I AM constrained to respond to the letter written by Graham Marsden “No reply or acknowledgement from election candidate over fracking” (March 11).

I feel obliged to point out to Mr Marsden that carbon dioxide (C02) or, as he prefers to call it, “carbon” (as carbon sounds all black evil and horrible) is not a pollutant, it is a trace gas present in the atmosphere that is a vital fertiliser essential to life.

In fact, it's no more deadly than oxygen or water and is not “already dangerously and almost irreversibly high” as he states. C02 levels are at historically low levels and in the past have been many; many times higher than they are now (which is currently around 380 ppm). The C02 produced today when we burn fossil fuels is merely returning into the atmosphere a minute part of the C02 sequestrated by plant and animal life over hundreds of thousands of years. It is not new C02 that we have produced. It is C02 that is being recycled. If we were to hold a huge bonfire and burn all the available fossil fuel, coal, gas and oil in the world at one go, it would raise the atmospheric C02 by only a very small amount, to nowhere near the level it was 500 million years ago when global cooling caused much of the earth’s surface to be covered with ice.

The tiny increase in levels of C02 witnessed over the last few decades falls quite within natural variances and is almost entirely made up by natural causes. It is also interesting to note that despite the small increase in C02 levels in the atmosphere since the turn of this century, a slight decrease in the earth’s average temperature has been observed, which is contrary to what the global warming that alarmists have been pontificating about.

Stuart A Chapman

Ventnor

Isle of Wight