Climate change campaigners on march with banner reading there is no planet B
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Letter: Unpacking the climate change deniers’ arguments after recent ‘Question Time’ episode

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This from Angela Hewitt. Ed


It is absolutely shocking that a man with the ambition to be prime minister of this country announced to Britain that he is climate change denier, not in those exact words, but in his rhetoric.

Richard Tice (leader of Reform UK) made it clear on Question Time on Thursday night (18th April) that climate change (in reference to this climate change) is just a normal, natural process in the of planet’s natural history.

In simple terms let’s look at this.

  1. First of all there are people in existence that once they have an idea in their head, no matter how much evidence to the contrary is presented to them, will not be able to see it let alone accept is. They will even twist the evidence as reported, in this case, the IPC report on climate change to justify their misconceived belief. It begs the question do they actually know how to digest a scientific document.
  2. 97% of scientist now agree that the climate change we are experiencing TODAY is significantly different and is exponential to the natural processes of a climate change that happens over the period of a million years – and that it is caused by human activity. It is the 3% of inadequate scientist (possibly paid by giant oil companies) that have spread the myth that climate change is not actually happening that the climate change deniers cling to.
  3. Natural climate change happens over million-year periods at a time. It is a slow, slow, slow process, so slow that the species living in that time barely notice it as they have a million years to adapt, become extinct, new species evolve and so on.
  4. Then there are the processes that we see around every 10 years that make small ephemeral changes to our climate such as an overactive sun every, roughly 10/11 years. El-nino effect roughly every 7 years. These are the most common events that climate change deniers use in an attempt to prove their case.
  5. Climate change deniers conveniently ignore the fundamental effect CO2 emissions have on the planet, suggesting as Richard Tice did on Thursday night that it is pointless reducing these emission as the rise in water is going to continue (as stated in the IPC document) even if we reach net zero tomorrow.
  6. The reason this is true is because of all the CO2 which we have sequestrated in the atmosphere will be up there for the next thousand years and added to if we carry on as we are today. This is what’s going to continue to drive this rapid, hard hitting climate change.
  7. The deniers are now saying we should learn to adapt, but how? A kind of contradiction – Is there or isn’t there exponential climate change? If it is going to be the planet’s natural, slow change that we won’t even notice, so why do we need to adapt? In the meantime for those that understand the science, where do all the climate change refugees go to live? Where do we grow our food when half the planet is under water and the other half is a dessert. Not over the period of 1,000+ years, but as CO2 emissions continue to increase years over the next 50 years.
  8. Politicians are all talk no action. It is now down to us, the individual. We have to stop adding to the CO2 sink in the sky. We have to bring the CO2 that is up there back down into trees, plants and underground. Every single one of us can do this. To be sure, learning to adapt to this planetary catastrophe will be nothing more than a fool’s errand.