Readers will recall TCW writer Gillian Dymond’s attempts to get a straight answer from Dame Norma Redfearn, Mayor of North Tyneside, about why North Tyneside Council has signed up to UK100, ‘a network of local leaders who have pledged to lead a rapid transition to Net Zero with Clean Air in their communities ahead of the government’s legal target’. You can catch up with the saga here.
I WAS just sending off an e-mail to Dame Norma, asking why there had been no reply to my last, when the following landed in my inbox:
Thank you for your further email.
I am afraid that I do not agree that man-made climate change is hotly disputed, either in the field of science or by Governments, both globally and locally. There is a range of evidence demonstrating that there is a scientific consensus on man-made climate change and there is good reason why Governments and organisations across the globe are taking action.
I do however respect your opinion to think otherwise.
Kind regards, etc
I’ve sent the following reply:
Open letter: Once again, please justify your adherence to the Net-Zero agenda
Thank you for your reply to my e-mail of 16 February. I am afraid it is unsatisfactory.
Man-made climate change may not be hotly disputed by governments, but it is most certainly hotly disputed in the field of science. I have already referred you to websites where you could have checked that this is, in fact, the case: but since, it seems, you have failed to do so, the required information can be found here, here and here, and in many other places, for those keen to take a balanced overview of the situation.
In the words of Nobel Laureate Dr John Clauser for example, ‘The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis. There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science.’
Or, as Professor Dr Knut Loschke, honorary professor at the University of Technology, Economics and Culture in Leipzig, groans: ‘I’m sick. Or, to put it even more clearly: I’m fed up with permanent and increasingly religious climate ramblings, fantasies about the energy transition, worship of electric cars, horror stories and doomsday scenarios from Corona to conflagrations and weather disasters . . . I suffer from having to see how science is turned into a whore of politics.’
As someone in a position of responsibility, answerable to a constituency of over 200,000 people, it is not enough for you to say that ‘there is a range of evidence demonstrating that there is a scientific consensus on man-made climate change’. I assume that what you mean by this is that there is a range of evidence which supports the hypothesis of man-made climate change, and that there is also a scientific consensus that this hypothesis is proven. To the first part of this claim, I would point out that there is an at least equally impressive range of scientific evidence which supports alternative hypotheses. The second part of your claim is patently untrue. There is no scientific consensus regarding the causes of long-term fluctuations in climate.
As we both know, science is not ‘settled’ by majority vote.
As we should also know, the definition of a ‘consensus’ is a general agreement. I repeat: there is no general agreement among scientists regarding the factors involved in climate change. Evidence from multiple scientific disciplines suggests that these factors are too complex to be reduced to a neat formula of ‘more carbon dioxide equals soaring temperatures plus extreme weather events’, nor are they are amenable to human control.
You go on to say that ‘there is good reason why Governments and organisations across the globe are taking action’.
It is precisely those ‘good reasons’ which I am asking you to define. Appeals to authority are not enough. You must prove your own integrity: i.e. that you have taken the trouble to examine all sides of the debate.
It is the consensus of many who have examined the evidence of scientists offering a wide variety of experience and expertise that your crusade to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions by a stringent application of Net Zero policies will make little impression on the workings of the cosmos, while forcing unnecessary hardship not only on the residents of North Tyneside but on the vegetation which (as we learnt in our first-year biology classes) thrives on an abundance of this much maligned nutrient.
Please will you:
1) point me to any evidence of anthropogenic climate change sufficient to outweigh the contra-indications of many eminent dissenting scientists; and
2) send me a copy of any comprehensive risk/benefit study of the entire Net-Zero agenda which you can lay your hands on.
You say that you respect my ‘opinion to think otherwise’. I, likewise, respect your right to hold a contrary opinion. What I find hard to stomach is that a mere opinion, promoted by powerful supranational agencies in defiance of the scientific method, should be allowed to toy recklessly with the lives of captive populations in North Tyneside and throughout the world.
I look forward to your prompt response.