THE doom and gloom merchants are at it again. We are being inundated with TV programmes stating that global warming is now a fact.

The only fact is that a lot of people depend on it happening to keep the cushy jobs and continue receiving handouts from our gullible government paid for out of our hard-earned taxes. We hate having our beautiful countryside blighted with useless wind turbines that contribute minuscule quantities of electricity and consequently will have negligible effect on the atmosphere. Only nuclear power can deliver the amount required in the future.

We are constantly told that because of global warming the ice caps are melting and that the sea will rise several meters. But the doommongers fail to mention that the average temperature on Antarctica, which holds more than 90 per cent of Earth's ice, is minus 37 Celsius, and I was under the impression that water froze at zero.

If "global warming" was happening as a result of us burning fossil fuels, wouldn't logic dictate that the atmosphere would be warming up? But NASA, using the most sophisticated satellite monitoring equipment available, states that air temperature over the last 20 years of the 20th century actually cooled by half of one degree.

We are now being told that global dimming is masking the problem of global warming. As usual it is our fault, yet again no mention of the power of nature.

Stephen Feaster,

Cropton,

Pickering.

Updated: 10:58 Thursday, January 27, 2005