DR Vines may very well be right (Times, February 27)) about rainfall from December to February. Nevertheless, the Met Office's England and Wales series (http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/monthly/HadEWP-monthly-qc.txt">www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadukp/data/monthly/HadEWP-monthly-qc.txt), shows that January 2014 was the 18th wettest month since 1766; the outright champion was October 1903, which had 218.1mm compared with Jan 2014's 184.6mm.

Your readers can look up the raw data and no doubt perform other selective concatenations to generate different scores. 'No evidence' seems a reasonable characterisation of such manipulations.

In any case, rainfall data says nothing about causation. It is disingenuous indeed to imply (as one is impelled by the context to infer that Dr Vines intended) that Professor Collins's assertion that there is 'no evidence' of a link between rainfall and 'global warming' should be gratuitously turned on its head and read as hinting the contrary.

On the other hand, it was entirely appropriate for me to juxtapose Professor Collins's statement with Dame Julia Sligo's, for the reason I stated, namely that the former's research is funded, at least in part, by the latter's organisation; ergo, one might reasonably have expected her to consult him (as her expert scientist) before issuing ex cathedra a contradictory statement on a contentious matter.

Space again prevents me from running to earth the coat that Dr Vines trailed about 'backing the scientists'. My disagreement is with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which claims to be their mouthpiece yet admits that 'It does not conduct any research nor does it monitor climate related data or parameters' http://www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization.shtml">www.ipcc.ch/organization/organization.shtml

However, I absolutely reject his notion that it is 'sensible to adopt the precautionary principle' as an imperative for public policy. On the contrary, it is absolutely insane to do so when the evidence of potential harm is at best speculative and contradicted by empirical evidence, whilst the harm inflicted by the outrageously disproportionate cost of 'precaution' is all too obvious to anyone who pays an electricity bill inflated by solar subsidies or buys a few gallons of petrol adulterated with ethanol.

Roger W Mathew

Down Road

Tavistock