Letter: We're cooling, not warming

Letter: In answer to the points made by Bev McCarthy made in her letter printed on January 21, the BBC stating that the "last decade was the warmest on record" does not conflict with my statement that we are in a global cooling stage.

1998 was the peak of the latest global warming period. From 1999 until 2005 the global temperature dropped too slightly to be recognised but the drop in the last five years has been noticeable and is accelerating.

Thus the average temperature for the last 10 years may be the highest since records began but this does not mean that the earth is not cooling now. Incidently the BBC is threatening to take the weather forecasting contract away from the Meteorological Office because it has been so wrong in the last few years. The Met office programmed its computer based on carbon dioxide causing heating, it doesn't.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is not composed of scientists, it is made up of politicians and civil servants. The chairman, Dr Rajendra Pachauri (an ex-railway engineer turned economist) is now an extremely wealthy man because of the carbon scare.

He has just had to apologise for issuing a report in 2007 that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. When Dr Vijay Raina, India's senior glaciologist published a report that showed that the rate of retreat of the glaciers had not changed for at least 50 years Dr Raina accused him of doing voodoo science.

As in the story of The Emperor's New Clothes, people are reluctant to appear to be silly and tell the truth.

Because of this we are ruining the world's economy, erecting useless wind turbines on beauty spots.

Denis Allen

Wellington