Met men
Sir: Andrew Kenny in his plea for con- sistency in the treatment of radiation dan- gers (`Up and Atom', 21 April) demons- trates how easy it is for a polemic to sink into pusillanimity after the first 1,000 words. In fact his article, like the British nuclear programme that he derides, began brilliantly but later became bogged down by incompetence and spurious arguments. He describes well how the great British public fail to understand statistics, but then as he enters the dangerous second 1,000 words he proceeds to exhibit his own ignorance of the subject, when he writes: `The world's weather is beginning to change in a dramatic and ominous way.'
At this point Kenny hangs himself by his own rope, as the elixir of his argument banishes the spirit of scientific inquiry from
LETTERS
his brain, and cant takes over. It is true that there has been an outbreak of extreme weather recently around the world, but a careful study of the climate records since about 1700 indicates that this happens periodically, with each outbreak lasting a few years. There are various possible explanations for this, one being no more than random fluctuations in the prevailing atmospheric circulation patterns, but the Important point is that we do not need the greenhouse effect to explain them. In fact the evidence so far suggests that the greenhouse effect will not increase the Probability of extreme weather in general, although the arguments are too complex to settle in the Spectator letters pages.
Philip Hunter
44 Brodrick Road, London SW17
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