What do climate ‘doubters’ hope to achieve with their sneering attitude towards people who care? - Yorkshire Post Letters

How beneficial it would be if those who cannot face climate reality would end their attacks on those who have the courage to look, with a clear eye, at what is happening in all areas of the globe including the UK.

These citizens deserve respect. To dismiss them as ‘Greenies’ shows that those who use adolescent terminology are attempting to disguise their guilt as participants in the charge towards a climatically hazardous future. We all share this responsibility. Why deny it?

When asked if 97 per cent of world scientists are wrong in stating that by far the greatest cause of global warming is human activity the response from the 'I'm alright Jack brigade' is often that ‘my opinion’ is as valid as the weight of expert analysis.

Definition of opinion: a thought or belief about something. A ‘thought’ or ‘belief’ so clearly differs from a ‘fact’ defined as "a thing that is known or proved to be true".

One weighty attempt to deny the 97 per cent was undertaken by Prof. E. Ritchie, writing in Forbes Magazine in May 2021. The Prof had worked in the oil industry for 35 years but he could find nothing more to help the 'doubters' than to assert that "committees never reach total agreement" and that "at least 80 per cent of scientists formed a strong consensus" around the CO2/temperature link.

The oil industry has of course denied that combusting their product harms nature and humans (just as the tobacco industry denied for decades that smoking causes lung cancer).

Does this lie behind the 'doubter' insistence that ‘facts change’? Yes, until the work of S. Arrhenius in 1896 there was no understanding of the connection between CO2 and temperatures.

We now know that as CO2 atmospheric volumes increase (1960- 318ppm ; 2023 - 419ppm) world temperatures increase. On Sunday 21/7 the global temperature averaged 17.09C; on Monday 22 it averaged 17.1C, both records, while 2023 was the hottest year in the modern period. The facts are only going in one direction.

Much 'doubter' anger is also directed against concerned citizens who want the volume of meat consumed to be reduced and for some institutions to experiment with meat free meals.

Those who suggest this are said to be ‘dangerously weird fanatical Puritans’ - a slight overstatement especially given that protesters sing, dance and wear bright clothes.

Our farm animals produce not only CO2 but Methane as well; their contribution to the heat crisis is indisputable. Add to this that much of our beef comes from countries where grazing land is produced by deforestation and soybean fed to farm animals here comes from the same deforested areas. Why do some citizens think that a positive change in related eating habits is somehow an assault on their manhood?

To name call those citizens who are brave enough to accept the obvious is not wisdom; to hide from reality is more than selfish. It is to knowingly diminish our childrens' standard of living and to decimate that of our grandchildren.

It is to threaten the health and longevity of all our descendants. That some Brits want to harm future generations simply because they are too timid to see what is obvious is difficult to comprehend.

For many economists, climate scientists, medics and others it is clear that we do have the knowledge and some of the tools needed to stop things getting disastrously worse. Can the 'doubters' not find the courage to join the movement towards possibilities or will they remain addicted to the cancer of dispute?