Ed,

Iluka climate sceptic Ray Smith made much of a petition to the Glasgow Climate Summit decrying the ‘climate emergency’ (CVI 12/10/22).

Now this petition was an updated version of a 2020 text (‘The Clintel Declaration’) from a Netherlands group founded by Guus Berkhout a retired geophysicist who worked for Shell.

Of the 1200 signatures to the petition only about 10 had climate credentials while the 300 odd scientists were geologists, engineers etc while the remainder had little science background (ie Joe Public).

Many had backgrounds in big oil, and many could be linked to sceptic think tanks like The Heartland Institute.

The consensus among real climate scientists is virtually unanimous – CO2 added to the atmosphere by human activity is responsible for global warming and the extra energy in the oceans and atmosphere leads to extreme weather events.

Sceptics like Ray should be very wary of social media and sceptic websites – what may seem convincing does not stand up to scrutiny.

Ted Strong, Seelands