Sir, - A tale of three writers on two pages on one day (The Irish Times, September 7th). Lorna Siggins tells us of a UN Commission reporting that the area of circumpolar ice cover fell by 25 per cent in the Antarctic from 1954 to 1972. She notes this as "disturbing", though perhaps "frightening" might be a better term.
Meanwhile, Kathryn Holmquist is finding it "unbelievable" that proof of global warming, of a kind, in the form of an exotic fish, should turn up in Irish waters. Not at all unbelievable: similar stories have been told, to my knowledge, throughout the 1990s as compelling signs of global warming accumulate worldwide.
Over the page William Reville's usual snide hatchet job on environmentalists contrasts a "technical expert" - an eminently reasonable fellow, facts at his fingertips - with an "environmental activist", unreasonably curmudgeonly in the face of a 96 per cent safe commercial product(!). There is the real world and then there is what is technically known as "Reville's World", and, so far, never the twain have met.
The good news is that even the environmentally-unfriendly doctor accepts that it would be "irresponsible" to allow greenhouse gas build-up to increase. May one assume, then, that he joins us in deploring the Government's current target of an increase in greenhouse gas emissions of 13 per cent over 1990 levels by 2012? - Yours, etc., Jim Woolridge,
Earthwatch magazine, Bantry, Co Cork.