THE world is flat and it is supported by turtles. If I had carried out a survey in ancient times, I guess the majority of those asked would likely have agreed to both or one of these untruths.

Your article (“More people now believe in climate change effects”, The Herald, February 14) is about as pointless as asking about turtles.

The question is meaningless. The earth's climate has been changing since it was formed some 1,000 million years ago. There is not one scintilla of scientific evidence that relates rises of falls in global temperatures to the activity of people.

We have been keeping records for 100 years or so, it is not a blink in terms of the age of the earth and it is no wonder records keep getting broken. It is stupid to blame floods on climate change. The evidence is anecdotal and without foundation. The whole thing is a hypothesis with no actual evidence. Science does not work like that. If one has a theory, it is your responsibility to provide reproducible scientific evidence for the theory.

About 325,000 years ago CO2 levels were higher than they are today. Today they are at a peak, a lesser peak. We are at the end of a warm interglacial and soon to enter the next ice age. The theory is that the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels is the “greenhouse” gas causing global warming. In fact, water is a much more powerful greenhouse gas and there is 20 times more of that in the atmosphere, about one per cent of the atmosphere. CO2 is about 0.04 per cent.

CO2 lags behind the changes in the earth's temperature by about 800 years, it does not drive warming, it lags behind the warming of the oceans.

The anthropogenic global warming theory is based on a ridiculously narrow time span and ignores millions of years of contra evidence. The real threat that will be brought about by the next ice age is that large tracts of the northern hemisphere will be uninhabitable and that is being foolishly ignored.

Recently President Obama (when he was president of the United States ) said 97 per cent of scientists now believe in global warming. What does that mean? What scientists? Were all 100 per cent of scientists asked? It was a meaningless, propaganda statement and meant nothing. A consensus does not a truth make.

Emeritus Professor Les Woodcock, former NASA scientist and Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences are quite clear, there is not a shred of recountable evidence to support the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

Ian McNeish,

2 Whitehill Place, Stirling.