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Climate sceptics issued with a challenge

Robin McKie

— PHOTO: AFP

PARCHED LAND: Farmers in Wimmera, Australia, survey an empty dam, which has left them with fields of stunted wheat. Parts of Australia are in the grip of the worst drought in memory. The situation has sparked an intense debate about global warming.

London: One of the world's leading climate scientists has challenged those who question the impact of the human population on global warming to defend their claims that car and factory emissions of carbon dioxide are not heating up the planet.

Alan Thorpe, chief executive of the Natural Environment Research Council in the U.K., said on Saturday he planned to defeat so-called "deniers", first on-line and later at a public debate.

"We need, very urgently, to discuss what to do now to mitigate the effects of climate change," he said. "Yet a handful of scientists, politicians and writers are still claiming humans are not responsible at all. We have got to kill off this notion so we can get on with the real work: protecting ourselves from future climate change. That is why I am challenging these deniers." Particular targets for Mr. Thorpe's attack include scientists Pat Micheals and Dick Lindzen in the U.S., weather forecaster Piers Corbyn in the U.K., British botanist David Bellamy and former Chancellor of the Exchequer (British Finance Minister) Nigel Lawson. All have claimed, in recent articles and speeches, that carbon dioxide is not responsible for the increase in global temperatures that the world is currently experiencing.

Mr. Corbyn welcomed the challenge on Saturday. "I relish the prospect of a debate," he said. "There is no evidence that carbon dioxide is involved in global warming. The rise in temperatures is due to changes in the sun's energy output and to changes in the Earth's magnetic field." —

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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