JOHN Palfreyman (Letters, October 10) takes issue with Geoff Moore (Letters, October 9) on climate change, but he should ask why environmentalists' past warnings have proved to be scaremongering.

Al Gore's 2006 film An Inconvenient Truth warned that sea levels would rise by 20ft in the "not too distant future" so when will we see the remaining 19ft 11.75 in? The film said polar bears would soon be extinct but today have a thriving population. The Maldives have not vanished below the waves. In fact the Maldives have nearly completed a giant new airport runway capable of handling the Airbus A380 jetliner, the world's largest passenger aircraft.

Other climate predictions categorically stated there would be an Ice Age by 2000, global cooling would cause a world war by 2000, rising sea levels would wipe entire nations off the map by 2000, global warming would cause fewer hurricanes or more hurricanes and laughably, after our recent deluge of snow, in 2000 scientists said "snow will soon be a thing of the past".

Meanwhile the world's population escalates.

Clark Cross,

138 Springfield Road,

Linlithgow.

JOHN Palfreyman says that Geoff Moore does not understand the process whereby scientists agree that man-made global warming exists. I can advise him that the process is variously known as peer group pressure, social anxiety, or fear of rejection.

As with the Salem witch trials, the judiciary individually knew that witches did not exist, but to have said so would have meant exclusion from the processes and privileges associated with their position.

What is happening to scientists today is the same. Fear of rejection, or of loss of funding, compels compliance.

Malcolm Parkin,

15 Gamekeepers Road,

Kinnesswood,

Kinross.