Sir - The IPCC has issued a number of forecasts of the effect of global warming over the years, in varying degrees of doom according to the assumptions fed into their computer models.

However, even after many years, and much public money, they still find it only "likely" or "very likely" that man-made emissions have any discernible effect on climate.

The faithful choose to interpret "likely" as meaning "certain" because they believe we need to wear hair-shirts anyway.

Sceptics however, take "likely" to be the scientific equivalent of "not proven", or in layman's terms "don't know" and consider it inadvisable to hamstring us and our economy, and its international competitiveness, with yet more taxes and regulations, on the basis of an informed hunch.

After all, even the "hockey stick", the original scientific cornerstone of the climate change movement, has long been proved incorrect in the way it showed the past, let alone the future, and has been quietly dropped from IPCC reports.

There is of course one proven technology, nuclear, which could provide both the carbon free environment the greens say they want, as well as keeping the lights on for us sceptics. The French rely on it and every time even the greens choose Eurostar rather than Ryanair, the journey is mostly nuclear-powered.

Instead of clamouring for nuclear, however, as you would expect, the greens oppose it even more strongly than fossil fuels. To them, apparently, a pain-free cure is worse than the disease.

It is hard to avoid the suspicion that it is the pain itself, the doing without, the greens really seek.

Could Climate Change be just a tool in the armoury in a mission to return us to an imaginary pre-industrial idyll with fickle power from windmills and only oxen to pull the plough?

Michael Tyce, Waterstock