Sir, - In his Science Today piece of June 19th, "Operating in a climate of uncertainty", William Reville attempts to give us the gist of an article by T.R. Karl and K.E. Trenberth in the December 1999 issue of Scientific American.
According to the authors of that article - "The Human Impact on Climate" - fossil-fuel emissions alone have increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere by about 30 per cent since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s.
The authors remind us that the inevitable result of pumping the sky full of greenhouse gases is global warming. "Indeed, most scientists agree that the earth's mean temperature has risen at least 0.6 degrees Celsius (more than one degree Fahrenheit) over the past 120 years, much of it caused by the burning of fossil fuels."
However, while he faithfully reproduces much of the article, Dr Reville fails to convey what seems to me the essential message. This is in the penultimate paragraph of the original article, in which the authors say: "Climate change is happening now, and more change is certain. We can act to slow it down, and we can sensibly plan for it, but at present we are doing neither." - Yours, etc.,
Myles Crowe, Old Brewery Lane, Clonakilty, Co Cork.