A letter from John McKerral in The Canberra Times print edition of Thursday 25 June 2009:

Crispin Hull (“Problem’s not in the climate science, it’s all in the mind”, Forum, June 20, p15) has fallen into the typical alarmist’s behaviour: attacking the character of any organisation or person who has a different opinion on the subject to his own.

Science does not operate that way.

The theories and observations supporting them are what counts, not the character of the person putting them forward.

But it is so easy to attack someone’s character.

As he is so fond of science, he should consider that the alarmist scientists have destroyed their own theory.

They and their models predict that if the warming that we have experienced is caused by greenhouse gases (GHG), there should be a hot spot about eight to 12 kilometres above the tropics.

That is to say the warming there should have been at a rate 1.5 to 3 times the rate of warming at the surface in that area.

50 years of weather balloon and thirty years of satellite data has not shown this to be so.

In fact it is the other way around, the near surface temperature increase has been between 1.2 and 1.4 times that of the supposed hot spot.

Also the Earth Radiation Budget Experiment Satellite has shown that the outgoing long wave radiation has diminished by only 1/7 of that predicted by the computer climate models and this fails to support the GHG theory.

That radiation is supposed be absorbed by the GHGs on its way to space thus diminishing the outward radiation.

It is not and that is another nail in the coffin of that theory.

Under normal circumstances that should have finished the GHG causes global warming/climate change theory. However this is zombie science, you can’t kill it.

Governments keep pouring money into it thereby keeping it going.  The climate has always changed without man’s help and will continue to do so.  So-called deniers do not disbelieve that the climate is changing.

What they do deny is that man has a major influence in the process.

It might be to Crispin’s benefit to do some research on the subject!

John McKerral, Batemans Bay, NSW

I sent this response to The Canberra Times, published in the 2 July print edition:

According to John McKerral (Letters, 25 June), the entire body of scientific evidence for human-caused global warming is invalid, and “alarmist scientists have destroyed their own theory”.  This bold claim is apparently proven by two rather lightweight quibbles over climate models.

The first, that the upper troposphere has warmed more slowly than the surface, was a favourite for several years among those trying to deny the scientific consensus, until it was shown in 2005 that the data involved included instrumental errors – such as sunlight warming instruments carried on balloons – that had not been properly accounted for.  While there are still some small discrepancies between climate model projections and warming over the tropics, they fall within the expected range of error and do not even remotely constitute a flaw in the mainstream science.

The second complaint, that the drop in outgoing long-wave radiation was not as much as predicted, was raised in late March by Richard Lindzen, a prominent denier (and recipient of funding from oil companies).  Unfortunately Lindzen neglected to mention that the graphs he was citing were out of date, containing data with significant instrumental errors (including the slow loss of altitude of the satellite’s orbit) which had not been properly corrected.  The updated graphs do not support his argument at all.

It’s disturbing that our society’s general level of scientific literacy is so low that these kinds of issues can be interpreted as constituting a disproof of current climate science. The big picture is that the evidence from a wide range of sources overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that human activities are the primary cause of  current global warming.    Our lack of scientific literacy is exploited by those who are actively seeking to delay or reduce action on global warming.  History will not judge them kindly.

Matt Andrews, Aranda