Sir, Under the headline “US global warming delay ‘worse threat than al-Qaeda’ ” (broadsheet editions, January 9) you report Sir David King, the Prime Minister’s Chief Scientific Adviser, as having made an outspoken attack on the United States’ refusal to combat global warming. Sir David accused President Bush of hiding behind dubious scientific uncertainty, justifying this attack by an overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that the phenomenon is real and needs urgent action.

That the policies required by the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol would be some of the most complex and costly facing the human race is not in question. Nor is there any doubt that global warming, whether the result of natural or human factors, or both, would have serious consequences.

But when over 17,000 scientists in the US, Canada and Russia have signed a document questioning the scientific basis of the protocol, I question the assertion that this enjoys “an overwhelming consensus”.

At the Royal Society conference on Abrupt Climate Change in September 2003, attended by 58 eminent scientists, virtually every paper contained expressions of profound uncertainty and scepticism.

One conclusion at this conference summarised the dilemma faced by political leaders, who will doubtless be held responsible for any catastrophe attributable to their failure to adapt to the consequences of global warming — if, indeed, the evidence eventually links the phenomenon unequivocally to human rather than natural causes. That conclusion was that “there is a danger that the political demand for detailed answers is far outstripping the current scientific ability to give them”.

Until these answers are judged to represent a genuine scientific consensus, it would be wise for the separation between science and policy to be more rigorously defined and observed, not least because the cost to the developed world of implementing Kyoto has been estimated to exceed $350 billion.

Yours faithfully,
IAN LLOYD,
Bakers House, Priors Dean,
Petersfield, Hampshire GU32 1BS.
sirianlloyd@aol.com~
January 12.

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