Ed,

Recent contributors to the Independent letters page, critical of my stance on changing climate, reveal their apparent confusion between science and politics, and misunderstanding of the role of IPCC.

The complexity of climate science is such that its practitioners work within a research environment of careful incremental knowledge-base improvement. Thousands of such persons, not always in agreement, nevertheless cooperate towards the common goal; and in science, eureka moments are rare.

IPCC is a politically appointed body whose charter is to gather data and produce reports, specifically addressing human causation theory, to the exclusion of all other factors of influence. While the sources are science based, exclusions render the data incomplete.

Inference that I’ve reached a conclusion is contrary to my consistent stance against premature acceptance of the human causation hypotheses. The theory remains unproven, i.e., it’s neither proven nor disproven, and subject therefore to ongoing research; and the science most certainly is not ‘settled’. My opinions are based on a long career in technical design and implementation, of infrastructure for mitigation of climate related environmental hazards.

Ray Smith, Iluka