Sir – Oh dear, here we go again! An unusually wet winter has the global warming bandwagoners out in force insisting it’s a man-made disaster and we’ll all be doomed within a couple of decades if we don’t take draconian measures immediately.

Any decent statistician knows you cannot base such a conclusion on two similar events seven years apart.


Much is made of the IPCC’s dubious graphs and reasoning based on a few years’ measurements but the earth’s climate has fluctuated over a far greater range in the past, without the help of Didcot power station or any other of man’s activities. Global temperatures have been much higher (and lower) than at present and, in fact, there has been no significant warming for the last decade.


As ecologist and co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore (not the late astronomer) has pointed out there is no scientific proof that climate change is man-made, adding that there was an ice age 450 million years ago when CO2 levels were ten times higher than now.

Naturalist David Bellamy affirms also that there is no evidence that carbon dioxide is a poison, or is capable of causing a warming Armageddon. Levels of CO2 follow, not precede rising temperatures and actually stimulate plant growth. Predictably, such dissenting scientists are labelled cranks and are ostracised for not toeing the fashionable line.


Of course, we need major changes in water management across the Thames Valley, as the Oxfordshire Climate and Flooding Alliance demand and, of course, it’s right to seek renewable energy sources but the notion that we can, like Canute, halt the tide of natural processes is futile.


Prof Graham Lee, Botley