i have written so much on the Arctic and Antarctic melt down, the Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain losing the hair and many issue , no one seems to take the note. Thank you for your column. Are there any Volunteers who can come to Tanzania then we discus this matter on the dying slope of Kilimanjaro, once the pride of Africa. It is the highest mountain in Africa that had lots of ice or snow (ENGLISH and AMERICAN TREATED ALIKE), and speed up because within in next ten year there will not be any ice or snow. It is dying. Need any solid proof from this side.

The effects that you attribute to global warming - rain in the Andes, changes in Indian Monsoons and warmer near-tropical waters - are in fact perfectly consistent with El Nino events and to circumstances where the Southern Oscillation Index is negative but has not reached the threshold of an El Nino event.

These are perfectly natural and they cause an increase in average global temperature. The greater frequency of negative SOI values in the last 25 years is probably the single greatest cause of rising temperatures.

There is also very good evidence that rising temperatures cause an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide - and only a tenuous correlation that collapses when examinined in detail to support the claims of the eco-political groups that you mention.

sorry Les and John, all evidence points to a correlation between Global Warming and human activity - Himalayan glacial melting and increasingly earlier flowering timres for Uk native species are just two phenonema that cannot be attributed to El Nino. I do aggree withLes though about the other threats to humanity on Earth.

Environmentalists talk as if a 2C rise were the end of the earth. But the world has been 10C higher. They talk as if it is inevitable, yet I can't see how we will have global warming when the economy collapses after oil and gas run out.

They talk as if a few windmills can produce all the petrol we need to run our vehicles, they can't we'd literally have to have windmills on every hill and valley from Arthur's seat to Ben Nevis and flood Clen Coe for a pump storage system just to supply a fraction of our energy demands.

Whether it is global warming or oil and gas depletion, the only certainty we have is that in 30 years our children will be extremely angry with this generation - particularly the politicians.

None of us should expect the next generation to fund our retirement (I suspect pensions will be taxed out of existence) and no doubt a great number of our leading politicians will find themselves ending up their days in that cosy retirement home called prison for their serious maladministration of our energy reserves!

John of Melbourne is completely correct - "global warming" is a natural phenomenon that has been hijacked by the environmental groups, and sadly by some individuals who should know better. Unfortunately this sideshow shifts the world's attention and resources from addressing the true global threats to humanity - HIV/AIDs, poverty, war and malaria.