Letters: climate protestors would do better to boycott China

Heat

Sir: May I place some of Nigel Lawson’s comments in a sensible historical context (‘Stupid fuels’, 6 November)?

First, he notes that the difference between the average annual temperature in Finland and in Singapore is at present 22°C. However, he is wrong to suggest that we should therefore not be concerned about a predicted rise in the average global temperature of a few degrees. The average global temperature during ice ages was only about 6°C colder than today, but that difference was enough to make the planet unrecognisable: much of the northern hemisphere’s land was covered in glaciers several thousand feet thick, and the sea level was 100 metres lower.

Second, it is misleading to describe the rate of recent warming as ‘barely perceptible’. The warming over the past century has been around 16 times faster than the warming which took place when the Earth was emerging from the last ice age.