Letter: Just wait for the summer

Letter: So, a quarter of the British people, according to a recent poll, believe there is no global warming, regardless of the cause.

I wonder by how much that fraction will fall if we have a hot summer. Sometimes I feel that the human species developed a large brain to become stupid, not clever.

How many people know that the UK occupies an area less than one two-thousandths of the whole world? Not many, as Michael Caine might have said. And you would have to add the North Sea and a sizeable chunk of Western Europe and the Atlantic to bring that fraction up to one per cent.

Furthermore, scientists predicted that global warming would not make our own temperatures rise, owing to a breakdown of the Gulf Stream.

Fortunately this has not yet occurred, although the signs are there. The influence of cold eastern and northern air masses have caused our present cold winter, particularly in Scotland.

Even so, we have not been threatened with conditions experienced in 1947 when even the sea froze. Anyone with any sense of local observation will have noticed that summer vegetables and fruits have been maturing recently about a month sooner than they did 40 years ago.

Perhaps that last comment of mine is the reason why some of us oldies are laughed at. Oh for the days when the old tribal chiefs were regarded with a certain amount of respect.

Richard Smythe

Newport