cc: a.minns,e.l.jones date: Mon Apr 14 18:44:01 2003 from: Mike Hulme subject: Re: Lenton, EDP and CRed to: "Trevor Davies" Thanks Trevor - I had already drafted a letter to the EDP which has gone off. It is attached below. I don't usually respond to Lenton's jibes, but I did to this one since he (ab)used my name specifically. Glad to know EDP are on board for CRed. The brochure looks good. A couple of suggestions: - the text by the graph of temperature could usefully have inserted "contained" between "carbon" and "in fossil fuels" - the graph could be a little bit better captioned/explained - the blurb cutting from 5 balloons to 2 balloons - this could be improved; when it says "released" what do you mean? this is for UK average - what about the world? you have used CO2 mass rather than C mass (the latter is the more common unit in formal statistics). And a final point - I know Marcus is working on CRed and Simon G has a role; who else in ENV is currently employed on CRed? Just useful to know who the right contact points are. And as Tyndall's rep on the Advisory Group for CRed, will Elaine be involved in any formal planning and development as the project takes off? And a final, final point - we (Laura) could still do with a bit of text about the 6 September Saturday CRed event as part of SD3 and ZICER opening - or maybe she has it already. Thanks, Mike ___________________________________________ Sir Mr Tim Lenton is clearly an arch sceptic of the idea that humans are already changing world climate ("Doing nothing, Mr Hulme, actually might be best", 13 April). For the many thousands of EDP readers, however, such cynicism and ignorance deserves a reply. The Ice Ages he mentions occurred when global temperature swung just 4-5 degC in a colder direction; the prospect ahead of us now is a 2-6degC movement to warmer conditions on the time-scale of no more than a century or so. This is indeed a more radical change than the 6 billion (and rising) people on the planet have previously had to cope with. Whether we should do something about this is a matter of judgement rather than of science, but there are many, many well-informed people who recognise that action to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases is at least desirable, if not essential (witness the front-page headline of the same issue of the EDP concerning incentives for biofuels). This issue is too important to be left as amusing entertainment on an unanswered opinion page. Yours sincerely, At 10:44 14/04/2003 +0100, you wrote: Mike, Before/if you respond to Lenton, you should know that I spoke with the Editors of both the EDP & the EEN last week. They are both fully behind CRed. The EDP will make the launch their top story & will include supplements etc. They will joins as "partners" and have agreed to support Cred actively (as newspaper "campaigns- with regular features, challenges etc et). UEA Communications Division is involved. I attach the latest version of the popular brochure for your info (still a few glitches). Trevor _____________________________ Professor Trevor D. Davies Dean School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia Norwich NR4 7TJ Tel +44 (0)1603 592836 Fax +44 (0)1603 593792