Sir, – In response to the letters denying global warming in last Friday’s edition of the D&S, I would simply point out that not one produced any evidence whatsoever to counter that produced by the 500 independent specialist climate scientists who wrote the last peer reviewed report for the independent body, the IPCC, which is maintained by the independent World Meteorological Organisation and independent UN and is backed by national governments throughout the world.

Why would such an organisation wish to produce incorrect and distorted results? Is there something to be gained by the analysing and publishing evidence which overwhelmingly supports acceleration of the effect that CO2 is having on the climate? Both the last – new Labour – and the current government rightly accept that the case is proven.

Incredibly, although measurements taken throughout the world show that the top ten hottest years on record in both hemispheres have been in the last 13 years, two make the claim that the world is actually getting colder (this claim has been specifically disproved) or is not getting warmer, thus blindly ignoring facts.

Trevor Nicholson makes the incorrect claim that the University of East Anglia distorted research results. They, wrongly in my view, as all research must be totally objective and never based on a selectively chosen data, or unverified claims, omitted some evidence from a report; that is not “fiddling statistics”.

Dave Wiper cites a report from the University of Pennsylvania Institute of Law and Economics that refutes claims made by scientists propounding global warming. Law and Economics? That hardly appears to qualify them to undertake such a study, does it? I seem to recall that this report was, not surprisingly, shown to be inaccurate (possibly a question of selection of data). Oddly, despite massive melting, particularly of land ice but also sea ice, and frightening Arctic sea temperatures rises, Mr Parlour claims that increases are concentrated in the tropical zone.

Finally, citing results of debates is meaningless; it depends on the predictions of those attending; it is not evidence.

I doubt whether any of them have read the very detailed FoE briefing I recommended, Our Unstable Planet (A Brief Look at Some Recent Climate Change Science). I suggest that they do so before writing anything more on the topic.

JOHN SEVERS Durham City.