Why do we have a moral duty to make up for the Industrial Revolution? - Yorkshire Post Letters

Clearly Mike Baldwin and David Ingham are among the misguided 61 per cent who believe that because the UK was the chief architect of the Industrial Revolution, which has bequeathed previously unimagined levels of prosperity and health across the world, it must now fulfill its 'moral duty' to blaze a new trail to the promised land of net zero by 2050 (Letters, April 24 - Miliband is on right track with net zero).

Perhaps the remaining 39 per cent of those surveyed in the YouGov poll who are either undecided or sceptical have taken the trouble to inform themselves of some irrefutable facts.

Undeniably carbon dioxide (CO2) levels have increased substantially since 1760 and is now viewed by many as a dangerous pollutant that will tip us into a climatic catastrophe.

However alarmists should surely be aware that although CO2 constitutes just 0.042 per cent of all atmospheric gases it is nonetheless a vital plant food.

The current level is actually enhancing photosynthesis and increasing crop yields. Observations by NASA satellites show that CO2 is responsible for 70 per cent of a global greening effect that has been observed on almost half the land surface.

We keep hearing about ‘unprecedented’ extreme weather events and highest temperatures 'since records began' but the media regularly fails to point out that such data only began to be recorded just over a hundred years ago.

Compared to today's multiple sources of information, observation stations at that time were few and far between and by nature of lower shipping levels, reports of cyclones were also limited.

The urban heat island effect caused by the expansion of so many heat absorbent and reflective materials is also distorting temperature readings.

During the Medieval Warm Period, between 950 and 1250 BC the level of CO2 was 115 ppm lower than today and yet temperatures were higher than, as was the case during the Roman Climatic Optimum from 250 BC to AD 400.

Research by Lightfoot and Ratzer ‘Earth's Temperature: The Effect of the Sun, Water Vapour and CO2’ concludes that “the Sun is always the primary controller of Earth's temperature” and that "the effect of CO2 on warming the Earth has a negligible increase in Earth's temperature".

Clearly there are many who blindly follow Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and his ilk on their journey to the promised land by squandering £ trillions on the ruinous road to net zero unaware of the old adage that science and politics shouldn't mix.