A response to Sammy Wilson

Being an MP gives Sammy Wilson certain opportunities such as having letters and statements carried by the press. However when his communication is so clearly outside the accepted scientific knowledge it is also encumbent on the press to allow a timely rebuttal. This week I responded to Sammy's misinformation/misunderstanding but this has not yet been covered by the press so I'm setting it out here for the record.

There are few individuals left in the world who deny the reality of anthropogenic (caused by human action) climate change, most who have a vested interest in maintaining activity which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions have moved to delayism or doomism. In Sammy Wilson MP however we have one of the world's last holdouts for straight denialism. He states, "many will be scratching their heads in bewilderment at the suggestion that world leaders can somehow control the earth's thermostat simply by changing the level of CO2 emissions" .  In 1856 a paper by Eunice Newton Foote detailed her observations of the warming effect of CO2, three years later an Irish physicist John Tyndall published a paper outlining how a rise in CO2 levels would increase global temperatures. Scientists have known this for 170 years, some of the most detailed studies and projections were produced by major fossil fuel companies, who promptly buried their results and began a campaign to undermine those who pointed out the impact of unrelenting use of fossil fuels. The world's governments and scientists recognise the problems and know the challenges in addressing them. The are many authors such as Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe whose work would educate anyone with an open mind on the subject, for the closed minds I don't have an answer other than ensuring they do not delay the important work to be done.