Experts slam climate change is a myth claims

Dec 6 2009 by Amy Hunt, Sunday Sun

WITH world leaders set to gather in Copenhagen this week for a key summit on ways of halting climate change, an e-mail row in the UK has mired the issue in controversy. Amy Hunt looks at the arguments for and against global warming . . .

AS thousands of people marched through London yesterday to call on world leaders to tackle climate change, experts in the North have hit back at claims global warming is a myth.

The man in charge of predicting the effects of climate change on the region and preparing us for rising temperatures and extreme weather says evidence that humans are causing global warming is “overwhelming”.

He was speaking as a row over leaked emails, which some claim show experts have exaggerated data to overstate the effects of climate change, hots up.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called for an enquiry into the content of the e-mails, which are believed to have been stolen by hackers who tapped into the computer system of the University of East Anglia.

Adrian Hilton, co-ordinator for ClimateNE, a partnership committed to tackling the causes and effects of climate change, said it was up to scientists to answer skeptics by proving them wrong.

He said: “Evidence for climate change is overwhelming. Leading scientists all over the world agree that the changes in climate that we are experiencing cannot be explained by natural causes alone.

“With such overwhelming scientific evidence, not taking action to tackle climate change is the wrong thing to do. The impacts of climate change will only get worse and the economic consequences will certainly be significant.”

County Durham naturalist David Bellamy is one person who has added his voice to the row, saying the claims around the e-mail leak from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) were “bad for science”.