THERE is so much rubbish being peddled by these so-called climate change activists.

The Gazette article about the recent protest quotes someone as saying we have only ten years to total disaster (Gazette, October 3, 'Woman pledges hunger strike). Where is the evidence for this? Why ten years and not 15?

There is also the statement by activists that if the temperature increases by two degrees we reach a tipping point. Where is the evidence for this? What tipping point are they talking about? We have had greater warming in the past and we are still here.

All these predictions are based on guesswork. Let me give you some real facts. Warming is a cyclical event. It has happened many times before and has been more severe in the past.

We had warming in the 1200s with more than three times the increase predicted this time, which was followed by a cooling period so cold that ice fairs were held on the Thames.

We had warming when the Romans were here, where they grew grapes around Newcastle. When we had this warming the population was tiny and there was no industry. So what caused this? Would it be the thousand-year cycle by any chance?

As for Greta, who in their right mind thinks a 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl is the fount of all knowledge. I would love to see her being quizzed by real climate experts.

Piers Corbyn is an astrophysicist who does know, and he disagrees withCO2 being the cause, but these activists think this schoolgirl knows more, which speaks volumes for their intellect.

It is my view that these people are being manipulated by vested interests who are perpetuating this irrational fear of something we cannot change. These vested interests see this fear as an opportunity to make money from governments as grants to finance climate change projects without any prospect of changing anything.

As for Tim Farron trying to get Parliament to block the proposed Cumbrian coalmine, he obviously doesn’t realise we need that coal for smelting steel. Imagine a world with no steel. Maybe he thinks we should go back to timber and wattle for building?

A much greater threat to the planet is the global population. In 1960 it was three billion, today it is 7.5 billion. I don’t hear Extinction Rebellion telling us what to do about that.

With the exponential population increase there will come a time when we will not be able to feed them all and water will be in short supply for everyone. The activists are totally against intensive farming yet that will be needed to feed the population. They are also against farm animals, so how do we fertilise the land to grow the crops. Will it be chemicals? No, the "greens" are against that also. So the land becomes sterile and barren? Not one global activist is wearing anything that was not derived from oil or animals, and this population increase will invariably require even more of the Earth's resources to survive. This increased population also needs energy which renewables will never be able to provide.

We could all go back to living in caves where the temperature is constant and in winter we could have a fire in the entrance. Oh, we can’t do that because of the CO2 emissions. How many millions of years do the "greens" want to drive us back to before they will be happy?

R Quirk

Ulverston