The evidence is clear, we must trust major climate institutions -Yorkshire Post Letters

John Heasman (The Yorkshire Post, January 8) is keen to buy into Charles Wardrop’s climate change denial, thinking that mankind is not the cause of our heating planet. Given the extreme weather events over the last 12 months witnessed globally, he’s playing a dangerous game.

He should trust information provided by our premier science institution, The Royal Society, over someone of unknown skill and motivation writing to a newspaper. That organisation guards its reputation and integrity vigorously and it says there is clear evidence that we’re heating the climate with serious consequences.

Common sense confirms it, because politically appointed representatives of every IPCC member nation have signed-up to the wording in the IPCC’s summary reports for policy makers.

The best available science is all in the public domain and concludes that we must rapidly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to avoid serious long-term harm.

Money talks and, if there was defensible scientific evidence that the conclusions the IPCC reports were unfounded, the likes of China, India, United Arab Emirates, and Qatar wouldn’t sign off on the reports. Yet they have.

Similarly, look at the statements on climate change from oil majors like BP, Shell and ExxonMobil.

Despite being subject to legal challenges relating to their role in climate change, they all publicly accept that CO2 emissions are leading to dangerous global warming.

The evidence is clear, we must trust the major climate institutions, the IPCC and the national science academies such as our own Royal Society. Why trust someone you don’t know when common sense tells you he can’t be right.