But of course, science, unlike democracy, is not done by counting heads. It is done by creating hypotheses and testing them. There are numerous examples from history where the majority was just plain wrong. I always remember the story of Albert Einstein. A journalist asked "Mr. Einstein, do you know that 1000 physicists disagree with your General Theory of Relativity?" Einstein thought a moment, and replied "If I were wrong, one would be enough".

But Mr Dent is wrong about the numbers. The claim about a "scientific consensus on climate change" is usually based on the 2,500 scientists on the IPCC panel. But the IPCC is driven by a small group of civil servants and bureaucrats. It is notorious for its cavalier dismissal of dissenting opinions, even from its own panellists, a number of whom profoundly disagree with it. I recently hosted a seminar in Brussels with two of the IPCC scientists, both of whom believe the IPCC is wrong. One of them, the distinguished American atmospheric physicist Prof. Fred Singer, remarked "The IPCC accepts my corrections of their spelling, but not of their science".

If Mr Dent believes in science by majority, he should note the 32,000 scientists (10,000 PhD status or above) who have signed the Oregon Declaration challenging climate change. Or he should look at actual opinion polls amongst working climatologists, which typically find that a third accept the alarmist hypothesis, a third reject it, and the rest think we need more data to decide. It is just not true that "the vast majority of the scientific community" accepts the alarmist position.

Roger Helmer

Conservative MEP for the East Midlands