Why I Am Still a Climate Change Sceptic
by James Dent Climate change is now a fixed part of our national psyche, as is Covid, and perhaps not surprisingly, a lot of features are shared. Perhaps the main connection is that both topics are very dependent on computer models for their illustration and projection, and are widely open to media exaggeration. I would suggest two things are important. One is that we realise that for the last 12,000 years, our climate has been changing gradually after the last glacial advance. Secondly, that during this period there have been distinct warm and cold periods that have persisted for several decades or even centuries. The most prominent of these periods have been warm conditions at the start of the Roman occupation of Britain, the early Medieval period and the last 150 years: distinctly cold periods occurred from AD 350 to 850, the ‘Little Ice Age’ lasting from about 1500 to 1700 and then most of the 19th century. Even within these periods, there were groups of years where warmer or cooler conditions prevailed. Similar fluctuations also occur in relation to wet and dry periods. For most of the time, the main anthropomorphic causes postulated for climate change i.e., industrial development and increasing carbon dioxide emissions, did not occur. We perhaps should ask what defines climate change, as opposed to climate...
