STEVE Pratt’s article on global warming (Echo, Jan 7) pointed out that global warming is real despite the present cold spell. Dr Myles Allen, of Oxford University, was quoted as saying that all the indicators “suggest”

the globe is warming up in line with predictions.

Other climatologists disagree.

They point out that there was global warming from 1860-80, cooling from 1880-1910, warming from 1910-40, cooling from 1940-76 and warming from 1976-98. Since 1998, global temperatures have levelled out and another cooling period could be on its way.

There is no doubt that climate change is real, but is it caused by carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels?

Many British politicians believe it is so and want us to spend £100bn on thousands of almost useless wind turbines, along with tens of thousands of pylons, which will desecrate our countryside.

But the main global warmer is not CO2. It is water vapour which produces a global warming effect of about 45 degrees Celsius. Without water vapour human life would never have developed. The warming effect of CO2 is tiny by comparison.

Is it really possible that irreversible climate change is being caused as a result of the CO2 content of the atmosphere rising from 0.027 per cent to 0.037 per cent over the past 150 years?

Jim Allan, Hartlepool.