IT is rumoured that Dr Elsa Woodward (Letters September 22 - 'Crisis increases global warming') obtained her doctorate in Chemistry.

IT is rumoured that Dr Elsa Woodward (Letters September 22 - 'Crisis increases global warming') obtained her doctorate in Chemistry. This is difficult to believe when she writes about 'the world's cosy blanket of CO2'.

The atmosphere contains only 0.03 per cent of CO2 and that is without taking water vapour into account.

Three parts in 10,000, or three stitches or pieces of thread for every possible 10,000 does not a blanket make, by any stretch of the imagination, unless Dr Woodward would have us believe that CO2 molecules join hands in a layer one molecule thick at some level in the atmosphere, contrary to all the gas laws in the book.

Even then there is little evidence to suggest CO2 gas has the unique property of allowing electromagnetic radiation to pass through it at any angle in one direction only.

There is however a wealth of evidence to indicate that global warming (and cooling) is as natural an occurrence, due to exactly the same phenomenon, as that which causes hemisphere warming and cooling winter to summer and summer to winter.

The rate of the cycle of the phenomenon which produces the global warming (and cooling) is known, as is the current position in that cycle.

It is also known that CO2 levels rise and fall in conjunction with global warming and cooling and why, and have done so for hundreds of thousands of years. Evidence, one would have thought beyond doubt, that it is a result of the warming and cooling not the cause and nothing whatsoever to do with road vehicle emissions or humans lighting fires.

I'm sorry if any of this letter sounds rude but I object strongly to having our civilisation's hard won collective knowledge and intelligence insulted by 'hocus pocus'.

Peter Somerville

Coningsby Road

High Wycombe