I WISH to take issue with some of the points raised by Richard Shirres, chairman of the Bolton and District Civic Trust, in his letter Town must adapt for the climate to come” (July 4).

Mr Shirres attempts to surreptitiously link the recent hot weather and moorland fires with anthropogenic global warming and that we can expect more of the same unless we change our ways.

Firstly, there is no empirical peer reviewed scientific evidence to prove that human activity; human induced carbon dioxide (C02) emissions are causing, (either directly or indirectly) global warming.

The so often cited computer models and "hockey stick graphs" that are wildly touted as irrefutable evidence by proponents of human caused global warming are just concatenations of calculations you could do on a hand-held calculator, so they are only theoretical and cannot be part of any evidence

But he then goes on to postulate as if it were a fact a dubious a report by UNICEF that “4.5 million children in the UK are subject to poor air quality”.

I would speculate that this figure of 4.5 million is significantly lower than what it was just a few decades ago because of much higher air pollution back then. Which makes this report bias and somewhat purposely misleading to say the least?

Mr Shirres continues by stating that during the 2003 heat wave 70,000 people died prematurely.

May be so, but cold weather kills far more people prematurely than warm weather ever does.

He intentionally refers to C02 (carbon dioxide) as “carbon” only, obviously this is done knowingly for dramatic effect, because “carbon” to the unversed sounds all black, evil and horrible, instead of the harmless plant food it actually is.

Climate change is a fact, but to listen to the likes of Richard Shirres, you’d think that it was a relatively new phenomenon caused solely by us ‘selfish humans’ which is of course utter nonsense.

I just wonder though whether or not if Mr Shirres and Bolton and District Civic Trust have also included within their grand plans for Bolton, “for the climate to come”, what they also think should be done in the town if the planet, ‘instead of getting warmer,’ suddenly plunges in to a prolonged cooling period, or even another ice age, which incidentally, is in point of fact well overdue?

Stuart A Chapman

Co Kerry

Ireland