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Writer's info is sketchy

If you talk like an expert then you better have the credentials of one, one writer says.

To the Editor,

In an AV News letter published Sept. 23, 2011, Keith Sketchley remarked on comments by Prof. Andrew Weaver, made in response to a Tom Fletcher column.

He accuses Dr. Weaver of errors of scientific method. These were to include ignoring “variation in causal factors” and negative feedback mechanisms.

But then Mr. Sketchley stated that the Vikings ‘“farmed Greenland.” He also went on about “sea level changing very slowly.”

First, I hope Mr. Sketchley’s Ph. D. is available on request. There is no reason why climatology should be more accessible to amateurs than any other field of science. Because while concepts like climate modelling are called theories, so is gravity which is nonetheless reliable.

Mr. Sketchley goes on to state that there were warming periods 1,000 and 6,000 years ago, as if they were in dispute. They aren’t in dispute. However the warm period previous to those peaked 125,000 years ago, which was the last interglacial.

Northern Hemisphere temperatures were then higher than they are now, but we are on course to pass that mark during this century.

Conditions in the last interglacial can tell us a lot about where we are going, with similarly high ocean levels and CO2 concentrations. It should also be realized that a lot of the criticism levelled at climate scientists is for doing the right thing. Estimate have been conservative, and consistently overshot by the data since 1970.

Even compared to the distant past, trend lines show no end in sight, and ice pack melting in Greenland and Antarctica could trigger more sudden events than expected. My sources are US government publication.

Colin Frazer,

Port Alberni