Feeling the heat

Lawson is a good columnist but a poor climate scientist. The 20th-century global temperature record contains many brief static periods within the long-term warming trend. They are caused by natural phenomena including La Nina and volcanism.

To invoke a recent "roughly static" period to suggest that anthropogenic climate change can now be forgotten is scientifically wrong. Data from only a few years can tell us nothing about global warming.

Dr Paul Williams
Royal Society University Research Fellow
University of Reading