Letter: The Earth's nature is not predictable - therefore I don't believe that 'experts' can predict our climatic future

This letter claims that we're in a climate crisis, though indeed the climate is changing but does he not understand that the climate has changed since the formation of the atmosphere some 2.6 billion years ago, this being a very slow and gradual process?

Climate change is a natural process so today's climate is no warmer than in many past times as the Earth transitions through both warmer and cooler phases, an example being the Pleistocene ice age which ended some 12,000 years ago.

It consisted of many thousands of years when we had ice sheets, interspersed with much warmer interglacial periods, as warm or warmer than today.

As the last glaciation ended 12,000 years ago how does he, or anyone, know that we're not in one of those ’normal’ interglacial, warmer episodes?

The Earth's climate goes through ’natural’ cycles caused by the interaction of a number of factors (Milankovitch cycles), including change in the earth's solar orbit around the sun, change in distance from the sun, changes in the tilt angle, the Chandler axis wobble, sunspot activity.

Thus it is impossible to predict many years into the future. Compare to daily weather which we can only accurately predict up to five days ahead and yet ’the experts’ expect us to believe that we can predict global climate well into the future!

The Earth's nature is not predictable.

Consider the unknown of volcanic eruptions. Suppose that we have a number of large volcanic eruptions of gases, liquids and solids so blocking the sun and thus the possibility of a cold earth, perhaps a nuclear winter?

I, thus, don't believe that those 'experts' can predict our climatic future. They may be correct or they may be incorrect or some halfway house. Who knows?

Rob McAuley, Larne