The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference has brought the topic under the media spotlight but has also brought with it the phenomenon of climate change sceptics.
Climate change deniers will use any shred of evidence to shed doubt to the fact that climate change is happening and is man-made. Joe Calleja's letter (The Sunday Times, December 27, 2009) entitled 'There is still no consensus on global warming' is a case in point.
Mr Calleja mentioned the Heidelberg appeal, which is commonly misquoted by climate change sceptics as a manifesto against climate change. I expected to find a text that clearly denounces climate change. Instead, I found an article that appeals to policymakers to base their strategies on sound "scientific criteria and not irrational preconceptions".
Mr Calleja is right in mentioning that the Heidelberg appeal was signed by 72 Nobel Laureates, and endorsed by over 4,000 scientists, not the 400 Mr Calleja states.
What he fails to mention is that 49 of those Nobel Laureates also signed the 'World Scientists' Warning to Humanity' in 1992. This is a much clearer manifesto and explicitly states that humanity is colliding with the natural world, and that humans are causing global climate change, massive species extinction, pollution and other problems.
Mr Calleja erroneously states that just 52 scientists worked on the UN-IPCC 2007 report, but a quick search found that the core climate science report was written by 152 scientists from more than 30 countries and reviewed by more than 620 experts and 113 governments.
The 'Caught green-handed' paper Mr Calleja invites George Debono to read was written by Christopher Walter Monckton, a politician, not a scientist.
The lack of consensus in the scientific community that Mr Calleja refers to is on the extent of the increase in global temperature due to human activities and not that global warming does not exist.
Sadly, by 2010 the world still hasn't come to any form of legally binding document about what to do with humanity's biggest challenge: man-made climate change. Instead, we're wasting effort debunking the erroneous claims made by these sceptics. Will we be referred to in a 100 years' time as the fools who failed to act upon the evidence of man-made climate change?