Saudi Arabia has just today informed the world that the hacked-into emails from the University of East Anglia (UEA) show that the idea that global warming comes from man-made activities is a complete myth. Well, what a surprise! The country with by far the biggest repositories of oil in the world, 252 billion barrels’ worth, has confirmed that 98% of the world’s scientists who believe there is overwhelming evidence of such a connection are all wrong. Having said that, however, having dismissed the Saudi oil kingdom and their confederate allies, Exxon Mobil and their tiny group of paid scientists, for the colossal vested interests that they are and worthless as a source of independent evidence, it is nevertheless true that the UEA emails are deeply shocking. Even if they have been obtained illegally and some taken out of context, it is still damning that they appear to show attempts to prevent scientific data being released, to prevent publication of work by climate sceptics and freeze it out of the UN official IPCC report, and even to destroy material subject to FOI requests. All of that is unforgiveable. But the idea that it somehow undermines the whole edifice of climate change science is absurd and derisory.

The truth of course is that climate change theory is extremely complex and every aspect of it is not yet perfectly understood. There are certainly phenomena that are not obviously consistent with the theory, most notably that there have been periods of cooling in global temperature as well as warming that are not yet explained, even though the level of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continues gradually but steadily to rise. This would seem to imply that there are other factors which can over relatively short periods of time override the general greenhouse gas warming effect. There have already previously been refinements to the theory that have improved its explanatory power, such as the inclusion of the impact of sulphate aerosols, but clearly not yet sufficient to produce a total match between observation and theory. The central problem remains that there is such an enormous number of variables influencing the state of the atmosphere and such huge complexity in interactions between the oceans, land masses and the atmosphere that disentangling the natural variability of the climate (which is quite substantial) from the specific and discrete impacts of man-made greenhouse gas concentrations superimposed on top of the variability is unquestionably problematic.
Nevertheless, there are very strong grounds for believing that the essence of climate change theory is solidly grounded. Eight of the hottest summers ever recorded (since 1670) have occurred in the last 10 years. The frequency and ferocity of extreme phenomena (typhoons, floodings as well as intense droughts and desertification) – many of them 1 in a 1,000 years events – have been steadily growing. The samples taken by the Russians from the ice core below Lake Vostok reveal a relationship between carbon intensity and temperature over the last 400,000 years in which they move in virtual lockstep. My own view is that the evidence, though far from complete, is sufficiently compelling that we would, globally, be very foolish and reckless if we ignored it rather than taking, proportionately and prudently, precautionary action to diminish the likely causes when not to do so could put us at risk of inducing the sixth mass extinction in the history of the Earth.

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