SIR – From where does UKIP’s Jason Smith get his ideas (Letters, April 10)?

He says he is no scientist. I have studied sciences to beyond degree level, including meteorology and ‘recent’ geology, including changing climate through the ice ages. The stuff he is talking about is school science.

“CO2 is not a pollutant”, whatever he means by that. Maybe not by his definition, but it stops long-wave radiation produced by the sun’s short-wave radiation heating the earth, escaping back into space – hence the greenhouse effect.

We talk of “climate change” for a reason – energy cannot be created nor destroyed, merely changed. More of the sun’s energy is trapped in the atmosphere through the greenhouse effect. It is changed and deployed in various ways, making the air temperature warmer, creating stronger winds, causing more evaporation from water bodies and plants, more rain and snow and floods.

I know of no-one who is suggesting that the Earth is cooling, though it might well in future, possibly bringing on another ice age, and this could happen in only a few hundred or 1,000 years.

There’s food for thought, Mr Smith.

John Hall, Pennithorne Avenue, Baildon