaks of the fossil fuel industry adopting the tactics of the tobacco industry. The accusation is an odd comparison to choose. The production of fossil hydrocarbons has brought many tangible benefits to the life of Mr lack and many others. How else would our societies have advanced without such incremental energy and its by-products?
In one breath, he is indirectly commending a member of that industry for work on algal biofuels (10,000 bopd) then later levelling unsubstantiated allegations about the industry as a whole. In the same paragraph, he speaks reverently about the IPPC and its predictions. He conveniently forgets to mention that among the panel of experts were those who colluded to not only silence, but malign fellow scientists who held contrarian views, in a completely unprofessional manner. Perhaps Mr Lack can explain why the models on which IPCC bases its predictions are no longer showing history matches with the temperature records of recent years? In petroleum reservoir engineering, if the model no longer matches newer data, the model is wrong, not the data.
I am not a denier that Climate Change has existed throughout the Earth’s history and is apparently taking place but I do question the sole focus on Anthropogenic Global Warming as being the cause.
A concerned portion of the membership and past members wrote to the President on 1
st June 2018 requesting a review of the Society’s Position Statements on Climate Change. So far, there has been no response. Yet the Society, through one of its publications, gives voice to some unscientific ramblings.
Clive Randle (FGS)