The following is a reader submitted letter from this week's Gazette (Thursday, January 10).

I think there is global warming but it is a natural cycle of the planet and has very little to do with mankind, the upright ape. Although we do need to look after our environment.

Looking back over time we had a period from about 1400 to 1800 called the Little Ice Age (LIA). In winter the river Thames sometimes froze over there were 26 ice fairs on the river the last being in 1814. The river froze to a depth of 11 inches and an elephant walked on the ice.

Also many other European rivers froze such as the Rhine, Elbe, Waal, Scheldt, which are all shown in contemporary paintings and writings.

There have been innumerable warm and cold period going way back in time for hundreds of thousands of years maybe before human type beings appeared on the planet. The last time the Thames froze over was in the winter of 1963/64 and then only in the upper reaches above Teddington lock.

I think the confusion lies in that the industrialisation of the world coincided with the start of the current natural warm period. This warm period will peak about 2050 to 2100 and then show cooling back to another LIA starting in about 2300.

The earth wobbles (cycles) on its axis about every 41000 years and in it’s orbit about every 95000 years. Since we only live for about 80 years we have terrible trouble coming to terms with passage of time say in 1000s of years. I think that the trouble is that we’ve made all these marvellous engineering and scientific inovations, we can cure disease and prolong life.

It’s all gone to out heads a bit and we think we can alter the climate of the planet. Masters of the universe! What hubris and arrogance!

I understand that and Australian professor reviewed the IPCC report and found it full of inconsistencies and incorrect facts and figures.

A few scientists have fiddled the figure to support their conclusions, i.e. Mann and his hockey stick graph.

This planet has a nasty habit of killing some of us at times, as people in Indonesia have found out (living on the 'ring of fire’). I have experienced earth quakes/tremors in parts of the planet, a scary time.

We live on a live planet, although we live on a relatively benign part. So be careful out there people!

Michael W Boulton C.Eng. M.I.Mech.E. M.R.Ae.S.

Thornbury