OH DEAR! Where, oh, where does one start to dismantle the outdated, scientifically illiterate, discredited gobbledegook that seems to be assumed by Chris Simpson's letter (Times, February 13)?

First, even the climate scientists decline to link recent storms with 'Global Warming'. Professor Matt Collins (Exeter University, lead author for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)): 'There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge.'

As Professor Collins's research is partly funded by the Met Office, it is somewhat surprising that their chief scientist, Dame Julia Slingo, appears not to have consulted him before claiming (if press reports are to be believed) that such a link is within her knowledge.

Second, there is considerable evidence that this year's rainfall is by no means exceptional; the disastrous flooding in Somerset results from an Environment Agency (EA) policy dating from 2008 to stop dredging, reduce pumping and allow reclaimed land to re-flood.

The policy can be found on the EA's website, together with a map that shows that Policy 6 applies to Area 8 (the Somerset Levels).

Thirdly, the IPCC's AR5 (Fifth Assessment Report), released in 2013, was obliged to concede that no warming had been measured (as opposed to being 'modelled') for the previous 17 years, during which the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere continued to rise. Nevertheless, it asserted that it maintains '95% confidence' in the models that had signally failed to predict the 'pause' in warming that actual measurement had so embarrassingly exposed.

Space now precludes me from explaining either (a) the methods by which IPCC concoct their parallel claim of '97% consensus' among scientists for their projections or (b) the basis (a single paper first published, without peer review, in 1998) for their AR3 assertion that 'most of the observed warming is 'likely' (greater than 66% probability, based on expert judgement) due to human activities'.

But I can.

Roger W Mathew

Down Road

Tavistock