VIAN Roberts, Saundersfoot continues to claim (Western Telegraph, January 8 and 15) that manmade climate is happening and is presenting an existential threat to all life, such as the polar bear, on our planet.

He also claims the most important driver of global heating are the greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere, but without any explanation to what he means by greenhouse gases - does he mean CO2?

It is telling that he never mentions water vapour, the main driver of greenhouse warming - his obfuscations and fairy tales beggar belief!

Perhaps Mr Roberts can explain to readers why the polar bear (Ursus maritimus) population has risen from an estimated 5,000 – 15,000 in 1960 to an estimated 28,500 bears in 2017?

To be sure, as far back as May, 2008, the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, predicting that bear populations would decline by two-thirds as the sea ice they rely on for hunting continued to shrink.

This conclusion was not based on evidence that the numbers of these iconic animals were declining – the opposite was the case – but they were put on the list based on predicted future dangers, using flawed climate models. (Acknowledgements to Gregory Wrightstone and his book titled, Inconvenient Facts).

The Fish and Wildlife Service’s thesis being: sea ice is shrinking because of global warming, polar bears need sea ice to hunt seals and cuddly polar bears will starve or drown unless we change our evil ways – perhaps there is a clue in the name, Ursus maritimus?

This was the first time of a species being listed upon a computer model of future climate – and we all know how dependable computer models can be – garbage in, garbage out (GIGO).

In reality, polar-bear populations are increasing, and in the greatest area of ice loss are in fact thriving – bearing in mind (no pun intended) polar bears survived a previous much warmer period.

Mr Roberts should simply just look at the data for the marginal seas, Chukchi and Beaufort, of the Arctic Ocean, and discover the truth (not politicised fairy tales) about polar bears and ice-loss.

Indeed, Greenland has just set a new all-time Record-Low Temperature January 3, 2020 at Summit Camp, a year-round research station on the apex of the Greenland Ice Sheet – this being fact, not fiction. It would appear Mr Roberts ignorance and gullibility know no end, and he would be wise to heed the words of H L Mencken (1880-1956), who stated: ‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary’.

DAVE HASKELL,

Brithdir