I refer to Muriel Clark's letter in the Gazette on November 16.

Her message to the country suggests that we should adopt an austere, hairshirt frugality in order to curb current carbon dioxide and other noxious emissions polluting the atmosphere.

In my view, it is a recipe for mass unemployment and misery. It is not for the layperson, unfamiliar with scientific data to comment, nor is it helpful for MPs or Friends Of The Earth groping into the unknown to state their case as factual evidence on the causes of recent flooding disasters, for there is little firm evidence that global warming is undeniably a fact of life.

Even the experts in this field cannot agree on the causes for the worst flooding in centuries.

It could be a natural phenomena, abnormal solar activity or whatever.

On the basis of recent low temperatures it might suggest, not global warming, but rather a return to the ice age.

But whatever measures this small island takes in arresting damaging emissions from vehicles, industry or whatever, it will have little or no affect on the worldwide situation on pollution as a whole, for it is a global problem.

We are not in a war situation, rationing of food indeed, import and export controls, closing the airways, pricing the motorist off the roads, rationing fun, cutting down on all forms of entertainment that damage the ozone layer; that is the doom and gloom scenario Muriel Clark portrays. Pigs in our back gardens indeed what next?

K R MANNS

Blounts Court, Potterne