CO2 rise claim too much for alarmists

European media sources (e.g., the Independent, Oct. 10) made a great deal out of a supposed surprise rise in CO2 levels in 2003, increasing by 2 parts per million to 379 ppm when the recent trend has a been 1.5 ppm rise each year.

Nevertheless, even dedicated climate alarmists such as Sir David King, chief scientific adviser to the British government, felt impelled to dismiss the anomaly as an aberration, not the start of a trend (BBC, Oct. 11).

The Hadley Centers Peter Cox told UPI (Oct. 14) that, as the CO2 increase was not uniform across the globe, it might have been caused by something unusual in the Northern Hemisphere, such as the forest fires in Europe caused by the hot summer.