Science is, was, should be, the final arbiter of what is happening. It needs to be well conducted, and based on scientific principles, proper analysis and recognised mathematical precepts, of course And there is such a thing as consensus It's how we make our way forward. Is consensus always right? Of course not, but I'd prefer a scientific consensus any day to a political or economic one.

These contrary arguments are often not part of any scientific or honest enquiry but are loaded and biased rebuttals based on creating doubt and inaction from self-interested parties. They come as preformed opinions based on emotion, libertarian ideologies and not measurement or science. So the claim that "all scientific theories are just hypotheses "- well that is wrong to start with, the fact that the writer doesn't know the difference between a theory and a hypothesis rather undermines his own thesis and he/she shouldn't be taken seriously. . .

Here's one internet resource explaining the difference, and it is important

A hypothesis is either a suggested explanation for an observable phenomenon, or a reasoned prediction of a possible causal correlation among multiple phenomena. In science, a theory is a tested, well-substantiated, unifying explanation for a set of verified, proven factors. A theory is always backed by evidence; a hypothesis is only a suggested possible outcome, and must be testable and falsifiable.

And in regard to extreme weather events, these sceptics are slurring climate scientists, because I've yet to hear a single climate scientist who will definitely label any single event as "proof". Indeed my frustration is the other way round.

For instance the temperature extremes in Europe in the last few years are such that wouldn't occur naturally more than one in many thousands of years, they represent incredible statistical outliers of 3 or 4 or 5 standard deviation, 3 standard deviation is a 99.5% certainty, 4 SD is something like a 99,99% certainty. So a climate scientist could state with total confidence that this even was caused by global warming and he/she would only be wrong 0.01% of the time or once in ten thousand years.. Yet they will still prevaricate or hedge their opinion.

There's nothing in life except some well established physical rules that reach this level of assurancy. Doctors prescribe valuable medicines on the basis of 2 SD or 95% probability. To be insisting that you cannot make the claim of associating weather events with climate change because of these vanishingly small levels of uncertainty is ridiculous and we don't that the time to piss around any longer. So in my book Packham is making an acceptable and defendable point.

And if the Sceptics Society doesn't get some funding from the fossil fuel industry, well, it's probably the only contrarian outlet that doesn't and is itself only a small part of the much wider attack on climate science that has gone on for years, much of it funded by fossil fuel interests to the tune of tens of millions perhaps hundreds of millions, of dollars. .