Eric Alexander (Letters, August 1) implies that 97 per cent of scientists believe in man made climate change. He fails to tell us the source of his statistics, which I would suggest are totally incorrect.

Extreme weather events can take the form of extremes of heat and cold, storms and calms, droughts and floods. It is only in the past 200 years that scientists have increasingly recorded weather data. However, the Central England Temperature (CET) series, the oldest continuous record of temperature in the world, dates from 1659. Various writers etc over the centuries have recorded severe weather events.

The Thames floods of last winter, although causing considerable hardship, were far less than the floods of November 1894 and March 1947. In 1607 a storm surge in the Bristol Channel flooded the Somerset Levels up to Glastonbury Tor 14 miles inland, covered an area of 200 square miles on both sides of the Bristol Channel and killed over 2,000 people. In January 1953 the East Coast floods killed over 300 people.

In December 1703 the Great Storm devastated the southern part of the UK. Over 10,000 seaman died, the Royal Navy lost one third of its sailors, Eddystone lighthouse was blown down with over 2,000 London chimneys, over 850 ships were shipwrecked including 200 in the Thames. There has not been a storm in the UK of comparable severity since then.

Many of the winters of the Little Ice Age were far colder than anything the UK has experienced in the past 150 years including the bitterly cold winter of 1963.

The worst recorded tornado in the UK was in May 1950.

Clearly, Eric Alexander has scientific data that contradicts the findings of the Meteorological Office who can find no link between extreme weather events and man made global warming. I would invite Eric to share this information with us. — Anthony Weeden, Bockmer End, near Marlow